Updates + Articles

Exploration Log 10: Interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr., author of Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction  (2025)

/ Joachim Boaz / 7 Comments
  • Graphic created by my father

Over the last few years, I have incorporated a smattering of the vast range of spectacular scholarship on science fiction into my reviews and highlighted works with my Exploration Log series that intrigue me.1 Today I have an interview with Jaroslav Olša, Jr. about his brand-new book, Dreaming of Autonomous Vehicles: Miles (Miroslav) J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer and the Birth of Science Fiction (2025). In the book, he covers the life and career of Miles (Miroslav) J. Breuer (1889-1945), the first SF author to regularly write original stories for Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing. Breuer’s career also provides a fascinating window into the literary and cultural world of immigrants in late 19th and early 20th century America.

You can buy an inexpensive physical copy ($15.80 at last look) directly from Space Cowboy Books here (preferred) and on Amazon.

Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. First, can you introduce yourself and your interests in science fiction?

Since childhood, I have loved reading science fiction, but — except for a short time — I have not been professionally attached to it. After studying Asian and African Studies and social sciences in Prague, Tunis and Amsterdam, I joined the Czech diplomatic three decades ago, and have served in various positions including Director of the African Dept. and the Head of the Policy Planning Dept. at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also served as a Czech Ambassador three times: to Zimbabwe for six years, to South Korea for another six years, and to the Philippines for four years. Since December 2020, I have served as Czech Consul General in Los Angeles in charge of the US West.

In the early 1980s, I became a part of a small but very active fandom when—in the then communist Czechoslovakia—the first science fiction club emerged. I started the SF fanzine Ikarie XB, which in 1990 turned into the first Czech-language professional SF magazine Ikarie, with monthly editions until 2024.

I have also translated many short stories and edited numerous SF anthologies, but never wrote fiction. But since the very beginning, the center of my interest in SF was to write about science fiction. I co-edited and authored entries in the only Czech SF encyclopedia, published in 1995. Thus my book about Miles (aka Miloslav) J. Breuer is somewhat of a culmination of my work on science fiction.

What drew you to the science fiction of Miles (Miloslav) J. Breuer (1889-1945)?

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Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLIV (Margaret St. Clair, Edgar Pangborn, Keith Laumer, and Edmund Cooper)

/ Joachim Boaz / 17 Comments

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

It’s the summer Joachim Boaz. Where are the reviews? I’m currently on a much needed vacation (Iceland). I will be back soon! In the meantime here are four recent purchases.

1. The Dancers of Noyo, Margaret St. Clair (1973)

  • Davis Meltzer’s cover for the 1st edition

From the back cover: “Like so many others before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Frail Vision by the Dancers: androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion–androids who held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall.

But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space.

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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXII

/ Joachim Boaz / 53 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read next month? Here’s the April installment of this column.

As readers of the site know, I am obsessed with the machinations of Cold War nuclear logic—historical and science fictional. In Ira Chernus’ brilliant Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity (2008), he dives into the Manichean ideoscape that dominated Eisenhower’s thinking. In short, he posits that Eisenhower interpreted the Soviet threat as an apocalyptic struggle in which the traditional outcome, eliminating the treat, is impossible. Instead the best hope is “to contain and manage it forever” (2)–hence “apocalypse management.” This “new linguistic paradigm” profoundly influenced their policymaking process and dominated American public discourse.

According to Chernus, Eisenhower was obsessed with Americans practicing voluntary self-control in their consumption in order shoulder the taxes needed to fund the perpetual struggle. With this paradigm, Eisenhower’s gestures towards peace–for example his “The Chance for Peace” (April 16th, 1953) speech–were acts of calibrated psychological warfare designed to put the burden of action on the Soviets and score points with the American public and American allies. The United States, on the other hand, could wage the conflict with perpetual, safe, and managed inaction in which peace is never the ultimate objective.

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Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLIII (Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, Chuck Rothman, Philip José Farmer, and an anthology on Future Love)

/ Joachim Boaz / 18 Comments

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

1. Deus Irae, Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny (1976)

  • Richard Corben’s cover for the 1980 edition

From the back cover: “One their own, they have written landmarks works that have added whole new dimensions of wonder to the field of science fiction. Now, in Deus Irae, they have created what ALA Booklist calls “the most successful collaboration in years!”–set in in bizarre world where you will encounter…

A bunch of backwoods farmers who happen to be lizards…

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Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)

/ Joachim Boaz / 10 Comments
  • Graphic created by my father

Back in July 2024, I posted six interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988). Since then I’ve tracked down three more. As in that post, I’ll provide a rundown of each interview and provide quotes of interesting passages. In the interviews, Simak comes across as an author deeply suspicious of rigorous generic distinctions, passionate about all life, and open to science fiction as an ever-changing and evolving entity.

As readers of the site know, I have a substantial interest in Simak’s SF that culminated last year in my September article “‘We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life’: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak” (2024) in Journey Planet . Since then I’ve posted an Exploration Log on his 1971 Worldcon speech, reviewed Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak (1957), and contributed to a podcast on “The Huddling Place” (1944) (the second City story).

Enjoy! And if you know of more interviews (or are able to update the Internet Speculative Fiction Database entry as it only includes five of the nine interviews I’ve covered) let me know.

THE INTERVIEWS

  • Jim Odbert’s cover for Rune # 43 (May 1975)
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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XXI

/ Joachim Boaz / 65 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s the March installment of this column.

Recently I came across John Boston and Damien Broderick’s three-volume series examining each and every story and non-fiction article in the pre-Michael Moorcock New Worlds and Science Fantasy/SF Impulse magazines in the UK. John Boston is a valued member of my site’s community — frequently stopping by in the comment sections. I thought for this mini-editorial I’d list a handful of active community members with websites, books, and worthwhile SF-related fanzine articles. I, of course, could be missing a few. Community matters more than you might think. I enjoy the discussion. I enjoy reading reviews that others write — even if it’s on science fiction that might not be within my more narrow focus (the historian in me). I always want to learn and share what’s worth reading and/or historically interesting. Thank you one and all.

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLII (Robert Silverberg, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Peter Tate, and Thomas Burnett Swann)

/ Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

1. Tom O’Bedlam, Robert Silverberg (1985)

  • Jim Burns’ cover for the 1986 edition

From the back cover: “MESSIAH OR MADMAN? It is 2103 and Tom O’Bedlam, madman, prophet, and visionary, wanders through California, dwelling place of the last humans on a continent decimated by radioactive dust. Tom, caught up in a living vision of distant worlds ruled by godlike beings, is the herald of a new age, a herald no one wants to hear until others too begin to dream of salvation beyond the stars. Yet while many dream, only tom has the power to make the wondrous visions real, to give people the ultimate escape they desire. Across the universe they must go… if Tom is humanity’s last hope–and not its final destroyer.”

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What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading? + Update No. XX

/ Joachim Boaz / 53 Comments
  • A selection of read volumes from my shelves

What pre-1985 science fiction are you reading or planning to read this month? Here’s the January installment of this column (sorry I missed a month).

Before John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971) attempted to raise the “standards and thinking in magazine SF,” David Lasser (1902-1996) attempted his own brief (1929-1933) program to improve science fiction as managing editor of Hugo Gernsback’s Science Wonder Stories, Wonder Stories, and Wonder Stories Quarterly. According to Mike Ashley’s The Time Machine: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazine from the Beginning to 1950 (2000), Lasser is a “much neglected revolutionary in science fiction” and through his efforts the genre “started to mature” (66).

Ashley highlights Lasser’s letter of instruction mailed to his regular contributors on the 11th of May, 1931, in which he “exhorted them to bring some realism to their fiction” (72). He also outlawed common tropes like the giant insect story and space opera (73). He emphasized the need to focus on characters that “should really be human” — not everything needs to be a “world-sweeping epic” (73). Stories in this vein, according to Ashley, include Clifford D. Simak’s religiously themed “The Voice in the Void” (1932), P. Schuyler Miller and Walter Dennis’ “The Red Spot on Jupiter” (1931) and “The Duel on the Asteroid” (1974), which featured a grim realism and character development (74).

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Updates: Recent Science Fiction Purchases No. CCCXLI (Pamela Sargent, Lan Wright, Burt Cole, and an Anthology on Post-Apocalyptic Fiction)

/ Joachim Boaz / 16 Comments

Which books/covers/authors intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?

1. Subi: The Volcano, Burt Cole (1957)

  • Peter Rudland’s cover for the 1958 edition

From the inside flap: “This is a forceful war story with a different. There is the Far Eastern background, the convincing solders’ talk, the military politics, the sex, disablement, disease, death, violence, stoicism, sadism, and so on, which combine to stress once again war’s futility and stupidity and man’s inhumanity to man: but there are also deeper implications which make this novel so strikingly unusual.

Judson, a persistent deserter from an army camp, has made a rough shelter for his native girl in the nearby ramshackle, bombed city, when he hears of a guerrilla attack on the camp. He goes to the base of the volcano (where the mob has gathered) to persuade them that if they kill Americans they will only die of disease for want of medical treatment. For his pains he is set upon and torn to pieces.

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