Karel Čapek 2 hr 16 min read

At Rossum's Universal Robots, artificial workers are mass-produced to serve humanity, until the tireless, soulless machines rise up to exterminate their makers.

Karel Čapek's 1920 play, which gave the world the word 'robot,' is the foundational drama of artificial life and rebellion. Prophetic, powerful, hugely influential. Read it for the immortal original robot-uprising story, a profound meditation on labor, humanity, and creation, in the original Czech.

In its time

Published in 1920, during the 1920s, the pulp era proper.

Reading it

2 hr 16 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).