RUR

 
RUR

Rossum's Universal Robots
by Karel Capek

translated by Paul Selver and Nigel Playfair

Dover

1921, reprinted 2001

 

 

RUR is a stage play, and it's most famous for introducing the word 'robot' into the global vernacular, based on the Czech word for drudgery. Capek's robots are artificial humans, more like the replicants from Bladerunner than the mechanical servants from The Jetsons or Forbidden Planet or Lost in Space.
 

Capek imagines robots being put together in a factory, but what they are made of is a lab-created alternative primordial soup, something other than the originator of all Earthly life, but that nonetheless can easily be prompted to form an sort of living tissue, and assembled into any sort of organism. 

 
Robots are like humans, but slightly simplified. They experience no pain or emotions; in particular they have no desires, they don't want anything. The most expensive robots will live for 20 years and can do white collar jobs. The cheapest are short-lived manual laborers.

 
In act 1, Harry Domin, manager of the Rossum's Universal Robots company, receives a visitor to its island location - Helena Glory, daughter of the president of whatever mainland jurisdiction they fall under. She's there to tour the facility and (secretly) to attempt to encourage the robots to form a labor union and demand better working conditions. 

 
Domin explains the bit about how robots work, and goes on to rave about how great it is that the price of food and manufactured goods are falling, and that all the human laborers are being thrown out of work. He dreams of a future with no scarcity or poverty, when every human can focus on living the best sort of life.
Domin also introduces Helena to the only five other human managers on the island (all men) and all of them instantly fall in love with her. Domin proposes marriage, and Helena accepts. Were the straights ever okay? Sadly for all of us, Domin does not propose by asking 'are you are or are you ain't my baby?' in what might be the greatest oversight of a potential pun in the history of literature.

 
In act 2, a decade later, Domin gives Helena an anniversary present - a private gunship that all the humans on the island will use to flee. Helena finally looks at some of the newspapers lying around and learns that more and more robots have been having epileptic fits and then refusing to work. (Capek means for this to signify that they have been developing human-like souls.) 

 
The global masses of unemployed have been protesting and rioting, and countries have used armies of robot soldiers to massacre their own citizens by the hundreds of thousands. Helena burns the newspapers, and perhaps one more document... 

 
No communication has arrived to the island for over a week, but today the mail boat is arriving right on time, which Domin assumes means good news. He proposes to start selling 'national robots' instead of 'universal robots' so that racism against other robots will prevent them from organizing again in the future.
 

In act 3, we learn that Domin was wrong, and the arrival of the boat is not good news! An army of robots has arrived to seize the factory. Domin plans to bargain for their lives by offering the robots Dr Rossum's original notes about how to make the artificial primordial soup, since without those notes, no more robots can be made. He's just full of good ideas. Unfortunately, would you care to guess what that additional document Helena burned was? The robots seize the factory, and one human survives, taken prisoner so he can help recreate the formula.

 
In act 4, a year later, we learn that the surviving human architect has not had much luck rediscovering the greatest ever advance in the unrelated field of biochemistry! He might be the last human left alive on Earth. The lowest grade robots are already dying out, and even the most expensive models will all be gone in 20 years or less. 

 
When the guy calls for a specific 'robotess' to be dissected for his studies, he learns that she and one of the male robots are in love with each other, each willing to die to save the other from destruction. The guy decides that these two have human souls and will be capable of sexual reproduction, and so sends them off the island on a boat so they can restart humanity anew.

 
What's particularly impressive here is that in addition to coining the term 'robot,' Capek has invented the entire robot uprising genre whole cloth, laying out like 90% of the themes that every future robot story will include, including the fear of robot soldiers being used to kill protesters and other civilians. 

 
Capek's novel At War with the Newts is another parable about humans encountering another form of sentient life and immediately enslaving them. Although RUR feels like it's less about literal slavery, and more about wage-slavery and the conditions of factory work. For example, the belated plan to prevent a global robot uprising via nationalism and racism is a pretty on-the-nose parody of capitalist plans to prevent global Communism and other forms of worker solidarity.