[2] Where Zagorka only touched the SF motifs for the purpose of an adventure story, Šufflay dived into the genre with all of its apparatus: technological achievements and social and political change.
Josip Smolčić used the pseudonym Aldion Degal to publish several novels: "Atomska raketa" ("The Atomic Rocket") in 1939, "Zrake smrti" ("The Death Rays") in 1932 and "Smaragdni skarabej" ("The Emerald Scarab") in 1938.
A wide spectrum of topics can be gleaned from the titles alone: "Osvajač 2 se ne javlja" ("Conqueror Two Not Responding") in 1959, "Svemirska nevjesta" ("The Space Bride"), “Varamunga – tajanstveni grad" ("Varamunga – the Mysterious City"), the young adult novel "Zagonetni stroj profesora Kružića" ("The Mysterious Machine of Professor Kružić") in 1960, "Mrtvi se vraćaju" ("The Dead Return") in 1965, "Ništa bez Božene" ("Nothing Without Božena"- actually an extended version of "Professor Kružić") in 1970.
Bjažić and Furtinger reached high levels of popularity, basically paving the way for the subsequent growth of not only SF in Croatia, but also within Yugoslavia as a whole.
As opposed to more or less classic, hard(er) SF, Angelo Ritig wrote two novels: "Sasvim neobično buđenje" ("A Quite Unusual Awakening") in 1961 and "Ljubav u neboderu" ("Love in a Skyscraper") in 1965, which were more aimed at psychology and character development.
[5] The second was the founding of Sirius, a magazine that published science fiction stories mostly originating in the USA and the United Kingdom, but occasionally picking the best works from other countries, mainly - but not exclusively - the Soviet Union.
Vjesnik had a large number of different titles under its roof, from various entertainment, TV, enigmatic magazines, through issues that specialized in various hobbies and all the way to pulp genre literature like westerns and love or crime stories.
At its peak, Sirius reached a circulation of nearly 40,000 copies (for comparison, Yugoslavia had a population of around 20 million), making it the third largest science fiction magazine in the world at the time.
These included Predrag Raos, Darko Macan, Vera Ivosić-Santo (later known as Veronika Santo), Branko Pihač, Živko Prodanović, Neven Antičević (who went on to become the founder of one of the biggest publishing houses and bookstore chains in Croatia), Radovan Devlić (mainly a comic author), Damir Mikuličić, Darije Đokić and many others.
In 1996 SFera also started a youth program, organizing a national contest for stories and literary works for all primary and secondary school students in the whole country.
There was a three year lull and then, in 1992, a small private publisher started what was to be the spiritual heir to Sirius, a magazine called Futura.
With a smaller market and unfavorable cultural circumstances, Futura has continuously struggled on the edge of existence with its circulation rarely - if ever - reaching 1000 sold copies and usually going around 500 per issue.
New fandom and semi-professional groups have emerged since 2010: in Slavonski Brod the SF group "Orion" came into being with a convention called "Marsonicon" (after Marsonia, the old Roman name of the city), a series of Croatian and regional SF annual collection series titled "Marsonic", started in 2012, and a fanzine named "Svemirski Brod" in 2013.
By the end of the decade, the city of Split followed suit with FantaSTikon[11] and one more series of annual collections of Croatian science fiction in print.