R.U.R. (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Karel Capek
- First Published: 1920
- Type of Work: Drama
- Type of Plot: Science fiction—artificial intelligence
- Time of Work: An indeterminate time in the future, possibly the 1920’s
- Setting: A remote island
- Genres: Satire, Drama
- Subjects: Factories, Love or romance, Future, Science or scientists, Islands, Work or workers, Inventions or inventors, Utopias, Robots or robotics, Technology, Artificial intelligence
- Locales: Islands
The Plot
The play begins at a time that is possibly the early 1920’s, on an unspecified island somewhere on Earth. A factory called R.U.R. (an acronym for Rossum’s Universal Robots) manufactures and exports thousands of artificial people, the so-called Robots.
Helena, a daughter of a renowned scientist, Dr. Glory, goes to the island on behalf of the Humanity League to investigate the condition of the Robots. She is told that the elderly Professor Rossum began to seek a sort of scientific substitute for God, with the sole purpose of supplying proof that Providence was...
[The entire page is 1278 words long]
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