R.U.R.

The origin of the word robots, although they are not so much robots as golems. Only there are lots and lots and lots of them -- eventually millions. It all starts out well but ends epicly badly. It suffers somewhat from a certain didacticism about technology, Communism, and other themes, that I don't remember in War with the Newts and other Capek books. That said, it is a classic that I've been meaning to read for a long time and am glad I finally got around to it.

This is a science fiction play published in the 1930s which is most famous for first coining the word "robot" to describe an artificial man or woman. The robots produced by Rossum's Universal Robots are not made of metal or plastic though (despite the cover of this SF Masterworks edition), but with a mysterious substance discovered by the company's founder which behaves exactly like living protoplasm but which has a different chemical composition. These robots have flesh, bones and organs composed of this alternative substance, so one might say they are a slightly different species of human, rather than what we would understand today by the word "robot" (which comes from the Slavic root "rob/rab" which relates to work, worker, slave). The play covers a wide range of ethical issues raised by the mass production of these artificial men and women, which have been further developed of course by many other writers, in particular Isaac Asimov. Asimov's three laws of robotics don't apply here, as the robots decide they are superior to humans and take over, killing their former masters. There is a whole spectrum of high drama and tragedy here in this fairly short three act play. Deservedly a seminal science fiction text.

It’s fascinating to me that R.U.R. was written in 1920, and is highly relevant nearly one hundred years later, with the very real concerns of robots replacing human workers and Artificial Intelligence posing a possible threat to the human race in the news. In addition to using the play to make comments about humanity, and the dehumanizing effects of science and mass manufacturing, Karel Čapek was clearly ahead of his time. Right up there with his masterpiece ‘War With The Newts’, and very enjoyable.

This play is credited as the first use of the term as robot.Since it is a play a lot of the the action of the revolt and attack of the robots happens off stage.The way all the men fall in love with Helena is so over the top I see it as played for laughs.You see the origin of a lot of the troupes of the genre set up here.

The origin of the word robots, although they are not so much robots as golems. Only there are lots and lots and lots of them -- eventually millions. It all starts out well but ends epicly badly. It suffers somewhat from a certain didacticism about technology, Communism, and other themes, that I don't remember in War with the Newts and other Capek books. That said, it is a classic that I've been meaning to read for a long time and am glad I finally got around to it.

Brilliant, bizarre play. The first "cylons" (as in Battlestar Galactica) and a wicked skewering of both capitalism and communism, from 1920s Czechlands.

The central theme of Karel Capek's R.U.R., the grandfather of all robot fiction (It is interesting to note that Capek's robots are actually artificially grown humans rather than being mechanical. I'd be interested to know what was the first work in which mechanical robots feature.), is that if humanity does not check it's hubris, then all our wonderful scientific advances will ultimately be our downfall. Quite prescient, especially in light of the atomic bomb (which the playwright never lived to see). The play's central message comes across clearly without feeling heavy handed at all.The writing is not the best on earth, unfortunately, and in some places the plot drags a bit or veers into illogical territory (for instance, why didn't the robots just kill them as soon as they got control of the Ultimus?). In addition a lot of the dialog, ESPECIALLY Helena Glory's, is far too melodramatic for my taste though that might just my unfamiliarity with plays from the 1920s or with the rest of Capek's work.Despite this, I enjoyed reading this and recommend it, especially for it's place of honor in the history and evolution of sci-fi.