The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
This topic is about
R.U.R
Group Reads 2018
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May 2018 Group Read: R.U.R. by Karel Čapek
Czech state library also provides free original text of Čapek's play in Czech if anyone is interested
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There are many earlier works dealing with robots, or other mechanical human-like beings. Going at least as far back as the Greek stories of Talos. That isn't SF, of course. Some would argue that E. T. A. Hoffman's 1814 story Automata would count as SF.
What makes R.U.R. famous is the invention of the word Robot.
Anyway, do you think "The steam man of the prairies" is a good story that is worth reading?
Ed wrote: "Anyway, do you think "The steam man of the prairies" is a good story that is worth reading?"Halfway through it now, and no, I can't recommend it. If it wouldn't leave a big hole, I'd delete my post where I mentioned it.
P.S.: Here is my one-star review: "I read the first half and decided not to read the second. It was truly awful. Written for children, it suffered from the racism (against native Americans) prevalent at the time of its writing. I don't demand writers of other periods share modern day cultural sensibilities. Therefore, what was even worse (for me) was that the characters lacked all introspection, a weakness common to most genre fiction until the Campbell revolution of 1938. The science fiction aspect was virtually nonexistent. The author was too lazy to even bother explaining how the steam man moved forward. The steam man could easily have been substituted with a steam locomotive, upon which it would lose all science fiction trappings and become just a forgotten western, like the rest of Ellis's oeuvre."
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How unfortunate! Now I'm almost want to read it just out of curiosity! But I need to get back to my lessons in Czech, so I can read R.U.R.
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... although that tea does look tasty!
Hah!But if you get the book from Project Gutenberg, you won't be supporting Amazon's controversial practices:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13083
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But if you get the book from Project Gutenberg, you won't be supporting Amazon's controversial practices."
Maybe. But I'd have to learn to read in Czech! Gutenberg doesn't have it in English.
Amazon has two e-book versions. One for 99 cents and one for 9.99. There are complaints about the quality of the translation for the cheaper one, as it combines some characters into a single character. Not sure that really matters to me if the plot is mostly the same.
Oh! I did not realize, ty. Sorry.I mean, 'google translate' works, but I tried to read it that way and didn't understand it all. I'll have to start looking for a copy in libraries, maybe in my son's college or something I dunno.
Ok... when I used the "download ebook" radio button on the GR book page itself, I got an epub translated by David Wyllie, who is not the Paul Selver that the Amazon reviewer dis-recommended.
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R.U.R. by Karel Čapek"
Thanks for the heads up. I linked it to the topic now.
I read this book during the winter and thought it was interesting. As the play progressed, I was thinking that the scientists should have had more controls on the robots.
I started it today. Looking forward to read it. In the book I'm reading RUR is followed by War with the Newts, which looks interesting and has high ratings on GR. Someone read this too?
Just found out it was a group read in 2014...
I found it naive, and wonder why the play was apparently so popular back in the day. There is a marxist undertone that I found interesting. Literatlly this is an allegory of laborers revolting against their masters. It does have all the tropes we come to expect from robots being involved (rebellion, extermination of humans, questions about identity and what it means to be a person). I wonder how influencial it is on modern sci-fi works with robots. Or if humans creating life automatically means they committed an affront to god and need to be punish with their creation turning on their creator. A bit like how Frankenstein's Creature rebelled against it human progenitor.
The robots of Capek are different from the metal machines we've come to associate with robots. In the play they are organic, not metallic. They have more in common with the film Blade Runner and it's Replicants. I wonder when the first metal/machinal machines named robots came to be in literature.
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That is an interesting question. I couldn't find an answer easily.
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That is a good question. I found this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
According to that article, "The Metal Giants" (1926) by Edmond Hamilton is to be the first story with metal robots after Capek coined the term, but the story doesn't have the word "robot" in it at all. The first story of his I can find using that word is "THE REIGN OF THE ROBOTS" which appeared in Wonder Stories in December 1931 & quite a few uses of the word after that.
I did a little more looking around, but didn't find the word in any earlier stories including "Metropolis" even though it had one. I'm not saying that's definitive, though. I just looked at as many early stories as I could find fairly quickly.
I have a vague memory of a TV show when I was a child. There was a boy who had a robot friend named Tobor. That, I think, was my introduction to robots. Does anybody remember it?
I just googled Tobor. It is a 1954 black and white movie starring Billy Chapin as the boy.
This was a great story/play. I really enjoyed it.
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Boy, I just went down an internet rabbit hole....
Lots of people have thought a lot about this already. Here is one such site cyberneticzoo.com
That site mentions that while the word "Robot" is not used in the book "Metropolis", it was used in some promotional materials for the film in 1927.
This site (in French) says that immediately following the success of R.U.R., people started using the word Robot to refer to mechanical men which had previously been called "Automata" or other terms, even though the Robots in R.U.R. were not purely mechanical.
Filmmaker Jean Painlevé created a story called "The End of Robots" in 1930 in the magazine Vu. Pictures were of mechanical men, not biological robots.
Westinghouse was creating real, but very primitive, machines called robots as early as 1926. One was "Televox".
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R.U.R. is the first play I have read. I am not going to rate or review it. I find it very interesting that the problems begin after they give the robot the ability to feel pain. The ability to feel pain would lead to the need for self preservation, which what the scientists want. This would also cause them to see that endless drudgery was shortening their lives, therefore causing a conflict with their need for self preservation causing them to gnash their teeth, foam at the mouth and go insane. Every human attribute they add to their robots just foments the coming revolt.
Keith wrote: "R.U.R. is the first play I have read. I am not going to rate or review it...."Why not? Drama (as plays are classified) is a valid literary form of writing, as are prose (a fancy name for fiction), non-fiction, and poetry. All of these get rated here on GoodReads.
Drama is a more challenging form to read than prose or non-fiction because it is designed to be acted and therefore seen. Many of the cues fiction writers use to embellish the experience of reading their work are of necessity omitted in drama. This places more visualization burden upon the reader. On the plus side, drama (including film, game, and grapic novel scripts) tends to have much better dialogue than you find in most fiction because so much has to be conveyed through it. Drama's dialogue tends to be subtler, more mature, and nuanced.
As in all good plays, there is a lot going on under the surface here. I'm a quarter the way through and loving it. I'm finding this an easier read than most drama, possibly because I am not reading the e-book I imagine most people are reading. I have what the publishers are calling an "Enriched Edition". It's the Pocket Books edition edited by Harry Shefter, which includes a number of aids to enhance text understanding.
I hope you reconsider rating and reviewing this book. It really deserves to be treated as much a work of fiction as any other. I wonder if there are more great (or classic) science fiction works presented to be read in dramatic form. Or is this the only one? (At a comic book convention held here in Columbia, SC, last weekend I picked up a copy of Space Family Robinson #2 [1963], which is pretty cool. Comics start out as a script, but of course a script isn't the final form they're enjoyed in.)
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OSC says he writes his books to be read aloud & he always does so to make sure it flows smoothly. It's worked well for his books, IMO. I've never run into any parts that didn't read easily & clearly which isn't the case in some books.
I adore the Old Time Radio shows of SF short stories such as X-Minus One, Dimension X, & such. Their dramatic readings with some sound effects can really bring a story to life, even one that I've liked very much in plain text.
I don't like it when people don't give star ratings or review books since it's one of my primary reasons for using this site. I rely on them to decide whether or not to read a book. There are far too many books available for me to read & I need some way to whittle them down.
Star ratings & reviews are my primary tools. I read a couple/few reviews of each star rating. 5 star gushes are nice, but I often find 1 star reviews the most helpful since they'll detail what they didn't like. If it's something like stream-of-consciousness, that's great. I hate it too, so won't waste any more time.
Jim wrote: "OSC says he writes his books to be read aloud & he always does so to make sure it flows smoothly. "I began reading aloud bedtime stories to my daughter when she was three or so, a thing we kept all the way through her teen years. An OSC book was more often than any other author my go-to, especially the Alvin the Maker series, though I had to take care to explain to her what the real history of the US was and what parts OSC made up for the purposes of his narrative. Now I know one more reason why I drew so much on Card's works. Cool!
I am really determined to see if I can find more good science fiction written in drama form. No luck yet.
On R.U.R., one thing I am really finding interesting to do is read Domain as God-figure. Domain starts the book out dictating letters about what he will create. God does the same, sort of, in Genesis, and pronounces things to be good. I think that's why Domain (that name isn't arbitrarily chosen) interrupts Helena mid-sentence so often: to demonstrate omniscience. Maybe Rossum is more Jesus figure though, since he talks of his father as being the original Creator of robots, but the line between their roles is a bit blurry....
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Isn't the line between Jesus & God blurry, too? Seems to me I read somewhere that it's one of those things Catholics & various Protestants disagree on, although I can't recall who believes what. Something about whether they're multiple faces of one being or distinct beings, I think. Could it be blurred on purpose to highlight that argument?
I'm not sure what the 'Holy Ghost' is or how it differs from 'God'. Probably differs between Christian flavors. Not sure how that works with monotheism, either. Is it part of the other Abrahamic religions? Is there a something like it in the story?
Was Čapek a Christian? If so, what branch & what were their beliefs on the Trinity?
To answer your question on whether the line between "Jesus & God is blurry", most present day Christians (of whom, for full disclosure's sake, I number myself) would say the line is not blurry at all, that the concept is perfectly clear. That assertion is, of course, the strongest evidence I can provide that the line is blurry indeed. There was a big dispute once between two groups arguing the distinction. One group, called Trinitarians, said that They are one and the same. Another group of Christians, called Unitarians, said The Two are not the same, or at minimum that Jesus was the human manifestation, and so should be considered separate in that sense. I know it is confusing for people with the name Trinitarians to be arguing the three are all one and for people named Unitarians to argue the opposite is confusing, but of course it was "perfectly clear" and "logical" to American Christians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Anyway, Trinitarians won the dispute by the early twentieth century, making Unitarianist beliefs a heresy to mainstream Christians of today. Trinitarians won not necessarily (or substitute "just" for "necessarily" if you are a Believer) because they were right, but more because Unitarians defaulted. Unitarians' beliefs morphed (or evolved) to embrace agnostic and/or atheistic beliefs, making the entire disputed point moot. Trinitarianism, the belief God and Jesus, not to mention the Holy Spirit, are One and kind of the same (how much and in what ways they are the same varies between denominations, if it is thought about at all) is so much an assumed component of Christianity today that few Christians realize the point was ever in dispute.
To add more on the reading of Domain as God figure, I see the factory as an allegory for Heaven. Domain: "It is forbidden to enter the factory of course. But everybody comes here with an introduction and then--" Further evidence for the allegorical reading is that Helena was very young to make the lonely voyage to the factory herself.
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Why not? ..."
We all use this site differently. And that is OK. Might be an interesting separate topic.
I rate everything, but don't usually review. Writing a review takes time that I could spend doing something else. When I read a book I like that has few reviews, I usually try to add one. R.U.R. already has over 350 reviews, many in English. Adding my review to it isn't likely to help many people.
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I'm tempted to try Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch, Volume 2. G.B. Shaw was great in Pygmalion and other things, so this might be good.
A local theater group is doing A Number, which is getting great reviews. The subject, human cloning, isn't very compelling to me, but might be to you.
I very much enjoyed Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, in which a post-apocalypse America gradually makes a religion out of vague memories of The Simpsons.
Henceforward... looks interesting, and includes an android. Excuse me, a gynoid.
And back to Karel Čapek, while I haven't read Makropoulos Secret, I have enjoyed the opera made from it.
Considering how many SF films and TV shows there are, one would expect more plays.
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Dan wrote: "Keith wrote: "R.U.R. is the first play I have read. I am not going to rate or review it...."Why not? Drama (as plays are classified) is a valid literary form of writing, as are prose (a fancy nam..."
I do not want to rate or review R.U.R. because it is only a script for a play. The script is composed of the dialog, very simple stage descriptions and basic stage directions. Someone could create a great play or a terrible play from this script. There are just to many unknowns for me to rate or review a script. If I had seen the play I could rate and review it, but no just the script.
Well, we're off-topic, but I want to throw my thoughts in, too.When I evaluate a script, I do so assuming that it's been well-performed. I don't mean 'brilliantly' performed, because a great actor can turn a mediocre script into an amazing theater experience. Nor do I mean competently performed, or read through during an early rehearsal... I mean the actors have both talent and skill, and care about the performance. If I can imagine the script being fleshed out like that, I feel that I can review and rate the play.
Btw, remember that Goodreads is for & about ordinary readers. Few of us are literature professors or professional critics. Our reviews are better thought of as comment boxes, and our ratings are supposed to be our own opinions.
And if I'm a reading friend with someone, I want to know their opinion. Doesn't matter of Dr. Smartypants thinks it's a great book; doesn't matter if 15K GR members rated it, I want to know why my GR friend Jim thinks it's a great, or mediocre, or lousy book.
Please, all of you, rate and say something about everything you read. Even if it's just a sentence. Even if (especially if) you don't finish a book... or if your opinion diverges from the majority, or if you don't know what to say!
Sorry for the rant. I hope to get to the play soon.
I am a very visual person, so I always try to picture how the play would be staged, but seeing it is more effective. I wonder if this play is ever produced on stage?
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If you google YouTube for "RUR play", you'll find some.
Rosemarie wrote: "I am a very visual person, so I always try to picture how the play would be staged, but seeing it is more effective. I wonder if this play is ever produced on stage?"I read it played for 6 years in a row in Prague, from 1921. I'm not familiar with theatre but I think this is a succesfull play then. It also played in a lot of other countries.
I don't like plays and this was no exception. What I liked is the fact that the robots started out as hollow shells and then problems grew with every step in making them more human.
This is so I won't end up on Cheryl's black list.
Thanks, Jim. I will check that out.
The text of anything, including plays, can (and I believe should) be evaluated on its own merit for what the text (and only the text) says. After all, Shakespeare's greatness, or how good one of his plays is, doesn't rise and fall on the basis of individual performances of the text. Neither does R.U.R. Whether performances of R.U.R. were a runaway hit for 20 years or 20 minutes could not possibly matter less.
Oh I dunno. If I can't visualize a performance, even a Shakespeare, then I don't feel as if I'm getting the experience the playwright intended. If the author wanted to write a book, s/he would have. But it's a play, because that is what the author intended.Remember that when Shakespeare is taught, the play is often taught in conjuction with a video of a performance of it. And, tbh, that's how I usually study them myself.
Then there is the closet play, which, like a love child, was never meant to be, yet might still have value.
Buck wrote: "I have a vague memory of a TV show when I was a child. There was a boy who had a robot friend named Tobor. That, I think, was my introduction to robots. Does anybody remember it?"Maybe you're thinking of "Captain Video." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain...
Fun fact about that show: Jack Vance did some script work on it.
Phil wrote: "Maybe you're thinking of "Captain Video." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain...Fun fact about that show: Jack Vance did some script work on it."
Interesting article. I watched Captain Video as a young boy, but I don't really remember it.
According to the Wikipedia article it was Written by:
Damon Knight
James Blish
Jack Vance
Arthur C. Clarke
Isaac Asimov
Cyril M. Kornbluth
Milt Lesser
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Robert Sheckley
J. T. McIntosh
Robert S. Richardson
Maurice C. Brachhausen (M. C. Brock)
Just a few familiar names there.
I really liked this story. Very thought provoking.
The Evolution of Science Fiction
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A Number (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Mark Twain (other topics)Jack Vance (other topics)
Isaac Asimov (other topics)
Edward S. Ellis (other topics)
Martin L. Shoemaker (other topics)
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However, we have a week before the group read is due to commence. Did you know there was an even earlier work that introduced the concept of robots? It may have been the earliest work on the theme. In any event, may I propose we consider reading <The Huge Hunter, Or, the Steam Man of the Prairiesi> by Edward S. Ellis as a prolegomenon for the main feature? This Edisonade, considered to be the first U.S. science fiction dime novel, may not be great literature, unlike R.U.R. However, it looks like an easy read about an earlier robot.
If you are interested, Gutenberg provides the story free of charge here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7506. There is even an audiobook available here: https://librivox.org/the-steam-man-of...