War With The Newts

A few days ago, I discovered the work of Czech writer Karel Čapek. It was Čapek's play R.U.R. that first introduced the word "robot".

I had been able to locate a copy of the play at Project Gutenberg. I felt that it was important to read the play, as it had been the first work on "robots", though I must say, I was a little disappoint in the play.

In spite of this disappointment I began to look further into Karel Čapek's life and work. In the wikipedia article on R.U.R., mention was made of one of Čapek's novels, War with the Newts. At the time, I had misinterpreted a sentence in the wikipedia article ("Čapek later took a different approach to the same theme in War with the Newts, in which non-humans become a servant class in human society.") and wrongly assumed that the novel dealt with robots.

After locating and downloading a copy of the novel from Project Gutenberg of Australia I learned otherwise. The "non-humans" in the novel are newts or salamanders.

(The copy of the novel at Project Gutenberg of Australia is in html format which I had to print as a pdf and convert to mobi in order to read on my Kindle. It can also be purchased at amazon.com.)

The novel has been described as a dark satirical science fiction novel and acclaimed as the first dystopian novel.

Personally, I can't speak more highly of the novel. It is, at times, quite funny. And yes, dark.

Written in 1936, Čapek's work is highly critical of Germany's fascism; he doesn't spare the segregated United States, and none of the European countries of that era do well in Čapek's view.

I'm quite sure that had Čapek written in English, his work would be compared today to the likes of H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell. He had been nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature seven times. It's thought that he was never awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature because his work was offensive to the Nazis, and the Swedish board did not want to risk Hitler's displeasure.

We all know the Nobel can be political.