The Diamond Lens

Fitz-James O'Brien

Anatomy of Wonder 1 Core Collection Library - Science Fiction and Fantasy Project Gutenberg _bleiler _good _isfdb chapterbook microscopic world novelette shortfiction

Published: Jan 2, 1858

Magazine: The Atlantic Monthly, January 1858

Description:

[a] The Diamond Lens. (Atlantic Monthly, January 1858) 
*  While the story is O'Brien's, he received technical information from his friend J. D. Whelpley, a chemist and minor author of fantastic fiction. 
*  Linley, the narrator, who has been an eager microscopist since childhood, has found the equipment of his day inadequate for his purposes. Despairing of acquiring better, he visits a medium, summons up Leeuwenhoek's spirit, and asks how a perfected microscope can be made. 
*  Leeuwenhoek instructs him to take a diamond of 140 carats, subject it to an electric current until the molecules are rearranged, and then drill a hole through it. 
*  On returning to his apartments, Linley chances to learn that his neighbor Simon, a somewhat dubious society figure and merchant of bric-a-brac, owns such a diamond. (The spirits apparently knew this, and put the situation in Linley's way.) 
*  Linley murders Simon, takes the diamond, and sets up a sealed-room situation so that Simon seems to have committed suicide. 
*  Linley now constructs his lens and examines a drop of water. He sees in it a wonderland, with a most beautiful humanoid female, whom he names Animula. Falling in love with her voluptuous beauty, he spends his days watching her cavort through the water. But one day he sees her withering away; the drop of water has evaporated. He is considered mad when he tells of his experiences. 
*  One of the early classics of science- fiction.