Review: The Diamond Lens and Other Stories

O’BRIEN, Fitz-James (Peter Orford, Ed.), The Diamond Lens and Other Stories, Hesperus Press Ltd., London, 2012.

Octavo; paperback with illustrated gatefold wrappers; 108pp. New.

Don’t worry too much if you’ve never heard of Fitz-James O’Brien (1828-1862) before: he’s been largely forgotten in the scheme of things – an obscure Irish scribbler who moved to New York and made the questionable decision to fight for the Union Army in the American Civil War. Spoiler alert: he didn’t make it. Nevertheless, some people regard O’Brien as the “Father of Science Fiction”, so he’s kind of a big deal.

First things first, I should mention that this book is a release from Hesperus Press in London, one of two publishers I’ve discovered recently with a mission to dust off and re-animate old, obscure and interesting works of literature. The production levels are grand and the editorial content more than what you’d expect, especially - in this case - for such a relatively unknown writer. They seem to have gone out of their way to pair interesting writers with equally-interesting commentators – I’d kind of like to see what Margaret Drabble has to say about Baudelaire’s On Wine and Hashish...

O’Brien’s literary debt is clearly owed to Edgar Allan Poe: his stories are disturbing and macabre, clothed in grim atmosphere and generally fuelled by a wicked come-uppance. The science-fiction angle seems to stem from the fact that his narrators are either scientists, or are steeped in the scientific method, looking for explanations using a clear-sighted gathering of facts. The scientist of the “The Diamond Lens” is more a scientist of the mad variety however, and is possibly the initiator of that trope.

Peter Orford’s analysis of O’Brien’s writing makes it clear that he could have been a great writer of his day, had he taken extra pains with his work. O’Brien was a deadline approacher of the last-minute variety, not using his time wisely but throwing down the words frantically as the time limit drew near. Orford makes the point that these stories are very good indeed; how much better could they have been if he’d taken the time to polish them as they deserved? Each tale has moral imperatives and grand themes which inform the action and the outcomes – slight as they inevitably must be considered, how incredible is it that they represent an author’s first drafts?

“The Diamond Lens” relates the activities of a self-taught scientist obsessed with microscopy and the discovery of unknown miniature worlds. As he tells of his past history and the awful events that his researches have caused to come to pass, we see the adamantine logic of his worldview begin to fray about the edges. In the end, he becomes the most unreliable of narrators and we become intimate with the scandalous acts of which he is the author. He justifies theft and murder, and the reliance upon a medium for his academic sources (using her to gain advice from Leeuwenhoek, the inventor of the microscope, no less) in his efforts to pierce through veils of diminutive worlds long unsuspected. Once he does obtain his goal, he discovers the microscopic woman Animula for whom he falls hopelessly in love. His romance is doomed however, because, unaware of him as she is, there is no way that they can ever meet and, before he thinks of a way to overcome the problem, the drop of water which is her world evaporates and she dies. All is lost and all was for naught.

The third tale in this collection prefigures H.G. Wells by several decades positing the arrival of an invisible person into an otherwise ordinary setting. Our narrator inhabits a guest house along with several other gentlemen. One night, after retiring to sleep, he is awakened by a strange sound and then the sharp surprise of a heavy object landing upon his person, an object that then grips his throat and tries to strangle him. He fights his way clear of the assailant, figuring in the darkness that it is some kind of sneak-thief; however, when the lights come up, he sees nothing – the being is completely invisible to the naked eye. With the assistance of some of the other lodgers, the creature is restrained and the gentlemen try to determine what it is and from where it originated; however, it dies of starvation before any of the mystery is revealed, leaving us only with the story’s title to contemplate - “What Was It?”

The second offering – “The Wondersmith” - I have purposely left until last. The tale involves a group of New York gypsies, led by the eponymous Wondersmith, who decide to launch a vicious attack upon the children of the city by smuggling homicidal wooden dolls – animated by dark souls obtained by a fortune-teller – into their Christmas stockings. The wooden dolls are rapacious and barely-controlled, each armed with a poisoned sword or dagger and, in a test-run of their murderous capabilities, make short work of the stock of a back-alley bird-seller. On the sidelines of all this deviltry, the Wondersmith’s adopted daughter – a young woman he stole from her original parents and treats as a servant – finds love with a hunch-backed bookseller and, at the climax of the tale, they find escape and freedom.

O’Brien’s shortcomings are clearly seen in this story. It’s patchy and there are many leads that are abandoned or only hastily followed-up upon. Primarily though, it’s horrifically racist, with the villains all of Jewish and Egyptian stock, Hell-bent on a dubious vengeance over the Christian populace of New York. We learn that the Wondersmith lost his son to an addiction to brandy, the first sip of which was offered to him by a Christian. At the end of the story, the villains are all undone by an inability to moderate their own drinking – they fall comatose and the manikins animate accidentally and turn their bloodlust upon their creators before a fire consumes them forever. During the chaos, the imprisoned servant girl and her paramour flee the scene and go on to live (we suppose) happily ever after.

The seeds of the evil plot and its eventual undoing are all traced back to the racial stock of the baddies. At the same time the purity and goodness of the non-Jews – in the form of the young lovers – is attributed to their Christian origins. Along the way there is revealed every poisonous anti-Semitic stereotype possible, with a nebulous suggestion of worldwide organisation of a terror-cell quality. This is not a fun piece at all. And it’s not standalone: in “The Diamond Lens” the young man whom the scientist steals the diamond from is highlighted as Jewish and, therefore, overly-emotional and of no consequence, allowing the narrator to execute the cruel murder and successfully stage it as a suicide. And Lovecraft cops stick for his racism! At least, unlike Fitz-James O’Brien, he had the good grace to keep it mostly off the pages of his published works.

I’m not going to advocate this book as a ‘must-read’; it’s really for completists only, those who have an interest in the origins of genre literature generally, and science fiction in particular. It fulfils the requirements for weird literature but O’Brien’s lack of attention to polishing and editing – along with his outré racial attitudes – make it somewhat hard work. Kudos to the Hesperus Press for giving it an airing, but – as a curiosity - I can only give it two Tentacled Horrors.