Miles (Miloslav) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer at the Birth of Modern Science Fiction
Born in Chicago to 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 an M.D., to moving around the United States, and writing science fiction that not only appeared in the English-language pulp magazines of the day, but in countless Czech-American journals.
His science fiction stories helped inspire a generation of authors. In 1924, he was among the first writers to warn about the dangers 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 inspiration for The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, who described Breuer’s work 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 first generation of Czech-American authors wrote primarily in Czech and the second in English, Breuer, who was bilingual, sought to enter both literary worlds throughout his life. His earliest known English-language story was published in 1908, followed by his first Czech-language story in 1911. His last two literary publications date to 1942, one published in English and the other in Czech.
This lecture explores Breuer’s English-language literary career in pulp magazines—documented in Michael R. Page’s 2008 book The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories—and also presents his early fiction, discovered only recently, published in a range of non-genre magazines, along with Miloslav’s Czech-language works, which remained almost completely unknown until very recently.
Jaroslav Olša, Jr. (b. 1964) is a career diplomat with more than three decades of experience in the Czech foreign service. He has served as Ambassador to Zimbabwe, South Korea, and the Philippines, and most recently as Consul General for the U.S. West Coast, based in Los Angeles. Alongside his diplomatic career, he has authored numerous books on Czech relations with the non-European world and edited more than two dozen literary anthologies, primarily focused on science fiction. In the past five years, his work has centered on Czech-American history, resulting in five publications, including the monographs V odlesku Hollywoodu: Čeští a českoslovenští konzulové v Los Angeles (In the Limelight of Hollywood: Czech and Czechoslovak Consuls in Los Angeles, 2024) and Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miles (Miloslav) J. Breuer – Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025).
*The first 15 people to RSPV and attend the event in person will receive a free copy of the book.
This event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Masaryk Club and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, with the gracious support of the Otto V. Čapek Fund.