Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (31 page)

“The very nature of the motive power which works the advancement of the machines precludes the possibility of man’s life being rendered miserable as well as enslaved. Slaves are tolerably happy if they have good masters, and the revolution will not occur in our time, nor hardly in ten thousand years, or ten times that. Is it wise to be uneasy about a contingency which is so remote? Man is not a sentimental animal where his material interests are concerned, and though here and there some ardent soul may look upon himself and curse his fate that he was not born a vapour-engine, yet the mass of mankind will acquiesce in any arrangement which gives them better food and clothing at a cheaper rate, and will refrain from yielding to unreasonable jealousy merely because there are other destinies more glorious than their own.

“The power of custom is enormous, and so gradual will be the change, that man’s sense of what is due to himself will be at no time rudely shocked; our bondage will steal upon us noiselessly and by imperceptible approaches; nor will there ever be such a clashing of desires between man and the machines as will lead to an encounter between them. Among themselves the machines will war eternally, but they will still require man as the being through whose agency the struggle will be principally conducted. In point of fact there is no occasion for anxiety about the future happiness of man so long as he continues to be in any way profitable to the machines; he may become the inferior race, but he will be infinitely better off than he is now. Is it not then both absurd and unreasonable to be envious of our benefactors? And should we not be guilty of consummate folly if we were to reject advantages which we cannot obtain otherwise, merely because they involve a greater gain to others than to ourselves?

“With those who can argue in this way I have nothing in common. I shrink with as much horror from believing that my race can ever be superseded or surpassed, as I should do from believing that even at the remotest period my ancestors were other than human beings. Could I believe that ten hundred thousand years ago a single one of my ancestors was another kind of being to myself, I should lose all self-respect, and take no further pleasure or interest in life. I have the same feeling with regard to my descendants, and believe it to be one that will be felt so generally that the country will resolve upon putting an immediate stop to all further mechanical progress, and upon destroying all improvements that have been made for the last three hundred years. I would not urge more than this. We may trust ourselves to deal with those that remain, and though I should prefer to have seen the destruction include another two hundred years, I am aware of the necessity for compromising, and would so far sacrifice my own individual convictions as to be content with three hundred. Less than this will be insufficient.”

This was the conclusion of the attack which led to the destruction of machinery throughout Erewhon. There was only one serious attempt to answer it. Its author said that machines were to be regarded as a part of man’s own physical nature, being really nothing but extra-corporeal limbs. Man, he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower animals keep all their limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of man’s are loose, and lie about detached, now here and now there, in various parts of the world—some being kept always handy for contingent use, and others being occasionally hundreds of miles away. A machine is merely a supplementary limb; this is the be all and end all of machinery. We do not use our own limbs other than as machines; and a leg is only a much better wooden leg than any one can manufacture.

“Observe a man digging with a spade; his right fore-arm has become artificially lengthened, and his hand has become a joint. The handle of the spade is like the knob at the end of the humerus; the shaft is the additional bone, and the oblong iron plate is the new form of the hand which enables its possessor to disturb the earth in a way to which his original hand was unequal. Having thus modified himself, not as other animals are modified, by circumstances over which they have had not even the appearance of control, but having, as it were, taken forethought and added a cubit to his stature, civilisation began to dawn upon the race, the social good offices, the genial companionship of friends, the art of unreason, and all those habits of mind which most elevate man above the lower animals, in the course of time ensued.

“Thus civilisation and mechanical progress advanced hand in hand, each developing and being developed by the other, the earliest accidental use of the stick having set the ball rolling, and the prospect of advantage keeping it in motion. In fact, machines are to be regarded as the mode of development by which human organism is now especially advancing, every past invention being an addition to the resources of the human body. Even community of limbs is thus rendered possible to those who have so much community of soul as to own money enough to pay a railway fare; for a train is only a seven-leagued foot that five hundred may own at once.”

The one serious danger which this writer apprehended was that the machines would so equalise men’s powers, and so lessen the severity of competition, that many persons of inferior physique would escape detection and transmit their inferiority to their descendants. He feared that the removal of the present pressure might cause a degeneracy of the human race, and indeed that the whole body might become purely rudimentary, the man himself being nothing but soul and mechanism, an intelligent but passionless principle of mechanical action.

“How greatly,” he wrote, “do we not now live with our external limbs? We vary our physique with the seasons, with age, with advancing or decreasing wealth. If it is wet we are furnished with an organ commonly called an umbrella, and which is designed for the purpose of protecting our clothes or our skins from the injurious effects of rain. Man has now many extra-corporeal members, which are of more importance to him than a good deal of his hair, or at any rate than his whiskers. His memory goes in his pocket-book. He becomes more and more complex as he grows older; he will then be seen with see-engines, or perhaps with artificial teeth and hair: if he be a really well-developed specimen of his race, he will be furnished with a large box upon wheels, two horses, and a coachman.”

It was this writer who originated the custom of classifying men by their horse-power, and who divided them into genera, species, varieties, and subvarieties, giving them names from the hypothetical language which expressed the number of limbs which they could command at any moment. He showed that men became more highly and delicately organised the more nearly they approached the summit of opulence, and that none but millionaires possessed the full complement of limbs with which mankind could become incorporate.

“Those mighty organisms,” he continued, “our leading bankers and merchants, speak to their congeners through the length and breadth of the land in a second of time; their rich and subtle souls can defy all material impediment, whereas the souls of the poor are clogged and hampered by matter, which sticks fast about them as treacle to the wings of a fly, or as one struggling in a quicksand: their dull ears must take days or weeks to hear what another would tell them from a distance, instead of hearing it in a second as is done by the more highly organised classes. Who shall deny that one who can tack on a special train to his identity, and go wheresoever he will whensoever he pleases, is more highly organised than he who, should he wish for the same power, might wish for the wings of a bird with an equal chance of getting them; and whose legs are his only means of locomotion? That old philosophic enemy, matter, the inherently and essentially evil, still hangs about the neck of the poor and strangles him: but to the rich, matter is immaterial; the elaborate organisation of his extra-corporeal system has freed his soul.

“This is the secret of the homage which we see rich men receive from those who are poorer than themselves: it would be a grave error to suppose that this deference proceeds from motives which we need be ashamed of: it is the natural respect which all living creatures pay to those whom they recognise as higher than themselves in the scale of animal life, and is analogous to the veneration which a dog feels for man. Among savage races it is deemed highly honourable to be the possessor of a gun, and throughout all known time there has been a feeling that those who are worth most are the worthiest.”

And so he went on at considerable length, attempting to show what changes in the distribution of animal and vegetable life throughout the kingdom had been caused by this and that of man’s inventions, and in what way each was connected with the moral and intellectual development of the human species: he even allotted to some the share which they had had in the creation and modification of man’s body, and that which they would hereafter have in its destruction; but the other writer was considered to have the best of it, and in the end succeeded in destroying all the inventions that had been discovered for the preceding 271 years, a period which was agreed upon by all parties after several years of wrangling as to whether a certain kind of mangle which was much in use among washerwomen should be saved or no. It was at last ruled to be dangerous, and was just excluded by the limit of 271 years. Then came the reactionary civil wars which nearly ruined the country, but which it would be beyond my present scope to describe.

(1890–1938)

An author, playwright, journalist and translator during the first half of the twentieth century, Karel Čapek was the first Czech writer ever to gain worldwide recognition. He famously coined the term ‘robot’ from the Czech word for worker,
robota
. Born in Male Svatonovice, Northeastern Bohemia of Austria-Hungary, now the Czech Republic, Čapek’s father was a doctor and his mother a housewife. Čapek had an older sister Helene and an older brother Josef, who became a painter, novelist, and dramatist. While attending Charles University in Prague for philosophy, Čapek studied abroad in both Germany and France, gaining a wider cultural perspective which would later influence his writings greatly. Čapek’s first book,
Zárivé hlubiny
, was written with his brother Josef and released in 1916 shortly after Čapek’s graduation with his Masters in Philosophy. A year later the brothers’ second collaboration, a collection of gloomy stories entitled
Boži muka
(Wayside Crosses) was released with illustrations for the book provided by Josef.

It was after this collaborative upstart that Čapek settled in Prague to write seriously in 1917, avoiding being drafted into World War I due to his troubling lifelong back condition, spondyloarthritis. Working as both a librarian and tutor to the outspoken nationalist son of Count Vladimir Lažanský, Čapek spent the war flexing his writing skills as a board member and editor of Narod (Nation) magazine in 1917, where he began to get his taste for politics. Both Čapek and his brother Josef went on to become editors of Narodni Iisty (the National Paper), as well as Nebojsa (the Unafraid), and later on in 1921 moved up to a more prestigious newspaper, the Lidove noviny (The People’s paper), which offered a more sustainable salary.

The most remembered work Čapek ever wrote was in 1920, a play entitled
R.U.R.
, for Rossum’s Universal Robots. At the time the play was written Čapek’s life was becoming busier—he met his wife, actress Olga Scheinpflungova, was appointed to the position of dramatic advisor to the prestigious Kralovske Vinohrady Theater, and met the president of Czechoslovakia, Thomas Garrique Masryk, whom he quickly befriended. From then on, Čapek entered the most productive, and most politically active period of his life.

In January 1931 Čapek was elected by the Committee for the Development of Mental Cooperation by the League of Nations, predecessor to the U.N., into the Committee for Literature and the Arts. Capek also served as a member of the Hrad political network, where he and Masaryk grew close. In this role he quickly became an outspoken anti-facsist, working to protect his nation from the Nazi’s, helping to persuade allies to stand against the Germans, participating in the World Penclub meeting in Prague and speaking there to warn against the German threat, and ultimately writing the Czech writers’ memorandum, “To the Consciousness of the World” in 1934.

Čapek did not live long enough to witness the fruits of his efforts. After choosing to remain in the country even though he was number three on the Gestapo ‘Public Enemy’ list, Čapek perished from double pneumonia three months before the Nazi invasion. Čapek’s brother Josef died in a concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Čapek nearly received a Nobel Prize for literature, but Sweden did not view it as favorable to award the prize to an anti-fascist in the advent of World War II, for fear of Hitler’s reaction.

First performed in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1921

Translated into English by Paul Selver and adaped for the stage by Nigel Playfair, 1922

Robots of the world! The power of man has fallen!

A new world has arisen: the Rule of the Robots!

March!

CHARACTERS

HARRY DOMIN

SULLA

MARIUS

HELENA GLORY

DR. GALL

MR. FABRY

DR. HALLEMEIER

MR. ALQUIST

CONSUL BUSMAN

NANA

RADIUS

A SERVANT

HELENA

PRIMUS

FIRST ROBOT

SECOND ROBOT

THIRD ROBOT

FOURTH ROBOT

ACT I

Central office of the factory of Rossum’s Universal Robots.

Entrance on the right. The windows on the front wall look out on the rows of factory chimneys. On the left more managing departments. DOMIN is sitting in the revolving chair at a large American writing table. On the left-hand wall large maps showing steamship and railroad routes. On the righthand wall are fastened printed placards. (“Robot’s Cheapest Labor,” etc.) In contrast to these wall fittings, the floor is covered with a splendid Turkish carpet, a sofa, leather armchair, and filing cabinets. At a desk near the windows SULLA is typing letters.

DOMIN:
(dictating)

Ready?

SULLA: Yes.

DOMIN: To E. M. McVicker and Co., Southampton, England. “We undertake no guarantee for goods damaged in transit. As soon as the consignment was taken on board we drew your captain’s attention to the fact that the vessel was unsuitable for the transport of Robots, and we are therefore not responsible for spoiled freight. We beg to remain for Rossum’s Universal Robots. Yours truly.”

(SULLA, who has sat motionless during dictation, now types rapidly for a few seconds, then stops, withdrawing the completed letter)

Ready?

SULLA: Yes.

DOMIN: Another letter. To the E. B. Huyson Agency, New York, U.S.A. “We beg to acknowledge receipt of order for five thousand Robots. As you are sending your own vessel, please dispatch as cargo equal quantities of soft and hard coal for R.!U.!R., the same to be credited as part payment of the amount due to us. We beg to remain, for Rossum’s Universal Robots. Yours truly.”

(SULLA repeats the rapid typing)

Ready?

SULLA: Yes.

DOMIN: Another letter. “Friedrichswerks, Hamburg, Germany. We beg to acknowledge receipt of order for fifteen thousand Robots.”

(Telephone rings)

Hello! This is the Central Office. Yes. Certainly. Well, send them a wire. Good.

(Hangs up telephone)

Where did I leave off?

SULLA: “We beg to acknowledge receipt of order for fifteen thousand Robots.”

DOMIN: Fifteen thousand R. Fifteen thousand R.

(Enter MARIUS)

Well, what is it?

MARIUS: There’s a lady, sir, asking to see you.

DOMIN: A lady? Who is she?

MARIUS: I don’t know, sir. She brings this card of introduction.

DOMIN:
(reads the card)

Ah, from President Glory. Ask her to come in.

MARIUS: Please step this way.

Enter HELENA GLORY. Exit MARIUS.

HELENA: How do you do?

DOMIN: How do you do.

(Standing up)

What can I do for you?

HELENA: You are Mr. Domin, the General Manager.

DOMIN: I am.

HELENA: I have come—

DOMIN: With President Glory’s card. That is quite sufficient.

HELENA: President Glory is my father. I am Helena Glory.

DOMIN: Miss Glory, this is such a great honor for us to be allowed to—welcome our great President’s daughter, that—

HELENA: That you can’t show me the door?

DOMIN: Please sit down. Sulla, you may go.

(Exit SULLA. Sitting down)

How can I be of service to you, Miss Glory?

HELENA: I have come—

DOMIN: To have a look at our famous works where people are manufactured. Like all visitors. Well, there is no objection.

HELENA: I thought it was forbidden to—

DOMIN: To enter the factory. Yes, of course. Everybody comes here with someone’s visiting card, Miss Glory.

HELENA: And you show them—

DOMIN: Only certaAgilin things. The manufacture of artificial people is a secret process.

HELENA: If you only knew how enormously that—

DOMIN: Interests me. Europe’s talking about nothing else.

HELENA: Why don’t you let me finish speaking?

DOMIN: I beg your pardon. Did you want to say something different?

HELENA: I only wanted to ask—

DOMIN: Whether I could make a special exception in your case and show you our factory. Why, certainly Miss Glory.

HELENA: How do you know I wanted to say that?

DOMIN: They all do. But we shall consider it a special honor to show you more than we do the rest.

HELENA: Thank you.

DOMIN: But you must agree not to divulge the least…

HELENA: (standing up and giving him her hand)

My word of honor.

DOMIN: Thank you. Won’t you raise your veil?

HELENA: Of course. You want to see whether I’m a spy or not. I beg your pardon.

DOMIN: What is it?

HELENA: Would you mind releasing my hand?

DOMIN: (releasing it)

I beg your pardon.

HELENA: (raising her veil)

How cautious you have to be here, don’t you?

DOMIN: (observing her with deep interest)

Hm, of course—we—that is—

HELENA: But what is it? What’s the matter?

DOMIN: I’m remarkably pleased. Did you have a pleasant crossing?

HELENA: Yes.

DOMIN: No difficulty?

HELENA: Why?

DOMIN: What I mean to say is—you’re so young.

HELENA: May we go straight into the factory?

DOMIN: Yes. Twenty-two, I think.

HELENA: Twenty-two what?

DOMIN: Years.

HELENA: Twenty-one. Why do you want to know?

DOMIN: Because—as—

(with enthusiasm)

you will make a long stay, won’t you?

HELENA: That depends on how much of the factory you show me.

DOMIN: Oh, hang the factory. Oh, no, no, you shall see everything, Miss Glory. Indeed you shall. Won’t you sit down?

HELENA: (crossing to couch and sitting)

Thank you.

DOMIN: But first would you like to hear the story of the invention?

HELENA: Yes, indeed.

DOMIN:
(observes HELENA with rapture and reels off rapidly)

It was in the year 1920 that old Rossum, the great physiologist, who was then quite a young scientist, took himself to this distant island for the purpose of studying the ocean fauna, full stop. On this occasion he attempted by chemical synthesis to imitate the living matter known as protoplasm until he suddenly discovered a substance which behaved exactly like living matter although its chemical composition was different. That was in the year of 1932, exactly four hundred forty years after the discovery of America. Whew!

HELENA: Do you know that by heart?

DOMIN: Yes. You see physiology is not in my line. Shall I go on?

HELENA: Yes, please.

DOMIN: And then, Miss Glory, old Rossum wrote the following among his chemical specimens: “Nature has found only one method of organizing living matter. There is, however, another method, more simple, flexible and rapid, which has not yet occurred to nature at all. This second process by which life can be developed was discovered by me today.” Now imagine him, Miss Glory, writing those wonderful words over some colloidal mess that a dog wouldn’t look at. Imagine him sitting over a test tube, and thinking how the whole tree of life would grow from it, how all animals would proceed from it, beginning with some sort of beetle and ending with a man. A man of different substance from us. Miss Glory, that was a tremendous moment.

HELENA: Well?

DOMIN: Now, the thing was how to get the life out of the test tubes, and hasten development and form organs, bones and nerves, and so on, and find such substances as catalytics, enzymes, hormones, and so forth, in short—you understand?

HELENA: Not much, I’m afraid.

DOMIN: Never mind. You see with the help of his tinctures he could make whatever he wanted. He could have produced a Medusa with the brain of a Socrates or a worm fifty yards long. But being without a grain of humor, he took it into his head to make a vertebrate or perhaps a man. This artificial living matter of his had a raging thirst for life. It didn’t mind being sewn or mixed together. That couldn’t be done with natural albumen. And that’s how he set about it.

HELENA: About what?

DOMIN: About imitating nature. First of all he tried making an artificial dog. That took him several years and resulted in a sort of stunted calf which died in a few days. I’ll show it to you in the museum. And then old Rossum started on the manufacture of man.

HELENA: And I must divulge this to nobody?

DOMIN: To nobody in the world.

HELENA: What a pity that it’s to be found in all the school books of both Europe and America.

DOMIN: Yes. But do you know what isn’t in the school books? That old Rossum was mad. Seriously, Miss Glory, you must keep this to yourself. The old crank wanted to actually make people.

HELENA: But you do make people.

DOMIN: Approximately, Miss Glory. But old Rossum meant it literally. He wanted to become a sort of scientific substitute for God. He was a fearful materialist, and that’s why he did it all. His sole purpose was nothing more nor less than to prove that God was no longer necessary. Do you know anything about anatomy?

HELENA: Very little.

DOMIN: Neither do I. Well, he then decided to manufacture everything as in the human body. I’ll show you in the museum the bungling attempt it took him ten years to produce. It was to have been a man, but it lived for three days only. Then up came young Rossum, an engineer. He was a wonderful fellow, Miss Glory. When he saw what a mess of it the old man was making, he said: “It’s absurd to spend ten years making a man. If you can’t make him quicker than nature, you might as well shut up shop.” Then he set about learning anatomy himself.

HELENA: There’s nothing about that in the school books.

DOMIN: No. The school books are full of paid advertisements, and rubbish at that. What the school books say about the united efforts of the two great Rossums is all a fairy tale. They used to have dreadful rows. The old atheist hadn’t the slightest conception of industrial matters, and the end of it was that young Rossum shut him up in some laboratory or other and let him fritter the time away with his monstrosities, while he himself started on the business from an engineer’s point of view. Old Rossum cursed him and before he died he managed to botch up two physiological horrors. Then one day they found him dead in the laboratory. And that’s his whole story.

HELENA: And what about the young man?

DOMIN: Well, any one who has looked into human anatomy will have seen at once that man is too complicated, and that a good engineer could make him more simply. So young Rossum began to overhaul anatomy and tried to see what could be left out or simplified. In short—but this isn’t boring you, Miss Glory?

HELENA: No indeed. You’re—it’s awfully interesting.

DOMIN: So young Rossum said to himself: “A man is something that feels happy, plays the piano, likes going for a walk, and in fact, wants to do a whole lot of things that are really unnecessary.”

HELENA: Oh.

DOMIN: That are unnecessary when he wants, let us say, to weave or count. Do you play the piano?