Čapek, Karel, << CHAH pehk, KAR uhl >> (1890-1938), a Czech author, became famous for introducing the word robot into the modern vocabulary. In his play R.U.R. (1921), Čapek criticized scientific progress and social conformity by creating a race of manufactured men and women who take over the world. He called them robots, a variation of a Czech word for peasants or serfs.
Čapek’s play The Insect Comedy (1922) is a fantasy in which he presents insect behavior as a satire of human society. In The Makropoulos Secret (1922), a woman who can live forever finds life unbearably boring. Čapek’s best-known novel is The War of the Newts (1936). He wrote many of his works with his brother Josef, though Karel is often given sole credit.
Karel Čapek was born on Jan. 9, 1890, in Malé Svatoňovice, Bohemia, near Trutnov in what is now the Czech Republic. He died on Dec. 25, 1938.
See also Science fiction (The early 1900’s).
