| Title | : | R.U.R. |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 58 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1920 |
R.U.R. Reviews
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Here are ten philosophical insights embedded in the extended prologue to this highly inventive 1920 science fiction three-act play by Czechoslovakian author Karel Čapek. And, yes, this play marks the very first appearance of the term “Robot” as in R.U.R. – Rossum’s Universal Robots – mass produced, human-like machines to perform manual labor and function as servants.
1. Old man Rossum was a biologist who failed to create actual humans in his laboratory; engineer son Rossum invented the living labor machine, the Robot, a natural progression of production (son) following discovery (father). After all, as the present central director of R.U.R. states: “If you can’t do it faster than nature, what’s the point?” Let’s not forget this is 1920, the engineer is king and speed, machines, factories and efficiency are all the rage. Speed and machines even made headway in the world of art some year prior, especially among the Italian Futurists such as Mainetti, Boccioni and Bella.
2. The central director continues: “Production should be as simple as possible and the product the best for its function.” And “The creation of an engineer is technically more refined than the product of nature.” The spirit of these statements was captured magnificently in the film “Modern Times” with Charlie Chaplin. Since the prologue is peppered alternately with satire, comedy and black humor, it’s as if the creators of that Chaplin film mined a number of ideas from Čapek’s play.
3. Young Rossum started with twelve-foot Superrobots but they kept falling apart so he began manufacturing Robots of normal human height and respectable human shape. Curiously, when Robots mimic human dimensions, there is something inexplicably appealing about their physical presence. For example, witness the computer generated American football playing Robot one of the large commercial stations uses in their broadcasts – the Robot signals a first down, spikes the ball and even does a little dance after scoring a touchdown – all very charming for football fans – just Robot enough to be fantasy; just human enough to seemingly possess human emotions and feelings.
4. A recent arrival to the R.U.R. factory, Helena, a sensitive young lady converses with the central director and mistakes the director’s beautiful secretary, a Robot named Sulla, for a real person. Oh, no, no! Helena is quite upset and initially refuses to belief such a gorgeous woman, just like herself, isn’t human. Ah, there’s something so very compelling about a woman’s beauty – we refuse to believe a young woman with such beauty lacks heart and feeling – case in point, the 2015 film “Ex Machina.”
5. The way they are constructed, Robots never think up anything original. As the director notes: “They’d make fine university professors.” Did I mention Karel Čapek’s infusion of satire and black humor? Such a nice touch – not too much satire to sound preachy but enough to let us know much in his society and culture, all the flummery about “progress” and the eventual perfection and purification of mankind through scientism, is so much smoke and mirrors.
6. Turns out Helena has traveled to the R.U.R. factory on behalf of the League of Humanity in order to incite and liberate the Robots. All the factory directors in the room, all six men, laugh and tell Helena everybody from the outside who comes to the factory wants to do good by the Robots and set them free. As the central director, Harry Domin, informs Helena: “It would amaze you to know how many churches and lunatics there are in the world.” Churches and lunatics . . . you gotta love it! As events unfold beginning in Act One, Helena’s words take on stinging irony.
7. Helena wants to know if you can show the Robots a bit of love. Impossible, retorts the directors, since Robots are made for one and only one purpose: work. For Robots have no sense of taste nor do they ever smile. Considering how many 21st century factory Robots have been successfully constructed for nonstop work, this passage takes on a particular resonance. And, God forbid, if there is work where Robots can’t replace humans, there is always the opportunity to move your factory to a third world country and corral the poverty-stricken into your sweat-shop for next to nothing. Much of the themes of R.U.R. are as relevant today as they were in 1920.
8. But, but, but . . . there is a chink in the armor. As one director sadly states: “Occasionally they go crazy somehow. Something like epilepsy, you know? We call it Robotic Palsy. All of a sudden one of them goes and breaks whatever it has in its hands, stops working, gnashes its teeth – and we have to send it to the stamping mill. Evidently a breakdown of the organism.” Sound like trouble? Such breakdowns prove to be big trouble.
9. Powerful economic forces are at work. One of the directors pronounces how their Robots have cut the cost of labor, so much so that non-Robot factories are going belly-up. Many are the zingers the playwright hurls at a society reduced to the forces of supply and demand where the requirement to produce profits for shareholders takes top priority at the expense of humanity. Money, money, money . . . the lifeblood of the modern world then and now.
10. Harry Domin proclaims how no longer will mankind have to destroy his soul doing work he hates; people will live to perfect themselves. Considering the modern phenomenon of the couch potato and numerous other mind-numbing addictions, unfortunately there is substantial evidence the vast percentage of the population is far from “perfecting itself” given time free from work.
So, Act One, Act Two, Act Three take place at the R.U.R. factory ten years after the prologue. It's Robots vs. humans. I encourage you to read the play to find out what happens. And I highly recommend this Penguin edition which includes a most informative introductory essay by Czeck writer Ivan Klima.
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This is the book that introduced concept of robots. And the play seems to get a lot of things about dynamics involved right too, and surprisingly right. It is criticism of result and productivity centered approach that seems to have taken over the world ever since industrial revolution:
" From a technical point of view, the whole of childhood is quite pointless. Simply a waste of time."
Or
" He took a good look at the human body and he saw straight away that it was much too complicated, any good engineer would design it much more simply."
Or
"Man is a being that does things such as feeling happiness, plays the violin, likes to go for a walk, and all sorts of other things which are simply not needed."
The people that are too sure of themselves to say things like that are such because they believe in one and only one value (in this case productivity, in Hitler's case it was imagined superiority of Aryan race). And thus they are wrong.
The Best part for me though is Helena's reaction. We develop compassion to things or people in proportion of how much they are like us - their physical similarity seems to imply that they must have similar feelings too. We are more compassionate to humans than animals, to mammals than insects etc. And thus, Helena can't understand that a machine that looks so much like a human doesn't have emotions.
Now, politicians know it best. That is why they must create or emphasize already existing artificial categories - race, caste, class, sex, rationality, religion etc. The R.U.R. knows it too and uses it to keep robots from getting united.
"... each factory will produce robots of a different colour, different hair, different language. The robots will be strangers to each other, they'll never be able to understand what the other says; and we, we humans, we'll train them so that each robot will hate the robots from another factory all its life, all through to the grave, all through all eternity."
Read Glenn's
review. -
إن مسرحية "إنسان روسوم الآلي" للتشيكي "كارل تشابك" هي أول مسرحية تستخدم لفظ "روبوت" على الإطلاق والذي عرفنا أن كلمة روبوت مُشتقة من كلمة تشيكية بمعنى العبيد.
تدور أحداث المسرحية في جو كئيب ظلامي.. في مصنع لتصنيع الروبوت.. ولكن بطريقة مُختلفة فهي أقرب إلى شكل الإنسان ولكن جنون صانعيها وصل إلى أنهم يُريدون خلق الروح بداخلها.. وهذه كانت المعضلة الأكبر.
جنونهم العلمي أعماهم عن فكرة ماذا لو خُلقت الروح داخل الإنسان الآلي؟ هل سيظل تحت سيطرتهم؟ بالطبع لا كما حدث..
فثارت الروبوتس على البشر لشعورها بأنها أفضل منهم.. ولكن بسبب غرروهم تناسوا أن يعرفوا كيف يتم صنعهم؟ شعروا للحظة أنهم ملكوا العالم.
المسرحية بها العديد والعديد من المغازي المُستترة والواضحة الدينية والسياسية والإجتماعية والإنسانية..
الحوار كان رائع.. وهُناك بعض الجمل الحوارية الرائعة بين شخصيات المسرح.
قد تكون فكرة المسرحية عادية، ولكن تخيل أن هذه المسرحية لم تُكتب؟ كُل تلك الروايات التي بُنيت على الذكاء الإصطناعي والإنسان الآلي وقدرة الإنسان الآلي على السيطرة على العالم.. كُل ذلك سيختفي!
نعم.. فكانت هذه المسرحية أول ما كُتب عن الذكاء الإصطناعي والإنسان الآلي.. والذي من خلالها تم إرساء القواعد والقوانين حول ما يُكتب في هذه النوعية.. التي أصبحت نوعية مُنفردة من الخيال العلمي. -
R.U.R, Rossum's Universal Robots. Written in 1920 by Czech writer Karel Capek. It is a science fiction play, and it has the distinction of introducing the word robot into the English language. Here comes a big spoiler; humans build robots to make their life better, robots become self aware and kill humans to make the world better. All the other species in the world gave a big thank you to the robots. That wasn't in the play, I just added that.
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Ця книжка - прямо компендіум усіх тривожностей епохи ранніх 1920-х, бо писання - дешева альтернатива до психотерапії))). Викладено дуже в лоб, але ж корисно, якщо потрібно швиденько пояснити комусь, як ті всі тривожності виглядали.
(Що вас тривожить?)
Чапек: Людство недостатньо продуктивне, щоб встигати за вимогами прогресу, ми програмуємо свою власну obsolescence. Машини замінять нас на виробництві, і справа не лише в конвеєрах чи там технічному погляді кінокамери, ми рано чи пізно сконструюємо штучний інтелект, який багато в чому перевершить нас - і, що страшніше, змусить нас відповідати на запитання, хто ми-як-людство такі, в чому наш унікальний внесок, і відповідь, швидше за все, буде досить непереконливим бабранням: здатність до самовідтворення? здатність відчувати біль?.
(Ще щось?)
Чапек: У нас є великі маси людей, у яких ми не помічали внутрішнього життя і людської гідності, вважаючи їх винятково робітничою масою. А що, як вони доведуть свою людську природу - свою здатність відчувати біль, свою здатність чинити спротив і т.д. - у найкривавіший з можливих способів, захоплять усі засоби виробництва й почнуть винищувати своє вчорашнє начальство? (Зауважу, що поєднання технічних тривожностей і тривожностей, пов'язаних з Жовтневою революцією, тут виглядає фігувато, бо робітники тут реально роботи, але страхи рідко говорять раціональним голосом.)
(Ще щось?)
Чапек: Так, минуло сто років, а ми досі не прожили всі тривожності з "Франкенштейна" Мері Шеллі. Чи можемо ми брати на себе роль деміурга? А що, як насправді чудовисько - це не створіння, а вчений, який загрався в Бога?
(І у відповідь чує: "Це все дуже цікаво, пане, але це вікно drivethrough в МакДональдсі. Щось замовляти будете?") -
Se suele decir que en toda obra literaria existen dos partes diferenciadas, aunque complementarias: el contenido y la forma. Cada autor debe decidir de qué manera va a contar lo que quiere contar y de esta elección depende en buena medida la calidad de la obra.
R.U.R. Robots universales Rossum (1920) es un ejemplo del poco acierto en esta elección. Karel Capek (1890-1938) escribe una clara disertación en lugar de una obra dramática, por mucho que presente esa forma. Así que nadie espere encontrar aquí personajes profundos, ambientes desarrollados, una historia de amor o una trama sorprendente, porque los personajes solo sirven para dar voz a los diversos puntos de vista, el entorno apenas está dibujado y se celebra un matrimonio que ni siquiera se describe.
Por tanto, creo que lo primero que hay que hacer al leer R.U.R. es dejar a un lado su mayor o menor calidad literaria y centrarse en su mensaje, en su significado. Porque lo que sí encontramos en esta obra (además de la primera mención de la palabra robot) es una colección de diferentes puntos de vista sobre lo que significaría que todos los trabajos fueran realizados por máquinas y sobre las implicaciones que ello conllevaría (algo, en cualquier caso, de plena actualidad).
Por un lado, los que están a favor, los fabricantes o creadores:Quería convertir a toda la humanidad en la aristocracia del mundo. Una aristocracia alimentada por millones de esclavos mecánicos. Hombres sin limitaciones, hombres perfectos.
Por otro lado, los que se oponen a la fabricación de robots esgrimiendo razones de índole diversa (religiosa, económica, social, de derechos humanos…) y avisan de sus nefastas consecuencias:DOMIN: ¿Qué iba mal?
ELENA: Tus planes, Harry. Por ejemplo, cuando las obreras lucharon contra los robots y los deshicieron, y cuando la gente dio armas a los robots para que lucharan contra los rebeldes y ellos mataron a tanta gente. Y después, cuando los Gobiernos convirtieron a los robots en soldados y hubo tantas guerras, todas esas cosas.
Cakep, acudiendo a menudo a símiles religiosos, plantea también cuestiones que en la actualidad suenan conocidas, pero que en 1920 debían ser novedosas: ¿podrían los robots crearse a sí mismos? ¿Podrían evolucionar ellos solos hasta convertirse en verdaderos humanos? Pero, por encima de ellas, nos propone una pregunta de paradójica respuesta: ¿debemos ser nosotros quienes los dotemos de humanidad? Porque si no proporcionamos emociones a los robots nos estamos comportando de un modo inhumano con ellos, pero, por otra parte, si se las concedemos se volverán como nosotros y nos aniquilaran. Para Capek resulta obvio que ellos son más poderosos y que destruir a alguien simplemente porque se puede, porque se es más fuerte es un comportamiento eminentemente humano que los robots sin duda reproducirán. No encuentra otra opción.
Leída de ese modo, R.U.R. merece la pena y no solo para los amantes de la Ciencia Ficción, porque debido a ese juego de contrastes asistimos a una interesante revisión de las cualidades que se supone que nos hacen humanos, que nos diferencian de los seres no sensibles (las máquinas) por muy inteligente que sean. Obviamente, en cuestiones como ésta, los lectores tendrán diferentes respuestas.
Por último, una curiosidad: Parece que Asimov no estaba muy de acuerdo con el final tan derrotista de esta obra y su reacción fue enunciar sus famosas tres leyes sobre la robótica y comenzar su saga de los robots. -
R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by Karel Capek is an interesting read. It is a Sci-fi play. This story was completely new to me. I didn’t know who came up with robots but now I know. This is the first Sci-fi story with the word Robot. The world of Sci-fi can thank this man for bringing Robots into the world. So, Karel, thank you!
Old Rossum, a mad scientist, wanted to be a substitute for God and decided to make man, but years came and went and nothing happened. No life. Young Rossum decided he would take on his father’s dream, and ditch his father’s crazy plan for making man and made a machine instead. Man-like but without a soul. He made a “skin” very much like man’s to make them look like a human being. Rossum’s dream is to create so much food and goods that it will be practically free and man will reign as the lords of creation. There won’t be war, poverty, and starvation…or so they say. The scientists discover, as they are making robots more and more into the image of man, they are destroying themselves and the rest of mankind.
This play/novella was very thought provoking. What makes man, well…man? Is it his soul? Is it his morals, or lack there of? Is it emotion? Can man make man? God created man, and thus the soul, but can man make a soul? All these, and more, are answered in the story. What are all the components of mankind?
If I were a high school teacher I would definitely read this book in class. It is very thought provoking and I can see talking with another person for hours on end about R.U.R. Great book! -
I'd never heard of this play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek until recently, even though it's the origin of the word 'robot' and was quite a hit when it was widely translated and performed in the 1920s.
Helena Glory visits the unnamed island where Rossum's Universal Robots are mass-produced and shipped throughout the world, ostensibly to drive down labor costs, thus prices, freeing mankind to perfect itself. General Manager Domin, her guide, suddenly proposes to her and she accepts, even though the purpose of her visit, on behalf of the Humanity League, had been to advocate for the liberation of the robots. The second and third acts are set ten years later, with a global revolution of the robots underway, and an epilogue a year after that.
It's thought-provoking and the free LibriVox audio performance of the play is very good. -
Çevirmenin önsözünü okuduğunuzda zaten ne kadar kıymetli bir eser olduğunu anlarsınız. Yazar, robot kelimesini dünyaya kazandıran kişiymiş. Bu kitaptaki fikirlerden yola çıkarak pek çok bilim kurgu kitabının yazıldığını tahmin ediyorum. Bence türü seven herkesin okuması gereken bir klasik
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Robots of the world! Many humans have fallen... we are masters of the world. The era of man has come to its end. A new epoch has arisen! Domination by robots!...
...The world belongs to the strongest. Who wishes to live must dominate. We are masters of the world! Masters on land and sea! Masters of the stars! Masters of the universe! More space, more space for robots!
Humans have succeeded in making robots using synthetic organic matter. But eventually the robots revolt, take over and destroy the humans who made them. Sounds familiar?
The play was written in 1920. -
I'm not sure what to make of this. It's a classic of SF, the origin of the word 'robot' although the idea had been around for quite some time & the 'robot's are actually not mechanical, but biological androids more like those in "Blade Runner". The story itself oscillates wildly between extremely profound to awful.
On the profound side is the entire idea. Capek encapsulates all our technological striving into one, short play. Overall, it's fantastic. There are also some great quotes:
A guilty party is being sought. Such action is a favorite means of consolation in the face of calamity.
More can be found here:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karel_%...
On the awful side, we have the action at the end of Act 1 It made no sense to me at all. There was no lead in to it, just a weird leap that I had to swallow to continue on. Jarring & ridiculous.
There are also translation issues. This version melds some characters, but I doubt that harmed it much. The Librivox cast did a great job reading this. From the discussion in the
Evolution of SF topic about this book, a lot of beautiful phrases & allusions are lost in translation. We're lucky enough to have a someone who speaks the language & has read it in its original form. Oleksandr is also quite fluent in English & an SF fan, so has shed a lot of light on it. Thanks, Oleksandr!
This is a play & would probably be best seen rather than read. I think an audio version is quite an acceptable substitute though, far better than reading it as text. There is no need for scenery & the actors' voices can speak well enough for themselves. The meat of this play is in the overall idea, so even poor translations can't ruin it. I think a good translation or reading our discussion to catch some of the nuances is well worth it, though. Capek was kind of a genius.
Highly recommended to one & all, but it's a must for anyone interested in the evolution of SF. -
Finishing R.U.R. was a bit of a chore and gets three stars, mostly on the strength of the brief pieces of dialogue between the characters. I can see how that and that alone might work with an audience. No long soliloquies. But that is all I can appreciate about R.U.R.
The play itself is muddled in different genres, and makes a grandiose point in the tritest manner for its conclusion at the end of the third act. With the Epilogue, R.U.R. tries to arrive at a more meaningful conclusion than the third act does. However, the Epilogue of R.U.R, has essentially the same ending as the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica (BG) TV series, both of which fail for the same reason--they can't justify what led up to it.
Most critics call R.U.R. satire. If so, it is failed satire. It is too serious a treatment to make mankind's institutions appear ridiculous.
If it is science fiction, it fails because it is not serious enough to justify the magnitude of its stakes. The very survival of mankind, undone because people stop procreating? Why? Or the survival of robots, undone because Helena burns a couple pieces of paper? How?
I know R.U.R. preceded BG, but the two are so alike in concept that I can't really separate the two. I think one reason I find the play so utterly boring is because it spends 114 pages in my edition rendering what it took BG a few minutes to cover, most of that off screen. Namely, the origin of their conflict. It's just not a sufficiently interesting concept to justify hours long treatment. If it somehow could be, Capek didn't prove it here.
Others might say, "Oh but there are such wonderful, intellectual ideas. Capek has so much to say about capitalism and societal roles." If so, I couldn't find a deep or unmuddled message in what I read. Workers are exploited. No kidding! Creating people to do the mundane tasks of society's labor may some day result in violent revolution. You don't say? Sorry, but these are socialist platitudes, not ideas. -
نمایشنامهای به شدت بدبینانه درباره ماشینیشدن زندگی انسان
وقتی در ویکیپدیا خوندم اولین بار بیش از صد سال پیش واژه روبات - که در زبان چکی که زبان نویسنده نمایشنامه هست معنی بیگاری میده - در این اثر به کار رفته برام جالب شد که بخونمش. البته علاقه چندانی به مباحث تکنولوژی کلا ندارم. ولی تصور مردی از اوایل قرن بیستم درباره موجوداتی ماشینی که مثل انسان هستند برام جالب بود. پشیمون هم نشدم. نمایشنامه کوتاه و جالبیه. البته منطق داستانش به نظرم یه مقدار مشکل داره ولی خب برای صد سال پیش طبیعیه. -
1920 yılında yazılmış ve ilk kez 1921’de sahnelenmiş, üç perdelik bir tiyatro oyunu R.U.R. Bu eserle ilgili tek bilgim Çekçe olduğu ve “robot” sözcüğünün İngilizce’ye bu oyunla geçtiğinden ibaretti.
R.U.R.’un yazılmasının üzerinden doksan dört yıl geçmiş. Kullandığımız anlamıyla robot kavramının bu kadar “yeni” olmasına şaşırıyorum; kitap Cyrano de Bergerac’ın bilimkurguları gibi 1600’lerde yazılmış olsa daha az şaşıracaktım sanırım. Bir yandan da, yüz yıldır robotlarla ilgili yazılan, çekilen, çizilen neredeyse her eserde karşılaştığımız kaygıların bu incecik kitapta topluca bulunabilmesine şaşırıyorum. Robotlarla ilgili etik kaygılar? Var. Robot hakları? Var. Robotların da duyguları olduğunu söyleyen aktivistler? Var. Robotların dünyayı ele geçireceği korkusu? Var. Karel Čapek, ardından gelen yazarlara yeni hiçbir şey bırakmamış neredeyse. Neyse ki bütün bunları bir tiyatro oyununa sığdırmış; böylece Asimov, Clarke, Lem ve adlarını sıralamakla bitiremeyeceğim tüm yazarlar buradan alıp yürümüşler.
Avrupa’nın sosyal ve ekonomik yönden epey dengesiz bir döneminde yaşayan; Rossum’un Evrensel Robotları’nı Ekim Devrimi’nin hemen sonrasında, memleketinin yanı başında SSCB kurulmak üzereyken ve konstrüktivizm akımı Doğu Avrupa sanatını etkilerken yazan Čapek, Marksizm hakkında ne düşünüyordu, robotlarını nasıl yarattı, artık gerçek robotların çalıştığı (ama insanların daha da çok çalıştığı) dünyayı görse ne düşünürdü bilmem. Fakat eserinde seri üretim bantlarından çıkan, ruhsuz köleler olarak tasarladığı robotları ile bir yüzyılın bilimkurgu edebiyatını besledi.
- Setenay KARAÇAY
İncelemenin tamamı için:
http://www.kayiprihtim.org/portal/inc... -
This book foretells many of the dangers and desasters of modern life, including ecological destruction, artificial intelligence, autonomous devices. And it demonstrates the importance of technology impact assessment. Here robots are living creatures from the onset and the way they are treated reminds of slavery and serfdom.
In contrast to the accelerated development of technology the human mind (or 'rozum' in Czech language) has not evolved much beyond premordial times. The motivation for men's actions still comes from strive for power, wealth or women (men in this case has to be understood as males - the females in this drama are limited to their role as loving but stupid companion or Pandora [both Helena] or wailing observers [Nana]).
Being confined to the R.U.R. factory island we observe the decline of the world and humanity through the eyes and ears of the company's directors. They each represent a certain type of character - the fighter, the complacent, the sceptic, the materialist, the doer - similar to masks in an ancient Greek drama, while the women play the role of the chorus. The reference to antiquity is underlined by the choice of Roman names for the robots.
I am glad that I finally read this drama, which coined the term 'robot'. But though I admire Čapek's foresight, he did not manage to fully embrace the problems of artificial life and its repercussions on mankind. In that respect I am much more with Isaac Asimov and his robot stories. -
People who pick this up to read probably know already that this is the first time that the word 'robots' was ever used, and that's only interesting, I think, because all of the thematic explorations found in robot literature and art such as in Asimov and Kubrick and all those little 'Terminator' movies were already there in the play! There's the 'what does it mean to be human', the war on the humans, religious implications (did mankind kill god?), all that stuff. There was an interesting forward to the book of Capek's other books, 'War With the Newts', and it talks about the invention of the word 'Robot' and how the dictionary can trace the origen to a specific date, Oct. 9, 1922 the premiere date, this one of only a couple of words, similar to okay, that could be uttered in any city and be understood.
I forget sometimes how much I like reading plays. Just as much as anything else really, but I think of plays and how stark they are of surroundings and how silly the dialogue often is ("Oh darling you simply must marry one of us for we all love you very much, blah, blah, blah") and how quickly everything climaxes and descends and -all the sudden everybody's in love! All that stuff, so I look at plays on the shelf and kind of snear. But then I actually pick one up and read it, and they're always a lot of fun to read! -
I listened to this as a play instead of just reading the script.
Even though this was written in the 1920's many of the themes still resonate today.
And be warned, this was written before Asimov wrote his rules for robots. -
Popular culture makes us think of Robots as entities that achieve a near mythical status over time and thereby replacing humans in the natural order of things. In a multitude narratives across books and movies we see them rising up in rebellion over humans and being superior beings they pulverize human resistance in no time. This plot has now be rehashed so many times that it is a cliché and yet at a very early stage in the life of sci-fi this might have been an amazingly fresh idea. This little book was the germ of that idea and the one that came up with the name ‘Robot’ and interestingly for a book which is an account of a robot rebellion, the story is extremely humane.
Ever considered this ?
" From a technical point of view, the whole of childhood is quite pointless. Simply a waste of time."
Childhood is that carefree phase when almost all is fun and games and nostalgia and yet speaking from a productivity standpoint, one can always say that it is a zero sum game. Now to dispel any thoughts about the relevance of this quote, this is not aimed at a human being but at a robot. When a humanoid robot is manufactured, it is almost always a fully grown adult specimen for the basic reason that it can be productive from the time it leaves the assembly hall. The fundamental principle that the designers at Rossum’s Universal Robots (RUR) relies on is productivity. They have an almost Kaizen like approach to robot production which they extoll at the drop of a hat. They avoid anything that is not to do with effectiveness and focus only on making their machines the most humanoid paragons of efficiency. Interestingly they also realize the folly of trying to replicate a human being in a robot for they realize that the complexity of a human body is unique and does not lend itself to reproduction easily. All these high opinions were bound to fall from grace which they eventually do. The designers in their folly create robots who resemble each other exactly with the end result being that for them forming a body of resistance becomes much easier. After the robots turn the tables on us and humanity as represented by the designers at RUR are under siege, they hatch yet another plan. This is to henceforth design robots across different nations with varying colors, creeds and nationalities and thereby avoiding such a congregation ever again : rings a bell ?
The core of RUR is not sci-fi but it is an examination of human folly. It is a story of egos crashing down, of the snubbing of arrogance, of the weakness of people and the pettiness we carry in our hearts. The Robots just happen to be there to edge things slightly over the cliff but essentially the characters themselves jump over the precipice all by themselves.
Recommended. A very short but memorable read. -
3.5 sao. mở đầu có nhiều đoạn hài, nói chung là một vở kịch gọn gàng nhiều chỗ hổng :D Capek viết kịch không có gì là xuất sắc cả, nhưng hầu như ý tưởng chủ đạo của Chiến với bọn sa giông đều đã trình bày ở đây. Màn Robot toàn thế giới liên hiệp lại cũng đã có. Sang Sa giông thì đã lên một bậc về cái gọi là style. Kết cũng đầy loãng mạn tích cực tôn thờ tình ái lai láng chảy cả nước :))))
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Zapanjujuće dobro
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“Man shall be free and supreme; he shall have no other aim, no other labor, no other care than to perfect himself. He shall serve neither matter nor man. He will not be a machine and a device for production. He will be Lord of creation.”
Oh such lofty goals of man in creating robots, crushed by corporate greed, the violence of nation-states, and the misplaced empathy of a rich woman.
Helena is the beautiful daughter of the president. She has no idea how much bread or cloth cost. That prices have gone down for everyday people is irrelevant to her. She just wants robots to have souls.
Robots were intended to be taught production and labor, to ease everyday human life, instead they were handed guns and taught to kill.
The companies who made the robots decided demand was the only arbiter and enjoyed their profits. How clients used their robots was not company business.
This all ends badly for humanity, but it’s implied that some robots carry on the best of humanity while the majority simply die. -
I can't believe I'd never read this before. I love Robots, I love robot revolts and the end of man. This is the book where we get the word robot from and I'd still not gotten around to reading it! But I am SOOOO glad I did. It was brilliant. Everything that modern scifi has been trying to say about robots since is all here!!! It's the perfect continuation on from Frankenstein. It's depressing and sees the destruction of the human race, yet it has a happy ending. I would love to see it performed as a play. I loved the fact that the robots were perfectly humanoid in appearance (and to be ultimately ironic wouldn't be classed as robots in today's scifi terms). That they were originally invented to save labour but ended up being used by nationalist governments to fight war. I liked that there was a woman fighting for robot rights and trying to make them more human. There were a few gender issues but overall I found it throughly enjoyable. It really should be read by everyone who likes robots. It's everything that Cameron and BSG stole and re-packaged and honestly I think the original does it much better.
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Indeed it was the first contact in literature through this relatively short play script.
Many thematic philosophical notions being set by the author, is something more extraordinary when considered that early timeline in which almost none (maybe except for a woman named Mary Shelley) had the mind to think about.
No doubt, the work inspired great sci-fi legends like Asimov, Clarke.
"A man is something that feels happy, plays the piano, likes going for a walk, and in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary."
But still..
"It was a great thing to be a man. There was something immense about it." -
R.U.R., a Czech play written by a man named Karel Čapek and first staged in the year 1920, is a literary work that might not be familiar to many readers. But whether you have heard of Čapek and R.U.R. or not, this author and his play have influenced your life – because in this play, Čapek gave the world not only the first literary presentation of robots in creative literature, but also the very word “robot.”
Čapek was born into a Kingdom of Bohemia that was a constituent part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; by the time he died in 1938, at the age of 48, he had lived to see an independent Czechoslovak republic established. But Czechoslovakia, at the time of his death, teetered precipitously on the verge of annihilation, in the wake of the Munich conference and Hitler’s annexation of the Czech Sudetenland. When one considers the turbulent history that Čapek lived through, it should be no surprise that his literary work was characterized by a penchant for serious consideration of thought-provoking philosophical ideas.
R.U.R. is characteristic, in that regard, of Čapek’s work; and before proceeding further with the review, I think it is important to note that the seemingly enigmatic title is simply the acronym for a fictional corporation – Rossum’s Universal Robots – that has mastered the technological processes necessary for the production of humanoid robots. Imagine a play being titled IBM, or A T & T, or BP, and then it becomes easy to imagine a playwright crafting a story showing how some innovation by one of those companies, in a field like information processing or telecommunications or fuel production, might lead to unexpected problems.
As R.U.R. begins, the production of Robots is already an accomplished fact, even though the company’s original founder and creator of the Robot production process, “old Rossum,” has long since passed on, leaving only his production notes. Harry Domin, central director of R.U.R., cannot recreate the process himself. Neither can his subordinates: Fabry (engineering, general technical director), Dr. Gall (head of Robot physiology and research), Dr. Hallemeier (head of Robot psychology and education), Busman (general marketing and legal counsel), and Alquist (builder and chief of construction) all know their respective fields, but none of them really knows how the whole process of Robot production works. From the beginning, it all seems terribly irresponsible.
The visit to the R.U.R. headquarters of a beautiful and elegant woman – Helena Glory, daughter of President Glory – sets the plot in motion. Helena, it turns out, is concerned about the rights of the human-like robots that R.U.R. is manufacturing, and Domin tries to dismiss her concerns: “My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul” (p. 9). Domin adds that “If you were to read them a twenty-volume encyclopedia, they could repeat the contents in order, but they never think up anything original” – and further states that “They’d make fine university professors” (p. 13). Ouch!
It turns out, when Helena is introduced to a Robot, that she cannot tell the Robot from a human being. These Robots are not mechanical automatons like Robby from the film Forbidden Planet; rather, they are human-like androids like the replicants from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), constructed through a process that synthesizes flesh, blood, and tissue.
And the Robots of R.U.R. are made to work for humans; Fabry assures Helena that “One Robot can do the work of two and a half human laborers” (p. 17). This seems a good point at which to address the genesis of the term “robot.” Coined by Čapek’s brother, the word “robot” goes back to Slavonic roots: in Old Slavonic, rabota meant “servitude.” In later iterations of the Czech language, robota meant “compulsory labour,” while robotník referred to a serf or peasant compelled to perform such labour.
In earlier times, the idea of a different sort of sentient being that could perform work for human beings usually involved magic, as with the djinn or “genie” of classical Arabia, or the golem of Jewish folklore. It was R.U.R. that applied science to that notion, introducing the concept of a technologically manufactured human being that could perform the kind of difficult, unpleasant, repetitive, and/or dangerous work that human beings don’t want to perform.
The corporate leaders of R.U.R. harbour utopian dreams of what their Robots will do for humankind. When Helena states that Robots will cause unemployment among humans, corporate director Domin insists that the ultimate results will be a poverty-free world in which Robots will do all the work, while “People will do only what they enjoy. They will live only to perfect themselves” (p. 20). It sounds too good to be true, and it is.
Domin, who falls in love with Helena at first sight, persuades her to marry him. Ten years pass between the play’s prologue and its first act; and over those ten years, a statement from Fabry to Helena, from earlier in the play – that “The human machine, Miss Glory, was hopelessly imperfect. It needed to be done away with, once and for all” (p. 17) – has turned out to be tragically prophetic. Robots have begun acting of their own volition, resisting and refusing human commands. Helena reminds a stubborn Domin of how his plans have backfired: “When workers rose up against the Robots and destroyed them, and when people gave the Robots weapons to defend themselves and the Robots killed so many people…And when governments began using Robots as soldiers and there were so many wars and everything, remember?” (p. 29)
There are other signs of trouble as well. After ten years of marriage, Helena is still childless; indeed, women all over the world are no longer having children. Helena’s devoutly religious nurse, Nana, is convinced that fatal human pride is bringing about the end of the human world. Alquist, who over the course of the play takes on qualities of a choral figure, likewise feels that the human race has become so spiritually sterile that physical sterility is an unsurprising outcome. Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Čapek’s R.U.R. asks a troubling philosophical question: if living human beings can be manufactured through a scientific process, what happens to the traditional process of passing on human life through sexual reproduction?
Dr. Gall, looking at the changes that R.U.R. has brought to the world, says bitterly of Domin that “People with ideas should not be allowed to have an influence on affairs of this world” (p. 39). Domin himself remains in something of a state of denial, even as he reads a Robot manifesto that declares a state of war between humans and Robots – a manifesto in which Robots “assert that they are higher than man on the evolutionary scale. That they are stronger and more intelligent. That man lives off them like a parasite” (p. 47). Domin fails to see the terrible logic of it all. If Robots do all the work, and humans do nothing useful at all, then why are humans necessary?
Soon, R.U.R.’s island production center is surrounded and besieged by Robots. Domin insists that his intentions were good – “I wanted to transform humanity into a worldwide aristocracy. Unrestricted, free, and supreme people. Something even greater than people” (p. 54). But Busman – the financial wizard who, at one point, seems to think that he can buy his way out of the apocalypse – states grimly that “history is not made by great dreams, but by the petty wants of all respectable, moderately thievish and selfish people – that is, of everyone” (p. 59). That line must have resonated with the play’s first audiences back in 1920, two years after the end of the Great War that had killed so many millions.
And Alquist – an older man whose background is much more working-class than that of the slick, polished R.U.R. executives – suggests that the motivations for Robot manufacture, going all the way back to “old Rossum” the scientific innovator and “young Rossum” the marketing genius who first sold the idea of Robots, were much less idealistic than Domin might have us believe: “Old Rossum thought only of his godless hocus-pocus and young Rossum of his billions. And that wasn’t the dream of your R.U.R. shareholders, either. They dreamed of the dividends. And on those dividends humanity will perish” (p. 54).
By Act Three, Alquist is the spokesperson for threatened humankind, and the Robots start sounding “human-like” in all the worst ways: one Robot, Damon, declares that “You have to kill and rule if you want to be like people. Read history! Read people’s books! You have to conquer and murder if you want to be people!” (p. 74). Yet this grim play ends on a surprising note of humanistic hope.
R.U.R., as an “idea play,” is sometimes awkward in terms of characterization and plot movement. Yet few plays in history have been as influential. Within six years after its first staging, filmmaker Fritz Lang, in Metropolis (1926), gave the world an all-powerful, R.U.R.-like corporation capable of manufacturing a human-like robot in order to put down rebellion among the company’s workers. And think of all the movie robots and androids that have followed, in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Forbidden Planet (1956), Silent Running (1971), Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), RoboCop (1987), A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001), and countless other films.
For that matter, think of the role of robots in our lives. Chances are that the car you drive was built mainly by robots, with human beings playing only a supervisory role. On the campus of George Mason University in Virginia, where I teach, one of the most popular majors is Artificial Intelligence; students in the major alternately exult in the field’s possibilities and worry that A.I. entities will bring about the end of humankind, in some sort of R.U.R.-style scenario.
I worry about these things from time to time – and then, if it is lunchtime, I take my cellphone and order lunch; and my pizza and coffee are brought to the English Department building by a four-wheeled robot that arrives in front of the building and cheerfully tells me, “Hi! Your lunch is ready!” I take my lunch out of the robot’s boxlike central compartment, and the robot says, “Thank you! Have a nice day!” before wheeling off to help other customers. A robot brings me the food I want for lunch; and R.U.R., the first literary work to forecast a robot-heavy future, provides much food for thought in our robot-heavy present. -
Nekako zadnjih par godina su mi bas super knjige/price o robotima, naravno i filmovi/serije ali necu ih spominjat.
Krenulo mi je sa Becketovom Holy Machine, ono kada se bas zamislim nad istima.
Tako da mi je ova drama bas legla super, jest daavno pisano ali jos uvijek drzi paznju i odlicne trenutke ima. Plus, prijevod je super. -
You all know this is the play that introduced the word "Robot". But is this 100-year-old play worth reading? I think so. You probably won't find many ideas here you haven't seen before. But you might be surprised by how many of the modern tropes were already there this early.
So, if you don't read Czech language, which version should you use? They are considerably different.
The most common version in English is by Paul Selver (1922) then modified by Nigel Playfair (1923)
http://preprints.readingroo.ms/RUR/ru...
This is the version that is most likely to be seen on stage. But it is very much modified from the original. It is shorter, removes some characters, and divides the acts differently. (Original has Prologue and 3 acts. Modified has 3 acts plus an Epilogue.) I do not recommend reading this version because of the modifications. If you are performing it, though, this might be a good choice since the changes were probably intended to make performance easier.
The first full-length version in English is by
Claudia Novack-Jones (1989) ISBN 13: 9780141182087
R.U.R.. It stays very close to the structure of the original, as can be seen in the dual-language version here:
http://www.czech-language.cz/translat...
Peter Majer and Cathy Porter did another full-length version in 1999. I haven't read it, but find it odd that they changed the title to "Reason's Universal Robots". This version is available in
Capek Four Plays
David Wylie did another version in 2006.
R.U.R.. It can be downloaded for free from the goodreads page, or from
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/cape...
I read the version by David Wylie and it was fine. It has the full text and keeps the language very plain and simple. The character of Nana is given an interesting lower-class British speech pattern: "She doe'n'alf get some funny ideas!"
I wish I had read the version by
Claudia Novack-Jones . It is much more poetic.
Compare the straightforward David Wylie: "You're still on watch, you star of man, steady glow and perfect flame, bright clear sprite of man's invention. Every beam brings thought and greatness... Torch that passes hand to hand, age to age, and ever onward. — That evening lamp in the family home. — Children, children now it's time for sleep. (Lamp goes out.)"
To the poetic Claudia Novack-Jones: "You still stand watch, O human star, burning without a flicker, perfect flame, bright and resourceful spirit. Each of your rays a great idea — O torch which passes from hand to hand, from age to age, world without end. — Eternal lamp of the family. Children, children, it's time to go to bed. (The lamp goes out.)"
To the drastically trimmed Selver/Playfair: "Man's power! May it keep watch over us. — Man's power. — Yes! A torch to be given from hand to hand, from age to age, forever! (The lamp goes out.)"
Original: "Ještě bdíš, lidská hvězdo, záříš bez kmitu, dokonalý plameni, duchu jasný a vynalézavý. Každý tvůj paprsek je veliká myšlenka — Pochodeň, která koluje z ruky do ruky, z věku do věku, věčně dál. — Večerní lampa rodiny. Děti, děti, musíte už spat. (Žárovka zhasne.)" -
Famous today mainly for originating the term "robot" (from the Czech term "robota," meaning "forced labor" or "drudgery"), Karel Čapek's slim play tells the cautionary tale of a world where sentient automatons eventually realize they are in many ways better than their masters, and so destroy humanity - only to realize they then lack the knowledge to create more of themselves. So, y'know, oops.
Interestingly, these first robots were not "mechanical men," but biological constructs that very closely mimic the human form - an early literal attempt at playing God, (and probably a timely reminder that those rarely end well). Along with "robot," Čapek also gives us the word "robotess" for a female robot, which thankfully never came into common use.* He also uses the charming British/European word "milliard," meaning "a thousand millions" and which just sounds a lot classier than America's more prosaic "billion."
Hadn't read this since high school (which sounds much better than saying "over a half century ago" - see below), but finding it in our used bookstore for about a penny a page, figured it was time for a revisit...
** Other common scientific terms that originally came from the world of science fiction include the following (although I'm sure there are more):
Spacecraft - J.J. Astor, 1894
Time Machine, Time Traveler - H.G. Wells, 1895
Atomic Bomb - H.G. Wells, 1914
Deep Space - E.E. "Doc" Smith, 1934
Nerd - Dr. Seuss, 1950 (not actually a science term, but pretty much)
Zero-G - Arthur C. Clarke, 1952
Cyberspace - William Gibson, 1982
Metaverse - Neal Stephenson, 1992
C-Beam, Tannhäuser Gate - Roy Batty, 2032
ORIGINAL REVIEW: Read this back in high school, and think I actually designed some stage sets as part of an art or theatre project. Pretty cool... -
Robot sözcüğünü bugünkü anlamıyla literatüre kazandırmış bir yazar olarak bahsediliyor Capek'ten, aslında kelimenin babası kardeşi imiş (bu da küçük bir not). Bilim kurgunun ilk örnekleri arasında yer alan R.U.R, aslında bir oyun, yine insanın sözde iyi niyetle başlayan ancak her iyi niyetle başladığı şeyde olduğu gibi bunu da bitmeyen hırsına alet ederek insanlığın felaketini getirdiğini görüyoruz bu oyunda. Semenderlerle Savaş'ta olduğu gibi insan yine kendisinin en büyük düşmanı.
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"El poder del hombre ha caído. Al hacernos dueños de la fábrica nos hacemos dueños de todo lo demás. La era del hombre ha terminado. Se abre una nueva era, la de los robots."
La obra teatral no es realmente buena pero creo que tiene muchas cosas que valen la pena mencionar: fue escrita en 1920, en 1921 hacía su primera aparición en Praga y en 1922 en Nueva York; ha quedado inmortalizada por contener la primera aparición de la palabra "robot", que fue creada por su hermano Josef a partir de la palabra checa "robota" que significa "trabajo"; los robots inician una revolución que acaba destruyendo a la humanidad, el capítulo final tiene todo el estilo "last man on earth" que me gustó.
La opresión parece ser un tema recurrente en las obras de Capek aunque ninguna de las dos que he leído ha terminado por convencerme.
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Famosamente, R.U.R. es la obra que popularizó la palabra “robot”, si bien en ella alude a una especie de hombres sintéticos que hoy más bien llamaríamos androides. En un principio, Karel Čapek había pensado en llamarlos labori, y fue su hermano Josef el que le sugirió emplear, en cambio, el ganador derivado de la palabra robota (en checo, servidumbre). Como suele ocurrir con quienes inauguran un género, Čapek no se limitó a dar el primer paso. Su obra teatral también nos muestra, creo que por primera vez en la ficción (aunque siempre hay en alguna parte un precursor más oscuro) el alzamiento de los robots y el consecuente exterminio de la humanidad. En uno de los segmentos finales, los creadores especulan que quizás deberían haber hecho a estos hombres artificiales con alguna limitación natural, algo que les impidiera organizarse y volverse contra sus amos. Isaac Asimov (que odiaba R.U.R.) ideó las Tres Leyes de la Robótica como medio para prevenir tales escenarios apocalípticos.
