Josef Nesvadba

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Josef Nesvadba (June 19, 1926 Prague, Czechoslovakia – April 26, 2005 Prague) was a Czech science fiction writer, one of the best known.

Nesvadba had a degree in psychiatry, he was a pioneer of group psychotherapy in the Czech Republic.

He originally translated poetry from English and wrote theatrical plays, afterwards, he started to write short stories, his interest being detective fiction and satirical SF.

As befitting his background, psychiatry is often a theme in his SF. These tend to revolve around stories of human weakness, divided personalities, and so forth. However the tendency was often toward satire and irony. As with much Czech fiction the humor tends to be dark. In "Vampires Ltd" cars run on blood. In "Tomorrow I'll wake up and scald myself with tea" issues of causality and Hitler crop up. He also directed satirical barbs at the Czech Communist government. He had little faith in some of the more grandiose dreams of Communism, but overall agreed with a Marxist analysis of things. He was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.

Starting in the 1970s he began to move away from science fiction. From a commercial perspective this did not work well, but in retrospect was likely inevitable. This is because his main interests are slightly divergent from Western views of science fiction.

Some of his stories were bases to movies (e.g. Death of Tarzan, The Half-wit of Xeenemunde, Vampires, Ltd, Tomorrow I'll wake up and scald myself with tea), he also worked on several TV and radio serials.