Picture of author.

Fitz James O'Brien (1828–1862)

Teoksen The Diamond Lens tekijä

44+ teosta 260 jäsentä 19 arvostelua

Tietoja tekijästä

Image credit: 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

Tekijän teokset

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

Associated Works

The Dark Descent (1987) — Avustaja — 719 kappaletta
Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (1944) — Avustaja — 638 kappaletta
American Supernatural Tales (2007) — Avustaja — 442 kappaletta
Fifty Great American Short Stories (1965) — Avustaja — 430 kappaletta
Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder (1989) — Avustaja — 328 kappaletta
Great Irish Tales of Horror: A Treasury of Fear (1995) — Avustaja — 322 kappaletta
A Century of Science Fiction (1962) — Avustaja — 194 kappaletta
The Mammoth Book of Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories (1995) — Avustaja — 168 kappaletta
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (2019) — Avustaja — 166 kappaletta
Classic Ghost Stories (1998) — Avustaja — 160 kappaletta
Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (1991) — Avustaja — 158 kappaletta
The Road to Science Fiction #1: From Gilgamesh to Wells (1977) — Avustaja — 151 kappaletta
An Anthology of Famous American Stories (1953) — Avustaja — 137 kappaletta
Suuri kummituskirja (1990) — Avustaja — 109 kappaletta
Poets of the Civil War (2005) — Avustaja — 93 kappaletta
American Fantastic Tales: Boxed Set (2009) — Avustaja — 92 kappaletta
The Prentice Hall Anthology of Science Fiction and Fantasy (2000) — Avustaja — 91 kappaletta
Famous Modern Ghost Stories (1921) — Avustaja — 87 kappaletta
Supernatural Horror Short Stories (2017) — Avustaja — 75 kappaletta
Bedside Book of Famous American Stories (1936) — Avustaja — 71 kappaletta
A Fabulous Formless Darkness (1991) — Avustaja — 65 kappaletta
The Giant Book of Ghost Stories (1994) — Avustaja — 59 kappaletta
Lost Worlds Short Stories (Gothic Fantasy) (2017) — Avustaja — 55 kappaletta
The Supernatural Reader (1953) — Avustaja — 55 kappaletta
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories 2 (1656) — Avustaja — 50 kappaletta
Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson (2014) — Avustaja — 45 kappaletta
Doorway to Dilemma: Bewildering Tales of Dark Fantasy (2019) — Avustaja — 41 kappaletta
Horrors unknown (1971) — Avustaja — 41 kappaletta
The Graveyard Reader (1958) — Avustaja — 37 kappaletta
100 Tiny Tales of Terror (1996) — Avustaja — 33 kappaletta
The Monster-Maker and Other Science Fiction Classics (2012) — Avustaja — 29 kappaletta
Fantasmi irlandesi (1973) — Tekijä — 29 kappaletta
The Lock and Key Library (Volume 9: American) (1909) — Avustaja — 29 kappaletta
A Brilliant Void (2018) — Avustaja — 26 kappaletta
Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre (1947) — Avustaja — 26 kappaletta
The Occult Detective Megapack: 29 Classic Stories (2013) — Avustaja — 25 kappaletta
Nursery Crimes (1993) — Avustaja — 24 kappaletta
Short Story Classics [American], Volume 1 (1905) — Avustaja — 24 kappaletta
The Looking Glass Book of Stories (1960) — Avustaja — 21 kappaletta
The Horror Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Horror Stories (2011) — Avustaja — 17 kappaletta
The Third Book of Unknown Tales of Horror (1979) — Avustaja — 17 kappaletta
Monster Festival: Classic Tales of the Macabre (1965) — Avustaja — 16 kappaletta
Classic Science Fiction Stories (2022) — Avustaja — 16 kappaletta
Poems of Magic and Spells (1960) — Avustaja — 14 kappaletta
Weirdies, Weirdies, Weirdies (1975) — Avustaja — 12 kappaletta
Shapes of the Supernatural (1969) — Avustaja — 11 kappaletta
The Vampyre: A Bedside Companion (1978) — Avustaja — 11 kappaletta
Gernsback Awards: 1926 (1982) — Tekijä — 9 kappaletta
Giving Up the Ghosts: Short-Lived Occult Detective Series by Six Renowned Authors (2015) — Tekijä, eräät painokset8 kappaletta
Enter at Your Own Risk: Dreamscapes into Darkness (1605) — Avustaja — 7 kappaletta
Gaslight Tales of Terror (1976) — Avustaja — 6 kappaletta
Representative American Short Stories — Avustaja — 5 kappaletta
The Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales of Horror (1964) — Avustaja — 2 kappaletta
Rædslernes hus : Udvalgte gysernoveller af Michael Arlen (o. 5 andre) — Tekijä, eräät painokset2 kappaletta
Representative Modern Short Stories (1929) — Avustaja — 2 kappaletta
30 Mystery Stories: Boxed Set (2014) 2 kappaletta
Wakacje Wśród Duchów — Avustaja — 1 kappale
Explorers of the Infinite (1963) — Avustaja — 1 kappale

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Jäseniä

Keskustelut

THE DEEP ONES: "The Lost Room" by Fitz-James O'Brien, The Weird Tradition (joulukuu 2017)
THE DEEP ONES: "The Diamond Lens" by Fitz-James O'Brien, The Weird Tradition (heinäkuu 2017)

Kirja-arvosteluja

Buenas historias
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
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
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
tuckerresearch | 1 muu arvostelu | Feb 6, 2023 |
A Halloween appropriate tale. What was it, indeed.

I only read the titled story from an online download.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
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.
… (lisätietoja)
½
2 ääni
Merkitty asiattomaksi
baswood | Apr 12, 2019 |

Listat

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Tilastot

Teokset
44
Also by
73
Jäseniä
260
Suosituimmuussija
#88,386
Arvio (tähdet)
3.9
Kirja-arvosteluja
19
ISBN:t
51
Kielet
4

Taulukot ja kaaviot