A new translation of Karel Capek's play R.U.R.-which famously coined the term "robot"-and a collection of essays reflecting on the play's legacy from scientists and scholars who work in artificial life and robotics.
Karel Capek's "R.U.R." and the Vision of Artificial Life offers a new, highly faithful translation by Stepan Simek of Czech novelist, playwright, and critic Karel Capek's play R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots, as well as twenty essays from contemporary writers on the 1920 play. R.U.R. is perhaps best known for first coining the term "robot" (in Czech, robota means serfdom or arduous drudgery). The twenty essays in this new English edition, beautifully edited by Jitka Cejkova, are selected from Robot 100, an edited collection in Czech with perspectives from 100 contemporary voices that was published in 2020 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the play.
Capek's robots were autonomous beings, but biological, not mechanical, made of chemically synthesized soft matter resembling living tissue, like the synthetic humans in Blade Runner, Westworld, or Ex Machina. The contributors to the collection-scientists and other scholars-explore the legacy of the play and its connections to the current state of research in artificial life, or ALife. Throughout the book, it is impossible to ignore Capek's prescience, as his century-old science fiction play raises contemporary questions with respect to robotics, synthetic biology, technology, artificial life, and artificial intelligence, anticipating many of the formidable challenges we face today.
Contributors
Jitka Cejkova, Miguel Aguilera, Inigo R. Arandia, Josh Bongard, Julyan Cartwright, Seth Bullock, Dominique Chen, Gusz Eiben, Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Inman Harvey, Jana Horakova, Takashi Ikegami, Sina Khajehabdollahi, George Musser, Geoff Nitschke, Julie Novakova, Antoine Pasquali, Hemma Philamore, Lana Sinapayen, Hiroki Sayama, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"R.U.R. is fascinating and bizarre. . . . The most important contribution of the volume is a new translation of the play by Stepan Simek . . . who manages to capture the surreal weirdness of Capek's dark comedy of errors while making the text accessible to contemporary audiences. . . . Capek's masterpiece reminds us first that just because we can does not mean we should."
-Science
"[The essays] are full of surprising insights and together constitute a fascinating experiment in how scientists might cast new light on a literary classic. In the process, they confirm the prescience of the radical questions Capek raised a hundred years ago. . . . In our age of ChatGPT . . . we may return to Capek for his prescient sense of how market logic underwrites scientific certainty, and vice versa." - Los Angeles Review of Books
"Makes for fascinating reading."
-IEEE Spectrum
"A must-read for anyone interested in ALife."
-Irish Times
"We are still reading [Capek] today, and as R.U.R and the Vision of Artificial Life shows, finding new significance in everything that emerged from minds such as . . . Capek's."
-Orwell Society
"The translation of the play, by Stepan Simek, is a revelation. . . . The book is well worth buying and adding to reading lists on the basis of Simek's achievement. . . . Fans of Capek, and proponents of the possibilities of literature for investigating histories and philosophies of science, should be grateful to Jitka Cejkova and Stepan Simek for introducing his wonderful work to a new generation."
-British Journal for the History of Science
"Capek's far-seeing tragicomic satire blurs the lines between the human and the biomechanical."
-Arts Fuse
"[A] stimulating volume . . . Stepan S. Simek gives us a bracing new translation."
-Issues in Science and Technology
"R.U.R. is of course superb, the new translation and the translator's note by Stepan Simek are helpful, and the essays are interesting and worth reading."
-Technology & Culture
Sprache
Verlagsort
Cambridge (Massachusetts)
USA
Verlagsgruppe
Illustrationen
28 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUS.
Maße
Höhe: 222 mm
Breite: 155 mm
Dicke: 25 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-262-54450-4 (9780262544504)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Karel Capek (1890-1938) was a Czech novelist, short story writer, playwright, and essayist best known for his dystopian works. He was the author of War with the Newts, The Makropulos Affair, The Absolute at Large, The White Disease, and many other notable works.
Jitka Cejkova is Associate Professor in the Chemical Robotics Laboratory at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague. Her research focuses on how chemical engineers can contribute to artificial life research.
INTRODUCTION ix
Jitka Cejkova
R.U.R. (ROSSUM'S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS) 1
Karel Capek, translated by Stepan S. Simek
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE 99
ESSAYS
1 ROBOTS AND THE PRECOCIOUS BIRTH OF SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY 105
Julyan Cartwright
2 ANOTHER METHOD WITH THE POTENTIAL TO DEVELOP LIFE 117
Nathaniel Virgo
3 HUMANS AND MACHINES: DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES
121
Carlos Gershenson
4 R.U.R. AND THE ROBOT REVOLUTION: INTELLIGENCE AND LABOR, SOCIETY AND AUTONOMY 133
Inman Harvey
5 IT WASN'T WRONG TO DREAM: THE PARADISE OR HELL OF OUR JOBLESS FUTURE 147
Julie Novakova
6 R.U.R.: A SHREWD PLUTOCRAT, A GENIUS ENGINEER, AND AN ANTI-SUE WALK INTO A BAR 153
Lana Sinapayen
7 ARTIFICIAL PANPSYCHISM 161
George Musser
8 WHAT IS "THE SECRET OF LIFE"? THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN CAPEK'S R.U.R. 169
Tom Froese
9 THE ROBOT 177
Jana Horakova
10 IS THE "SOUL" SYNONYMOUS WITH CONSCIOUSNESS? 193
Sina Khajehabdollahi
11 SCIENCE WITHOUT CONSCIENCE IS THE SOUL'S PERDITION 199
Antoine Pasquali
12 KAREL CAPEK: THE VISIONARY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ARTIFICIAL LIFE 207
Hiroki Sayama
13 ROSSUM'S UNIVERSAL XENOBOTS 213
Josh Bongard
14 WHY ARE NO MORE CHILDREN BEING BORN? 217
Hemma Philamore
15 LOVE IN THE TIME OF ROOMBA 221
Seth Bullock
16 THE LESSON OF AFFECTION FROM THE WEAK ROBOTS 227
Dominique Chen
17 GENERATIVE ETHICS IN ARTIFICIAL LIFE 233
Takashi Ikegami
18 FROM R.U.R. TO ROBOT EVOLUTION 241
Geoff Nitschke and Gusz Eiben
19 ROBOTS AT THE EDGE OF CHAOS AND THE PHASE TRANSITIONS OF LIFE 251
Miguel Aguilera and Inigo R. Arandia
20 ROBOTIC LIFE BEYOND EARTH 259
Olaf Witkowski
AFTERWORD: "THE AUTHOR OF THE ROBOTS DEFENDS HIMSELF" 265
Karel Capek
CONTRIBUTORS 269
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 275
NOTES 277
INDEX 289
