R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)

About

Karel Čapek's 1920 play gave the world the word 'robot' — coined by his brother Josef from the Czech robota (drudge labor) — and inaugurated the science-fiction tradition of artificial beings rising against their creators. A factory producing synthetic humans to serve as labor eventually produces a workforce that has grown too capable to remain servile; what follows is a meditation on technology, exploitation, and what makes us human. The play was an international sensation in the 1920s and is historically important far beyond its literary quality. Its warnings about industrial dehumanization and the ethics of creating sentient beings read differently with each generation but never less urgently.