Ondřej Neff (born June 26, 1945,Prague) is a Czech science fiction writer and journalist. He is the founder ofNeviditelný pes (The Invisible Dog), one of the earliest and most popular Czech daily news/comments websites, andDigineff, a website about digital photography for amateurs.
His fatherVladimír Neff was a popular writer, author of many historical novels.
Neff had two children with his first wife: a son, David, born in 1970, who works as a photographer for Mladá fronta DNES and a singer; and a daughter named Irena, born in 1979, murdered by her husband on 23 February 2008.
Ondřej Neff has supported Czech PresidentVáclav Klaus in his fight against environmentalism. He described his opinions, for example, in the article Klaus versus the Warming IdeologyArchived September 27, 2007, at theWayback Machine.
(Only four short stories were translated to English, collected later on as "Fourth Day to Eternity and Other Stories" (Manila: Anvil 2015); names in parentheses are just approximate translations of the titles.)
1984Jádro pudla (juvenile novel)
1985Vejce naruby (An Egg Inside Out), a collection of short stories, including:
Bílá hůl ráže 7,62 (White Cane 7.62) – ahorror story describes an alien invasion through hijacking a visual signal coming from an interstellar probe captured by the aliens. The modified signal triggers a process similar to abuffer overflow in a human brain, rewriting the victim's DNA and turning it into a copy of the alien attacker. A very similar theme was used independently byDavid Langford in the short story"BLIT". The invasion is thwarted with the help of a blindstunt driver trained to shoot on sound, who, to add to the conflict, happens to be apacifist.
Zelená je barva naděje (Green is the Colour of Hope) – describes an invention of an apparatus used for reading animal's minds and presenting them to humans in image form. The inventor tests the device on his friends' aquarium, causing much distress and anger because the apparatus shows the aquarium fish dreaming about killing and eating the humans, and dominating the world; as a consequence, all humans who saw the experiment feel they will never be able to trust any pet animal again.
Strom (The Tree) – a vision of a society after a near-miss ecological catastrophe, which was avoided only thanks to draconian laws of environment protection that put the nature and its preservation well above human life. The characters, last dwellers of a small village, are fighting a losing battle for their homes against a growing forest, as the laws prevent them from harming any tree.
1987Čtvrtý den až navěky (The Fourth Day Forever, coll)
1988Měsíc mého života (The Moon of My Life, novel)
1989Pole šťastných náhod (The Field of Good Chances, marginally fantastic novel)
1989Čarodějův učeň (The Wizard's Apprentice, sequel toJádro pudla)
1990Zepelín na Měsíci (A Zeppelin on the Moon, coll)
1991Vesmír je dost nekonečný (The Universe is Infinite Enough, coll)
1991Šídlo v pytli (sequel toJádro pudla)
1992 – 1995Milénium (The Millennium) – three parts:Země ohrožená (Earth Endangered),Země bojující (Earth Fighting),Země vítězná (Earth Victorious)
1997Reparátor (The Reparator, novel)
1997Bůh s. r. o. (God, Ltd., coll)
1998Tma (The Darkness, award for best Czech SF; revised versionTma 2.0 in 2003)
2003Pravda o pekle (The Truth about Hell, coll)
2003Tma 2.0 (The Darkness, 2.0, a revised version ofTma)
2004Dvorana zvrhlosti (The Hall of Aberrations, coll,ISBN80-204-1534-3)
