New Book Spotlight
Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction
A mini-interview Jaroslav Olša, Jr.
Tell us about your new book?
It is a new insight into the birth of science fiction. My book tells the story of a man who had an incredibly important impact on how early Hugo Gernsback´s Amazing Stories looked, and how the genre developed in its earliest years.
And not only that, it is also a story of a man living in two different worlds – his American home and his heritage homeland, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. Writing science fiction in both languages he mastered, English and Czech, he was a unique personality of both American science fiction and Czech-American literary society.
Last, but not least, as Breuer was a medical doctor, but also a researcher and scientist, his stories were really “scientific.” He was one of those authors who tried his best to predict the technological trends of the future, as he was the first who imagined self-driving cars, now already transversing the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Phoenix.
What aspect of the book was the most fun to write?
The most thrilling part of working on this was the research itself. I still vividly remember the shock, when I discovered that early US science fiction writer Miles J. Breuer is also Miloslav J. Breuer, Czech-American, and precursor of Czech writing in the United States. He was a no name in both Czech-American literature and Czech science fiction. Nobody ever even mentioned him… And then I had spent hundreds of hours trying to connect the dots and pieces in contemporary US magazines and books, both in English and Czech, uncovering details about Breuer´s life and work. Every time I’ve discovered a new story not mentioned before, I had goosebumps.
If there is one emotion or theme that you would hope that the reader connects with, what would that be?
Every science fiction fan would feel Breuer´s zeal for the genre literature, which is visibly seen from his fiction as well as the articles he published about science fiction.
