Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
R.U.R.

R.U.R.

Čapek, Karel

Paperback

Science FictionClassic FictionLiterary Fiction

ISBN13: 9791043136177
Publisher: Les Prairies Numeriques
Published: Mar 4 2026
Pages: 110
Weight: 0.35
Height: 0.26 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots is a play written in 1920 by Karel Čapek, a Czech writer who wrote many plays and novels, many of them with science-fiction and dystopian themes. R.U.R. is perhaps the most well-known of these works in the English-speaking world because it brought the word robot into the language. Robot is derived from the Czech word meaning worker.The play is set in the island headquarters of the R.U.R. corporation. The corporation has been manufacturing artificial beings which resemble humans, but who are tireless workers. They can be mass-produced in large numbers and are being adopted as workers in many countries. In the first scene of the play, they are visited by a young woman, Helena Glory, who aspires to relieve the lot of the robots, who she sees as oppressed. However, in what must be the fastest seduction scene in all drama, she is wooed and agrees to marry Harry Domin, the factory manager, who she has just met. She still however aspires to improve the life of robots and find a way to give them souls. Ultimately, however, this admirable desire leads to disaster for humankind.The play was translated into English, and slightly abridged, by Paul Selver and Nigel Playfair in 1923. This version quickly became popular with both British and American audiences and was well received by critics.

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