R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play by the Czech
writer Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti
(Rossum’s Universal Robots). However, the English phrase Rossum’s Universal
Robots had been used as the subtitle in the Czech original. It premiered on 25
January 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language
and to science fiction as a whole.
R.U.R. quickly became famous and was influential early in the history of its publication. By 1923, it had been translated into thirty languages.
The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people, called roboti (robots), from synthetic organic matter. They are not exactly robots by the current definition of the term: they are living flesh and blood creatures rather than machinery and are closer to the modern idea of clones or replicants. They may be mistaken for humans and can think for themselves. They seem happy to work for humans at first, but a robot rebellion leads to the extinction of the human race. Čapek later took a different approach to the same theme in War with the Newts, in which non-humans become a servant class in human society.
R.U.R. is dark but not without hope, and was successful in its day in both Europe andNorth America .
The Robots described in Čapek's play are not robots in the popularly understood sense of an automaton. They are not mechanical devices, but rather artificial biological organisms that may be mistaken for humans. A comic scene at the beginning of the play showsHelena
DOMIN: Sulla, let Miss Glory have a look at you.
HELENA
SULLA: I do not know the rest of the world Miss Glory. Please sit down.
HELENA
SULLA: From here, the factory.
HELENA
SULLA: Yes I was made here.
HELENA
DOMIN: (laughing) Sulla isn't a person, Miss Glory, she's a robot.
HELENA
In a limited sense, they resemble more modern conceptions of man-made life forms, such as the Replicants in Blade Runner, the "hosts" in the Westworld TV series and the humanoid Cylons in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, but in Čapek's time there was no conception of modern genetic engineering (DNA's role in heredity was not confirmed until 1952). There are descriptions of kneading-troughs for robot skin, great vats for liver and brains, and a factory for producing bones. Nerve fibers, arteries, and intestines are spun on factory bobbins, while the Robots themselves are assembled like automobiles. Čapek's robots are living biological beings, but they are still assembled, as opposed to grown or born.
One critic has described Čapek's Robots as epitomizing "the traumatic transformation of modern society by the First World War and the Fordist assembly line."
R.U.R. quickly became famous and was influential early in the history of its publication. By 1923, it had been translated into thirty languages.
The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people, called roboti (robots), from synthetic organic matter. They are not exactly robots by the current definition of the term: they are living flesh and blood creatures rather than machinery and are closer to the modern idea of clones or replicants. They may be mistaken for humans and can think for themselves. They seem happy to work for humans at first, but a robot rebellion leads to the extinction of the human race. Čapek later took a different approach to the same theme in War with the Newts, in which non-humans become a servant class in human society.
R.U.R. is dark but not without hope, and was successful in its day in both Europe and
Robots
The Robots described in Čapek's play are not robots in the popularly understood sense of an automaton. They are not mechanical devices, but rather artificial biological organisms that may be mistaken for humans. A comic scene at the beginning of the play shows
DOMIN: Sulla, let Miss Glory have a look at you.
SULLA: I do not know the rest of the world Miss Glory. Please sit down.
SULLA: From here, the factory.
SULLA: Yes I was made here.
DOMIN: (laughing) Sulla isn't a person, Miss Glory, she's a robot.
In a limited sense, they resemble more modern conceptions of man-made life forms, such as the Replicants in Blade Runner, the "hosts" in the Westworld TV series and the humanoid Cylons in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, but in Čapek's time there was no conception of modern genetic engineering (DNA's role in heredity was not confirmed until 1952). There are descriptions of kneading-troughs for robot skin, great vats for liver and brains, and a factory for producing bones. Nerve fibers, arteries, and intestines are spun on factory bobbins, while the Robots themselves are assembled like automobiles. Čapek's robots are living biological beings, but they are still assembled, as opposed to grown or born.
One critic has described Čapek's Robots as epitomizing "the traumatic transformation of modern society by the First World War and the Fordist assembly line."
The play
introduced the word robot, which displaced older words such as "automaton"
or "android" in languages around the world. In an article in Lidové
noviny Karel Čapek named his brother Josef as the true inventor of the
word. In Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to
perform on their masters' lands and is derived from rab, meaning
"slave".
On 11 February 1938, a
thirty-five-minute adaptation of a section of the play was broadcast on BBC
Television – the first piece of television science-fiction ever to be
broadcast.
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