First Scifi Horror: Rossums Universal Robots?

[Almagarde]

We know it is supposed to be the first ever tale of Robots and human Society...but the definition of Spaceship Horror was that most carried a common thread - it was some alien tech gone wrong as it manifested the subconcious of the human mind.

Is R.U.R. the Krell Technology of its era?


www.planetmonk.com/dramageeks/scripts/rur.pdf

[Cannot think of a name]

I love Capek. After reading R.U.R. I picked up War with the Newts, which was awesome.

R.U.R. has really been the prototype of the robot story. Is it really that different from Terminator in basic concept, that the machines that do our work become aware and turn on their masters...or even more closely, Battlestar Galactica where it really is the robots that rise up to destroy their masters while having the same problem Rossum's robots have, how to reproduce.

I have no idea what you're talking about with Krell whatsit and Spaceship Horror whosit. But what R.U.R. was was a discussion on the nature of labor, leisure, and the problems of class. The term robota, or something like that, is a Czech word that means forced labor, or something close to that. It was less that machines will become our masters (while that certainly is true), but rather the relationship between labor and those that benefit from it is, not to go too far into it, delicate.

He explores this again in War with the Newts, where a pearl trader discovers four foot tall newts that he trades knives to fend off sharks with in exchange for pearls. When they no longer are getting killed by sharks, they become more populous others discover them and exploit them for laborer, which becomes problematic when it's discovered that the newts can talk. Not to give too much away, it plays out with a similar notion as RUR.

As to your other question, again, I really have no idea what you're talking about so I can't speak to that.

[Anti-Social Darwinism]

I love Capek. After reading R.U.R. I picked up War with the Newts, which was awesome.

R.U.R. has really been the prototype of the robot story. Is it really that different from Terminator in basic concept, that the machines that do our work become aware and turn on their masters...or even more closely, Battlestar Galactica where it really is the robots that rise up to destroy their masters while having the same problem Rossum's robots have, how to reproduce.

I have no idea what you're talking about with Krell whatsit and Spaceship Horror whosit. But what R.U.R. was was a discussion on the nature of labor, leisure, and the problems of class. The term robota, or something like that, is a Czech word that means forced labor, or something close to that. It was less that machines will become our masters (while that certainly is true), but rather the relationship between labor and those that benefit from it is, not to go too far into it, delicate.

He explores this again in War with the Newts, where a pearl trader discovers four foot tall newts that he trades knives to fend off sharks with in exchange for pearls. When they no longer are getting killed by sharks, they become more populous others discover them and exploit them for laborer, which becomes problematic when it's discovered that the newts can talk. Not to give too much away, it plays out with a similar notion as RUR.

As to your other question, again, I really have no idea what you're talking about so I can't speak to that.

As to the prototype of the robot story - I thought everything from Frankenstein to Cylons were pretty much derived from the Jewish golem - a constructed entity.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... Golem.html

[Cannot think of a name]

I love Capek. After reading R.U.R. I picked up War with the Newts, which was awesome.

R.U.R. has really been the prototype of the robot story. Is it really that different from Terminator in basic concept, that the machines that do our work become aware and turn on their masters...or even more closely, Battlestar Galactica where it really is the robots that rise up to destroy their masters while having the same problem Rossum's robots have, how to reproduce.

I have no idea what you're talking about with Krell whatsit and Spaceship Horror whosit. But what R.U.R. was was a discussion on the nature of labor, leisure, and the problems of class. The term robota, or something like that, is a Czech word that means forced labor, or something close to that. It was less that machines will become our masters (while that certainly is true), but rather the relationship between labor and those that benefit from it is, not to go too far into it, delicate.

He explores this again in War with the Newts, where a pearl trader discovers four foot tall newts that he trades knives to fend off sharks with in exchange for pearls. When they no longer are getting killed by sharks, they become more populous others discover them and exploit them for laborer, which becomes problematic when it's discovered that the newts can talk. Not to give too much away, it plays out with a similar notion as RUR.

As to your other question, again, I really have no idea what you're talking about so I can't speak to that.

As to the prototype of the robot story - I thought everything from Frankenstein to Cylons were pretty much derived from the Jewish golem - a constructed entity.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... Golem.html

True enough. The difference being that the Golem story revolves around a sense of vengeance overwhelming the avengers. Frankenstein has the whole Promethean angle. But with R.U.R. to Terminator to the Cylons the common factor, missing in the same role from the Golem story, is the issue of class and the relationship between the laborers and those who benefit from them. That's the key difference.

[Desperate Measures]

I really like the book but like the other poster, I have no idea what is being discussed.

[Risottia]

We know it is supposed to be the first ever tale of Robots and human Society...

but it's NOT the first scifi horror. Frankenstein predates RUR by about a century.
(btw, I wouldn't call RUR exactly horror).

[Muravyets]

I'm not sure the Golem or Frankenstein are properly thematic precursors to R.U.R.

Although the legend of the Golem of Prague does set the standard for beings constructed to serve who fail to be controllable, let's not forget that it is a magical story, not a science fiction one. The Golem was created by casting a spell using God's word of life (in Hebrew), and according to one version of the legend, it was stopped by removing one letter of the word which changed "life" to "truth" (a rather profound allegory there). Another version of the legend says it was never stopped, only contained, and exists somewhere in Prague to this day.

The Golem story is not about revenge of the created against the creator at all. The Golem was made to serve and protect -- it was essentially a weapon -- but when its creator got distracted and left it without instruction, it went off on its own, following the nature he made for it, and became destructive, but not out of anger or malice, just because that's how it was made. The Golem is about the responsibility of the creator, and about the limitations of human wisdom compared to divine wisdom. It's actually a fairly deep story.

I can sort of accept Frankenstein as a scientific version of the same theme, except that the original book was vague about Frankenstein's methods and seemed to allow for as much magic as science, or more. It was later versions of the story, especially the movies, that made it solidly sci-fi.

Frankenstein IS about revenge of the creator against the created. Frankenstein is self-centered and only interested in proving his theories. Displeased with his creation, he rejects and ignores it, but it refuses to just fade quietly from his interest. He is responsible for it, and it punishes him for trying to shirk that responsibility. So, unlike R.U.R type stories, Frankenstein is not trying to use the monster and treating it unfairly. He is trying to weasel out of an ethical responsibility. Mary Shelley was writing about social issues, but she made the story be intensely personal and focusing on interpersonal responsibility.

R.U.R. on the other hand is flat-out about the interdependent but adversarial relationship between labor and management, workers and bosses. For a long time before it was written, the social gap between workers and owners had been increasing to abusive levels, and I think R.U.R., while being original and seminal, is more in line with social commentary stories like The Time Machine and Metropolis, which hinge largely on exploitation of class divisions. They are about the anger of those who are controlled and used for service, the justified fear of the controllers, and the ignorant blindness of the upper classes of society who benefit from a system they are largely unaware of.

So although all of them are about creators who think they can control their creations and find out, disastrously, that they cannot, I think they go in very different directions, thematically, from that common starting point.

[Muravyets]

Oh, as for space tech, etc, no, there is nothing even remotely alien in R.U.R..

[Muravyets]

Oh, and finally, stories like Terminator are, to my mind, the central notion of R.U.R. brought to its logical conclusion, or otherwise embroidered and expanded upon -- the tool that is designed to do a job decides it knows the best way to do said job and goes ahead and does it, without regard for the instructions of its creators. They are cautionary tales, along the lines of "be careful what you wish for."

In that sense, we might say that storytellers have brought the divergent theme of R.U.R. back to the same line as Frankenstein.

If you want to see the REAL prequel to all the Terminator movies, by the way, see Colossus: The Forbin Project. It's basically the creation of Skynet.

[Almagarde]

Oh, as for space tech, etc, no, there is nothing even remotely alien in R.U.R..

How about philosophically? Consider the concept of the alien tech being the 'idea of creating a robot' and the embracing of that reality being the subconcious creating the reality by 'interacting with the alien' idea?

[Muravyets]

Oh, as for space tech, etc, no, there is nothing even remotely alien in R.U.R..

How about philosophically? Consider the concept of the alien tech being the 'idea of creating a robot' and the embracing of that reality being the subconcious creating the reality by 'interacting with the alien' idea?

Nope. Not buying it. Sorry, no. Engineer gets idea. Idea blows up in our faces. Nothing alien about that. The idea is inherently human -- trying to get out of doing our own work -- and I would say that philosophically that is vitally important to the meaning of the story. All stories about humans facing destruction from their own inventions and other science-run-amok stories are really about human nature. Everything bad that happens in such stories is our own fault, and casting an alien-ish angle over it -- as if the thing that got us into trouble came from somewhere/thing else -- just allows humanity to retain some kind of moral/ethical innocence for the event. It lets us avoid moral responsibility just as the story is about us trying to avoid interpersonal responsibility.

[Yootopia]

Err what about Frankenstein or indeed The Tempest?