An intergalactic investigator arrives on Earth to witness an astonishing experiment: self-aware diamonds, newly granted life, are probing the limits of creation itself. At the center is Prime, a brilliant, vain diamond whose curiosity quickly becomes ambition as he invents life forms of increasing complexity, from simple organisms to plants and animals, redefining what "organic" can mean and finding ways to sustain them without sunlight. Prime's experiments grow ever bolder, powered by heat, chemistry, and carbon-based structures, until his true aim becomes clear: to create a self-aware species. On a final visit, the investigator finds Prime weakened and trapped amid the ruins of a civilization destroyed by nuclear catastrophe. There, Prime reveals his ultimate achievement—humanity itself, a carbon-based life-form with intelligence, adaptability, and immense technological power. Witty, unsettling, and sharply ironic, this science-fiction tale becomes a cautionary story about genius, pride, and the dangerous consequences of creating life that may surpass its maker. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

À propos de l'auteur

Marks, Winston K.

Winston K. Marks, born Winston Kinney Marks, was an American writer whose career flourished during the energetic mid-century era of pulp science fiction and fantasy, a period when magazines offered a lively home for bold ideas, strange worlds, and sharp social observation. He built his reputation through a steady stream of imaginative stories that blended adventure, suspense, and speculative wonder, earning a place among the dependable voices of the genre’s golden age. Marks had a particular gift for turning high-concept science-fiction premises into fast-moving, accessible tales that also carried an undercurrent of wit, unease, and human curiosity. His writing often explored the limits of knowledge, the unpredictability of discovery, and the strange consequences of encountering forces beyond ordinary understanding, themes that still resonate in an age shaped by rapid technological change and uncertainty about the future. Though he is not always as widely remembered as some of his contemporaries, his work remains significant for its energy, clarity, and sense of fun, as well as for the way it captures the optimism and anxieties of its time. Readers today can still find in his stories a lively blend of entertainment and reflection, along with a reminder that science fiction has long been a way of asking practical, human questions about identity, responsibility, and survival. He will especially appeal to readers who enjoy classic pulp SF, inventive premises, and storytelling that moves briskly while leaving room for surprise.