R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) is a 1920’s fresh and sharp theatre satire about human dreams and artificial intelligence. This successful work by Karel Čapek popularised the modern use of the word robot to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.
I’ve picked out my favourite quotes on the delirious protagonists’ motivations to drive humanity to a future in which only robots work.
Intelligence
DOMIN: From a practical standpoint, what is the best kind of worker?
HELENA: The best? Probably one who-who-who is honest-and dedicated.
DOMIN: No, it’s the one that is the cheapest. […] My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul. Oh, Miss Glory, the creation of an engineer is technically more refined than the product of nature.
Wealth
HELENA: Why do you make them? (Robots)
DOMIN: Within the next ten years Rossum’s Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs. There’ll be no mode poverty. Yes, people will be out of work, but by then there’ll be no work left to be done. Everything will be done by living machines. People will do only what they enjoy. They will live to perfect themselves.
HELENA: Will it really be so?
DOMIN: It will. It can’t be otherwise. But before that some awful things may happen.
Procreation
HELENA: Why have children stopped being born? […]
DR: GALL: Because Robots are being made. Because there is a surplus of labor power. Because man is virtually an anachronism.
Purpose
DOMIN: I wanted to transform all of humanity into a worldwide aristocracy. Unrestricted, free and supreme people. Something even greater than people. […]
BUSMAN: My, you are naïve! No doubt you think that the plant director controls production? Not at all. Demand controls production. The whole world wanted Robots. My boy, we did nothing but ride the avalanche of demand, and all the while kept blathering on-about technology, about the social question, about progress, about very interesting things. […] as I was sitting here balancing the books, it occurred to me that history is not made by great dreams, but by the petty wants of all respectable, moderately thievish and selfish people, that is, of everyone.
The uncanny valley
HELENA: I wanted to give the Robots souls! […] I felt so dreadfully sorry for them, Harry!
DOMIN: That was very-frivolous on your part, Helena […]
HELENA: I was afraid of the Robots.
DOMIN: Why?
HELENA: I thought they might start hating us or something.
ALQUIST: It’s happened.
HELENA: And then I thought that… if they were like us they would understand us and they wouldn’t hate us so-if they were only a bit human!
DOMIN: Oh, Helena! No one can hate more than man hates man!
My copy of the book is Claudia Novack-Jones’ fantastic translation of the play, published by Penguin Random house.