Miles Breuer Explained

Miles John Breuer (January 3, 1889 – October 14, 1945) was an American physician and science fiction writer of Czech origin. Although he had published elsewhere since the early 20th century, he is considered the part of the first generation of writers to appear regularly in the pulp science fiction magazines, publishing his first story, "The Man with the Strange Head", in the January 1927 issue of Amazing Stories. His best known works are "The Gostak and the Doshes" (1930) and two stories written jointly with Jack Williamson, "The Girl from Mars" (1929) and The Birth of a New Republic (1931).

Early life and medical career

Miles J. Breuer was born in Chicago, in 1889, to Charles (Karel) and Barbara Breuer, Czech immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The family moved to Nebraska in 1893 while Charles pursued a medical degree at Creighton University in Omaha. Miles grew up in the Czech community of Crete, Nebraska. He graduated from Crete High School in 1906.

He attended the University of Texas, where he earned a master's degree in 1911. After earning a medical degree in 1915 from Rush Medical College, which was then at the University of Chicago, Breuer returned to Nebraska to join his father's medical practice. In 1916 Miles married Julia Strejc. The couple had three children together, Rosalie, Stanley, and Mildred.

During World War I Miles Breuer served for twenty months in France as a first lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps. Rejoining his father's medical practice after the war, Breuer contributed frequent medical articles to Czech-language newspapers, as well as a monthly health column in the country's largest Czech-language agricultural monthly. In 1925 he published a handbook called Index of Physiotherapeutic Technic, cataloging a variety of methods for physical therapy.

Breuer suffered a nervous breakdown in December 1942. Shortly afterward he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued his medical practice until 1945. He died that year after a brief illness.[1]

Writing career

Breuer's first published works of fiction appeared as early as in 1909 in various English-language (e.g. early monthly pulp 10 Story Book) as well as US-based Czech-language publications (e.g. calendar Amerikán, monthly Bratrský věstník). Breuer had long been interested in scientific romances, particularly those by H. G. Wells.[2] When Hugo Gernsback founded the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, Breuer began submitting stories, publishing his first, "The Man with the Strange Head", in the January 1927 issue. Only a few months earlier, this story was published in Chicago in Czech as "Muž se zvláštní hlavou" in the yearly Czech-language calendar Amerikán for 1927.[3]

Over the next fifteen years Breuer published two novels, thirty-six shorter stories, and several other items for science fiction magazines, including collaborations with Jack Williamson and Clare Winger Harris. A great majority were published in Amazing Stories (a monthly) and Amazing Stories Quarterly. Of these stories, at least a dozen were previously published in various non-genre publications, either in English, or Czech, or both languages.[4]

Several of Breuer's stories have been included in anthologies. In the early 21st century, Michael R. Page of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln edited a collection, The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories (2008), comprising ten stories, the novel Paradise and Iron, and Breuer's editorial essay "The Future of Scientifiction". The most recent article addressing his Czech-language writing was published by Jaroslav Olša, Jr. in the Czech SF monthly XB-1 (November 2020). Its abbreviated version is a chapbook The Amazing Breuer. Early Czech-American Science Fiction Author Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer (1889-1945) (2020). – chapbook available online.[5] Most recently Jaroslav Olša, Jr. wrote the Czech-language book Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer. Česko-americký spisovatel u zrodu moderní science fiction (Miloslav /Miles/ J. Breuer: Czech-American Writer at the Birth of Modern Science Fiction.) Praha: Nová vlna 2023, which also includes three Breuer's SF short stories originally written in Czech.

Jack Williamson has described Breuer as "among the first and best of the amateurs whose work Gernsback began to print."[6] Walter Gillings said that Breuer wrote "some of the most intriguing tales that appeared in the early volumes of Amazing Stories ".[7] John Clute described his work as crudely written, but intelligent and noted for new ideas.[8]

Works by Miles J. Breuer

This list is limited to speculative fiction as cataloged by the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. For Breuer as author or co-author, ISFDB lists the following one 1916 story and 44 items published from 1927 to 1942. It also catalogs ten letters to Amazing Stories and one to Wonder Stories, all 1927–31, and one 1930 illustration.

Short stories (only those listed in ISFDB)

Novels

Poems

Essays

External links

Notes and References

  1. Obituary, Lincoln Evening Journal, October 16, 1945.
  2. Michael R. Page, "Introduction", The Man With the Strange Head, Miles J. Breuer, 2008, p. xvii.
  3. Book: Amerikán národní kalendář na rok 1927 . 1926 . Aug. Geringer . Chicago, IL . 191–198.
  4. Book: Olša, Jr. . Jaroslav . The Amazing Breuer. Early Czech-American Science Fiction Author Miloslav (Miles) J. Breuer (1889-1945). . 2020 . Nová vlna - Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Los Angeles . Praha - Los Angeles.
  5. Web site: Catalog . interkom.vecnost.cz . 2021-02-18.
  6. Wonder's Child: My Life in Science Fiction by Jack Williamson, 2nd ed., 2005, pp. 61-62.
  7. "Miles J. Breuer," Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers, ed. Curtis C. Smith, 2nd ed., 1986, pp. 78-79.
  8. "Miles J. Breuer", The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 1993, p. 157.

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