Today in Labor History January 2, 1921: Karel ฤapekโs science fiction play โR.U.R.โ premiered. "R.U.R." stands for โRossum's Universal Robots.โ The play introduced the word โrobotโ to the English language and to the world of science fiction. He derived the word โRobotโ from the Czech word for forced labor by Serfs, a derivation he attributed to his brother, Joseph. The play is an archetype for many of the science fiction stories and films that followed, like Bladerunner, West World and Terminator, and others about robots, replicants and hosts that rebel against humans. However, โR.U.R.,โ like ฤapekโs 1936 novel โWar with the Newts,โ is also a satirical critique of totalitarianism, which was already on the rise in Europe at the time he wrote the play.
ฤapek was opposed to all forms of totalitarianism, including both communism and fascism. As a young man, he worked as a journalist, in Prague, where he wrote on topics such as nationalism, totalitarianism and consumerism. As a teen, he was expelled from his high school for participating in an unauthorized student club, which he later described as a "very non-murderous anarchist society." In 1938, he had the chance to leave for the UK, but refused to leave Czechoslovakia, where the Nazi Gestapo had named him "public enemy number two." He died later that year from pneumonia.
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