R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)

In 1920, a Czech playwright accidentally gave the English language its most enduring sci-fi word. "Robot" : from the Czech robota, meaning forced labor : entered the world in this dystopian play about artificial workers created to serve humanity. A scientist discovers the secret of synthetic organic matter, and a factory begins producing beings of flesh and blood who think, labor, and serve. When Helena arrives to advocate for robot liberation, she finds a world already transformed : one where human workers have become obsolete. But the robots were designed without souls, without creativity, without the capacity for love. What happens when they begin to question their own existence? R.U.R. is a century-old warning about the cost of treating beings as tools, and it aches with the terror of creating something you cannot control. For anyone who has ever wondered what we owe our creations : and what they might owe us.