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Karel Čapek

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Karel Čapek (pronounced [KARel CHAP-ek] ([Media helphelp]·[info])) (IPA: [ˈkarɛl ˈʧapɛk]) (January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938) was one of the most important Czech writers of the 20th century. He introduced and made popular the frequently used international word robot, which first appeared in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1920. The true inventor of the term robot was Karel's brother Josef Čapek.

Karel Čapek
Karel Čapek

Čapek was born in Malé Svatoňovice, then Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic.

Contents

Life and work

Karel Čapek wrote with intelligence and humor on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known not only for interesting and exact descriptions of reality, but also for his excellent work with the Czech language. He is perhaps best known as a science fiction author, who wrote long before science fiction became established as a separate genre. He can be counted as one of the founders of classical non-hardcore European science fiction, which focuses on possible future (or alternative) social and human evolution on Earth, rather than technically advanced stories of space travel. However, it is best to class him with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a mainstream literary figure who used science-fiction motifs.

Many of his works discuss ethical and other aspects of the revolutionary inventions and processes that were already expected in the first half of 20th century. These included mass production, atomic weapons, and post-human intelligent beings such as robots or intelligent salamanders.

In this, Čapek was also expressing fear of upcoming social disasters, dictatorship, violence, and unlimited power of corporations, and trying to find some hope for human beings. Čapek's literary heirs include Ray Bradbury, Salman Rushdie, Brian Aldiss and Dan Simmons.

His other books and plays include detective stories, novels, fairy tales and theatre plays, and even a book on gardening. The most important works try to resolve the problem of epistemology, or "What is knowledge?": The Tales from Two Pockets, and first of all the trilogy of novels Hordubal, Meteor and An Ordinary Life.

Later, in the 1930s, Čapek's work focused on the threat of brutal Nazi and fascist dictatorships. His most productive years corresponded with the existence of the first republic of Czechoslovakia (1918-1938). He wrote Talks with T.G. Masaryk, a Czech patriot and first President of Czechoslovakia and a regular guest at Čapek's Friday garden parties for Czech patriots. This extraordinary relationship between the great author and the great political leader is perhaps unique, and is known to have been an inspiration to Václav Havel. He also became a member of International PEN.

Karel Čapek died in the December preceding the outbreak of World War II and was interred in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague. Soon after it became clear that the Western allies had refused to help defend Czechoslovakia against Hitler, he refused to eat or leave his country and died of double pneumonia. The Gestapo had ranked him as "public enemy number 2" in Czechoslovakia. His brother Josef Čapek, a painter and also a writer, died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

After the war, Čapek's work was only reluctantly accepted by the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia, since during his life he had refused to believe in a communist utopia as a viable alternative to the threat of Nazi domination.

Etymology of robot

The word robot comes from the word robota meaning "drudgery", "forced labor" in literary Czech and "work", "labor" in literary Slovak.

While Karel Čapek is frequently stated to have been the originator of the word, he wrote a short letter in reference to the Oxford English Dictionary etymology in which he named his brother, painter and writer Josef Čapek as its true inventor. [link]. In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1930, he also explains that he originally wanted to call the creature dělňas (a substantive derived from the Czech verb dělat- to work, to do).

However, Josef did not like dělnas and advised Karel, who was writing the play R.U.R. in Trenčianske Teplice in Slovakia, to use a word from the local Slovak language, in which "work" is robota, (as it is also known in the Czech language). The origin of both the Czech and the Slovak word is the Old Church Slavonic rabota "servitude", which in turn comes from the Indo-European root [*orbh-]. Robot is cognate with the German word arbeiter (worker).

Čapek in popular culture

On the science fiction cartoon show Futurama, a planet inhabited entirely by robots was named "Čapek 9", as a reference to Karel Čapek's coining of the term "robot".

In an episode of the science fiction programme Doctor Who entitled "The Robots Of Death" (1977), the crazed leader of a group of murderous robots is named "Taran Capel", which is deliberately similar to Čapek's own name.

An outline of Čapek's works

Works which can be considered early science fiction: Anti-Nazi plays from the 1930s: Some other works:

Selected bibliography

External links

 

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