SF Masterwork of the Week: RUR & War with the Newts

Karel Capek, one of the most important Czech writers of the twentieth-century, was a major voice in early European SF. R.U.R – his most famous play – introduced the word ‘robot’ into popular usage.

 

 
 

Written against the background of the rise of Nazism, War with the Newts concerns the discovery in the South Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, which is enslaved and exploited by mankind. In time they rebel, laying siege to the strongholds of their former masters in a global war for supremacy.

R.U.R., or Rossum’s Universal Robots, seen by many as a modern interpretation of the ‘golem’ myth, is regarded as the most important play in the history of SF. It introduced the word ‘robot’ and gave the genre one of its most enduring tropes.

 
 

R.U.R. & War with the Newts is available as an SF Masterworks paperback and the two titles are available as separate SF Gateway eBooks. You can find more of Karel Capek’s work via his author page on the SF Gateway website and read more about him in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.