Afbeelding van de auteur.

Fitz James O'Brien (1828–1862)

Auteur van The Diamond Lens

44+ Werken 260 Leden 19 Besprekingen

Over de Auteur

Fotografie: By William Winter 1836 – 1917 - William Winter (1881) The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien, Osgood & Co., Boston (Digitised by Google Books), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22711363

Werken van Fitz James O'Brien

The Diamond Lens (1858) 32 exemplaren
What Was It? (1964) 26 exemplaren
Relatos de vampiros (1997) — Medewerker — 9 exemplaren
Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 (1884) — Medewerker — 9 exemplaren
Nightmares on Congress Street, Part 5 (2006) — Medewerker — 8 exemplaren
The Wondersmith and Others (2008) 8 exemplaren
The Wondersmith (2012) 6 exemplaren
The Lost Room 5 exemplaren
The Child Who Loved a Grave (2010) 4 exemplaren
The Golden Ingot (2010) 3 exemplaren
Collected Stories 3 exemplaren
My Wife's Tempter (2010) 3 exemplaren
Mother Of Pearl 2 exemplaren
Co to Było? 1 exemplaar
From Hand To Mouth 1 exemplaar
The Lost Room 1 exemplaar
Qu'était-ce ? (1998) 1 exemplaar
A lente de diamante 1 exemplaar

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A Brilliant Void (2018) — Medewerker — 26 exemplaren
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THE DEEP ONES: "The Lost Room" by Fitz-James O'Brien in The Weird Tradition (december 2017)

Besprekingen

 
Gemarkeerd
mahebelen | Aug 25, 2023 |
This is in an excellent pamphlet edition by Helios House Press for the Miskatonic Literary Society for the H.P.L.H.S. Nice typography and black-and-white illustrations by Evelyne Sequeiros. A decent story from 1859. You can definitely see the forerunner of the Lovecraft stories, even down to the narration and type of madness.
½
 
Gemarkeerd
tuckerresearch | 1 andere bespreking | Feb 6, 2023 |
A Halloween appropriate tale. What was it, indeed.

I only read the titled story from an online download.
 
Gemarkeerd
mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 |
The Diamond Lens is a short story by Fitz-James O’Brien; published in 1858, it holds its place in the canon of proto science fiction. It is a story of a young man obsessed with microscopes in an age where important scientific discoveries were still being made in the field. He sacrifices everything to build a machine that can see further than anyone has seen before. With the help of an occultists he learns that a very large diamond could be made into a lens which would serve his purpose. He commits murder to obtain his diamond, but is rewarded when he finally peers through his lens for the first time. It is a well written story with an imaginative denouement that still has the power to grip the reader with a sense of wonder. The excellent pacing and imaginative writing led me to explore further and I came across this 1925 collection of O’Brien’s stories.

O’Brien was born in Ireland and emigrated to New York in 1852. Previously he had edited a magazine in London and was prepared to earn his living as a writer in New York. He had stories published in Putnam’s magazine, Vanity Fair and the Atlantic Monthly and joined a coterie of bohemian writers living and working in New York. He enlisted in the New York National Guard during the civil war and died of wounds received in April 1862 at the age of 35. The 1925 edition of his collected stories starts with The Diamond Lens and it is the most satisfying story in the collection, however there are others that are worth reading. The Wondersmith tells of a gang of gypsies living in a tenement in a seedy part of the city, who plan to unleash an army of small wooden figures brought to life by Herr Hippe the leader of the gang. The evil figurines are on a mission to murder Christian children. This claustrophobic story involving Herr Hippe’s adopted daughter and her lover moves towards an exciting climax with well drawn characters. Two good stories to start the collection, although both are worryingly anti-Semitic.

The other stories in the collection are not so well paced or so well developed as the first two, but the anti-Semitism is no longer present. “The Pot of Tulips” is a fairly run of the mill ghost story but “The Lost Room” is much better; a group of ghosts take over a reclusive bachelors apartment and he must enter into a dice game with them to get his apartment back. “The Golden Ingot” is a story of a modern alchemist which again features an obsessive character who destroys himself with his obsession. What Was It is a weird tale of a murderous ghost that is creepy enough, but “My Wife’s Temper” takes O’Brien away from fantasy elements to a story that is only strange because of its lacklustre conclusion. The collection ends with ‘The Dragon Fang Possessed by the Conjuror Piou-Lu in which the fantasy elements tend to run away with the story.

The obvious comparison to O’Brien’s stories are those of Edgar Allan Poe whose stories would have been in print when O’Brien started writing, in my opinion a couple of Obrien’s tales stand up well with those of Poe and they are certainly as well written. As an example of early fantasy writing in short story format I found these well worth reading. An enjoyable afternoon’s read and so 3.5 stars.
… (meer)
½
2 stem
Gemarkeerd
baswood | Apr 12, 2019 |

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Statistieken

Werken
44
Ook door
73
Leden
260
Populariteit
#88,386
Waardering
3.9
Besprekingen
19
ISBNs
51
Talen
4

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