A new translation of Karel Čapek'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 Čapek's "R.U.R." and the Vision of Artificial Life offers a new, highly faithful translation by Stěpán Simek of Czech novelist, playwright, and critic Karel Čapek'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 Čejková, 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.
Čapek'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 Čapek'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.
ContributorsJitka Čejková, Miguel Aguilera, Iñigo R. Arandia, Josh Bongard, Julyan Cartwright, Seth Bullock, Dominique Chen, Gusz Eiben, Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Inman Harvey, Jana Horáková, Takashi Ikegami, Sina Khajehabdollahi, George Musser, Geoff Nitschke, Julie Nováková, Antoine Pasquali, Hemma Philamore, Lana Sinapayen, Hiroki Sayama, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski
卡雷爾·恰佩克的劇作《R.U.R.》的新翻譯，這部劇作首次提出了「機器人」一詞，並附有一系列由從事人工生命和機器人領域的科學家和學者撰寫的文章。
《卡雷爾·恰佩克的《R.U.R.》與人工生命的願景》提供了捷克小說家、劇作家和評論家斯蒂潘·西梅克對卡雷爾·恰佩克的劇作《R.U.R.：羅薩姆的通用機器人》的全新、高度忠實的翻譯，以及來自當代作家對這部1920年劇作的二十篇文章。《R.U.R.》最著名的是首次提出了「機器人」一詞（在捷克語中，robota意味著農奴或辛勞的苦工）。這本新英文版的二十篇文章由吉特卡·切伊科娃精心編輯，選自《機器人100》（Robot 100），這是一本收錄了100位當代聲音的捷克編輯合集，於2020年出版，以慶祝這部劇作發表一百週年。
恰佩克的機器人是自主的生物，而不是機械的，由化學合成的軟物質組成，類似於《銀翼殺手》、《西部世界》或《機械姬》中的合成人類。這本合集的貢獻者，包括科學家和其他學者，探討了這部劇作的遺產以及與當今人工生命研究的聯繫。在整本書中，我們無法忽視恰佩克的預見力，因為他這部百年前的科幻劇作提出了與機器人技術、合成生物學、科技、人工生命和人工智能相關的當代問題，預見了我們今天面臨的許多嚴峻挑戰。
貢獻者：
吉特卡·切伊科娃、米格爾·阿吉列拉、伊尼戈·R·阿蘭迪亞、喬希·邦加德、朱利安·卡特萊特、賽斯·布洛克、多明尼克·陳、古斯·艾本、湯姆·弗羅斯、卡洛斯·格舍森、因曼·哈維、雅娜·霍拉科娃、竹上隆史、西納·卡傑哈卜多拉希、喬治·馬瑟、喬夫·尼奇克、茱莉·諾瓦科娃、安托萬·帕斯夸利、海瑪·菲拉摩爾、拉娜·西納帕揚、佐山博樹、納撒尼爾·維爾戈、奧拉夫·維特科夫斯基
Karel Čapek (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 Čejková 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.
