Miles (Miloslav) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer at the Birth of Modern Science Fiction
Born in Chicago of Czech immigrant parents, Miles (Miloslav) J. Breuer (1889-1945) was the first author to have original fiction published in Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories in 1927, marking a milestone in the early history of science fiction. His life and fiction spanned working as a physician and moving around the United States to writing science fiction that not only appeared in English the pulp magazines of the day, but in countless Czech-American magazines in the Czech language. Breuer’s important work was published in Cedar Rapids periodicals.
His science fiction stories helped inspire a generation of authors. In 1924 he was one of the first writers to warn against the danger to humanity posed by the rise of modern technologies, in this specific case, by autonomous vehicles. His collaborative novel with Jack Williamson, The Birth of a New Republic, served as an inspiration for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein, who saw it as, “A very, very solid piece of work, one of my favorites, and miles ahead of the stuff … of the period.”
Breuer was a unique writer of the period. While the 1st generation of Czech-American writers wrote in Czech, the 2nd wrote already in English. Breuer was bilingual and tried to penetrate both literary works for the whole of his life. His first English-language story (as yet discovered) was published in 1908, he published in Czech in 1911. His last two known literary publications are from 1942, one of them published in English, one in Czech.
The lecture presents not only Breuer’s English literary career in pulp magazines (known thanks to a book The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories (2008) by Michael R. Page), but also unveils Breuer’s early stories published in various non-genre magazines, including Czech-language works, absolutely unknown until recently.
A significant number of Breuer’s stories were published in Bratrský Věstník, the monthly newspaper for members of Western Fraternal Life Organization, in Cedar Rapids.
Presentation is approximately 60 minutes in the Skala Bartizal Library.
About the Speaker: Jaroslav Olša, Jr. (1964) is a career diplomat with more than three decades of experience in Czech foreign service. He served as ambassador to Zimbabwe, South Korea, the Philippines, and most recently as Consul General for the U.S. West Coast, based in Los Angeles. He has published a wide range of books on Czech relations with the non-European world, and edited two dozen literary anthologies, mainly science fiction. In the last five years he has published five books on Czech-American history, the most recent being the monograph Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miles (Miloslav) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2005) and an omnibus of Miloslav J. Breuer’s Czech-language science fiction stories, Osudný paprsek (The Fatal Ray, 2025).
