H.G Wells is known as the father of science
fiction. He wrote many science fiction stories in his career by including many
scientific processes in his stories. One of his science fiction stories is “The
Diamond Maker” which is entirely based on the scientific process of making
diamonds. Science fiction is a genre encompassing imaginative works that take
place in this world or that of the author’s creation where anything is
possible. The only rules are those set forth by the author. This field leads in
exploring social perspectives, predictions of the future, and engage in
adventures unbound into the richness of the human mind.
Diamonds are nature’s hardest substance,
valued for their brilliance, lustre, and durability, but are rare and expensive
to mine. Manmade diamonds provide a cheaper, more readily available solution.
Science-fiction writer H. G. Wells described the concept of synthetic diamonds
in his short story "The Diamond Maker," published in 1911.The story
“The Diamond Maker”, a businessman meets a diamond maker, who is in a very
shabby and deplorable condition. The diamond maker is an amateur chemist who
performs chemical experiments in his small apartment during fifteen years of
increasing poverty, during which he nearly starves to death and who visibly
resembles the medieval “mad alchemist”. When he eventually succeeds in making
diamonds, he gets into some trouble with the police, to the consequence that he
is unable to sell the diamonds and thus benefit from his creation. The story
introduces medieval alchemist as the miserable seeker but modify the plot in
that they concede some experimental success in the making of diamond, gold and
other jewels. These things had always been vital for striving for material
goods, against which writers had been using their skills at any time and for
literary means, including the alchemist figures.
The businessman suspected the diamond maker
as fraudulent, that clearly depicts the influence of
science and when the diamond maker shows him the brown stone same as the size
of the narrator’s thumb, he is pretty much aware of the field of mineralogy“a year or so ago, I had occupied my
leisure in taking a London science degree, so that I have a smattering of
physics and mineralogy. The thing was not unlike an uncut diamond of the darker
sort, though far too large, being almost as big as the top of my thumb. I took
it, and saw it had the form of a regular octahedron, with the curved faces
peculiar to the most precious of minerals. I took out my penknife and tried to
scratch it--vainly. Leaning forward towards the gas-lamp, I tried the thing on
my watch-glass, and scored a white line across that with the greatest ease.”
We see that the narrator is pretty much aware
of the different types on minerals and their specificities “The thing might, after all, be merely a lump of that almost equally
hard substance, corundum, with an accidental resemblance in shape to the
diamond.”
H.G Well in this story “”The Diamond Maker”
alludes to Moissan, a French Chemist, who discovered the rare mineral
Moissanite (SIC), “I had heard something
of Moissan, but I knew his artificial diamonds were very small”. Moissan
heated charcoal (a form of carbon) and iron in a furnace until the iron melted;
and then rapidly cooled, the iron would generate high pressure and transform
the charcoal into diamonds. Others tried to repeat this experiment in later
years, and very small diamonds were created; commercially successful production
of synthetic diamonds was not achieved until the 1950s.
H.G Wells explained the method of making
man-made diamond in this story "Diamonds
are to be made by throwing carbon out of combination in a suitable flux and
under a suitable pressure; the carbon crystallises out, not as black-lead or
charcoal-powder, but as small diamonds. The Diamond maker further explains
that, “You know time is an important
element in crystallisation. If you hurry the process the crystals are small--it
is only by prolonged standing that they grow to any size. I resolved to let
this apparatus cool for two years, letting the temperature go down slowly
during the time” and the diamond maker further explains the way of making
diamonds and how he was ultimately successful “I let the fire out. I took my cylinder and unscrewed it while it was
still so hot that it punished my hands, and I scraped out the crumbling
lava-like mass with a chisel, and hammered it into a powder upon an iron plate.
And I found three big diamonds and five small ones”.
Therefore, the above mentioned scientific
instances from the story “The Diamond Maker” prove that H.G Wells was a science
fiction shot story writer.
