Miles J. Breuer, M. D. (1889-1945) was an early Science Fiction writer as well as a doctor from Lincoln, Nebraska. He was a acolyte of H. G. Wells and a friend to Jack Williamson. In Jack’s wonderful autobiography, Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction (Revised version 2005) he speaks of his friend and collaborator, Miles J. Breuer:
Miles J. Breuer. He had fans then [1930], and his name on magazine covers. With little time for writing, he made it a very serious hobby. The long decades since then have almost erased his reputation, but he was among the first and best of the amateurs whose work Gernsback began to print for next to nothing when his supply of classic reprints ran low. By today’s standards, his work is scarcely outstanding. John Clute calls him “an intelligent though somewhat crude writer” who was “particularly strong on the articulation of fresh ideas.”
Breuer, like so many others, began by selling to Hugo Gernsback. Hugo’s predatory publishing practices drove most to other markets. For Breuer, this was T. O’Conor Sloane at Amazing Stories after Gernback was forced out. Breuer did sell to other editors such as Harry Bates (who paid the most), and teenagers Charles D. Honig and Mort Weisnger, and last, Ray A. Palmer. He never sold to Astounding after 1932. F. Orlin Tremaine and later John W. Campbell must have found Breuer’s work too old-fashioned.
1920s
“The Man With the Strange Head” (Amazing Stories, January 1927)
“The Specter”(poem) (Weird Tales, March 1927)
“The Stone Cat” (Amazing Stories, September 1927)
“The Riot at Sanderac” (Amazing Stories, December 1927)
“The Puzzle Duel” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1928)
“The Appendix and the Spectacles” (Amazing Stories, December 1928)
“The Girl From Mars” (Science Fiction Series #1, 1929) with Jack Williamson. Breuer took Jack on as a kind of apprentice, with Williamson providing the copy and Breuer revising and commenting on the work. They split the checks 50/50.
“The Captured Cross-section” (Amazing Stories, February 1929)
“Buried Treasure” (Amazing Stories, April 1929)
“The Future of Scientifiction” (essay)(Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1929)
“Rays and Men” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1929)
“The Book of Worlds” (Amazing Stories, July 1929)
“A Baby on Neptune” (Amazing Stories, December 1929) with Clare Winger Harris. It would be interesting to find out how Harris and Breuer collaborated. Was it different than the Williamson formula? I suspect so, since Clare had a bigger reputation than Jack at the time.
1930s
“The Fitzgerald Contraction” (Science Wonder Stories, January 1930) reprinted in Startling Stories, January 1942
“The Hungry Guinea Pig” (Amazing Stories, January 1930)
“The Gostak and the Doshes” (Amazing Stories, March 1930)
“Vis Scientiae” (poem) (Amazing Stories, May 1930)
“The Time Valve” (Wonder Stories, July 1930)
“The Driving Power” (Amazing Stories, July 1930)
“Paradise and Iron” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1930)
“A Problem in Communication” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, September 1930)
“The Inferiority Complex” (Amazing Stories, September 1930)
“Sonnet to Science” (Amazing Stories, December 1930)
“The Birth of a New Republic” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Winter 1931) with Jack Williamson
“On Board the Martian Liner” (Amazing Stories, March 1931)
“The Time Flight” (Amazing Stories, June 1931)
“The Demons of Rhadi-Mu” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1931)
“Mechanocracy” (Amazing Stories, April 1932)
“The Einstein See-Saw” (Astounding Stories, April 1932)
“The Perfect Planet” (Amazing Stories, May 1932)
“The Finger of the Past” (Amazing Stories, November 1932)
“The Strength of the Weak” (Amazing Stories, December 1933)
“Millions For Defense” (Amazing Stories, March 1935)
“Mars Colonizes” (Marvel Tales, Summer 1935)
“The Chemistry Murder Case” (Amazing Stories, October 1935)
“Mr. Dimmitt Seeks Redress” (Amazing Stories, August 1936)
“The Company or the Weather” (Amazing Stories, June 1937)
“Mr. Bowen’s Wife Reduces” (Amazing Stories, February 1938)
“The Raid From Mars” (Amazing Stories, March 1939)
“Meet the Author” (Amazing Stories, March 1939)
“The Disappearing Papers” (Future Fiction, November 1939)
1940s
“The New Frontier: A Guest Editorial” (essay) (Startling Stories, May 1940)
“The Oversight” (Comet Stories, December 1940)
“A Baby on Neptune” reprinted as “Child of Neptune” (Tales of Wonder, Spring 1941)
Reprint of “Driving Power” as “Lady of the Atoms” (Tales of Wonder, Autumn 1941)
“The Sheriff of Thorium Gulch” (Amazing Stories, August 1942)
“The Man Without an Appetite” (”Bratrsky Vestník” in Czech 1916) appeared in Great Science Fiction About Doctors (1963) edited by Groff Conklin. In this way, Breuer came full circle, with his oldest story appearing last in English.
Conclusion
Jack Williamson again:
That was our last work together [“The Birth of a New Republic”], but Breuer was a cordial and generous host when I stopped in Lincoln once to visit him. He died in California in 1947 (sic). I owe him a considerable debt for sympathetic and intelligent help when I needed it , and I’m sorry to see him so completely forgotten. He was one of our pioneers. His vision nobler than anything he did.”
Jack remembers the year wrong but that matters little. The fact that after his death, Breuer was largely forgotten. His first collection was The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories (2018). Most of his better stories did appear in anthologies, sometimes quite often. His longtime publisher, Sloane retired in 1938, making Breuer seek new markets. He died in 1945, so we can’t say how he would have done in the late 1940s but he did sell two stories to Ray A. Palmer. If Miles had been willing to sell-out a little to Palmer’s style of flash and sizzle, he might have had yet another long-buying editor there. He also reprinted a story and wrote an editorial for Mort Weisinger at Startling Stories. So maybe a future there. He also sold two reprints in England. He was only fifty-six when he died. What his later years may have produced we can only guess.
