THE FIRST CROATIAN SCIENCE FICTION

The rather prolific novelistic production in Croatian between the two world wars is distinctly marked by several literary works which clearly break through the usual thematic limits of Neorealism. It is this inter-war period that witnessed, among other genres, the birth of the first Croatian science-fiction, the novel On the Pacific in 2255 by Milan fSufflay. The prominent Croatian politician, historian and albanologist published his work as a serial in the "Obzor” magazine, appearing throughout 1924 under the pseudonym Eamon O’Leigh. It is an unusually daring and penetrating vision of the future built upon diverse philosophical (Confucius, Bergson, Spengler), scientific (Einstein, Russell, Freud), parapsychological and pseudoscientific (cabbala, occultism, telepathy) and literary influences (Wells, Verne). Altough the year in which Sufflay set his plot is still far ahead, actual events have more than once born witness to the truth of many of the author’s forecasts and in some uncanny way the general course of history seems to follow in his prophetic wake