R.U.R. / War with the Newts

Two satirical darkly comedic sci fi stories of hating the stranger and the political ideology of fascism.

I R.U.R. a company makes robots to replace human workers. It does not work out well and the robots grow to superiority and revolt against the humans. It is blended with a melodromatic love story between a robot engineer and a woman who starts out trying to liberate the enslaved robots.

War of the Newts is a series of stories about the discovery of sentient water lizards in Sumatra. They are exploited by Europeans, they grow in numbers in Europe, committees seek ways to use them politically, and in the end there is a war. Capek uses the allegorical nature of the book to mirror how fascism invades the exploits other nations and peoples, or to scapegoat ethnic populations.

Both of the book are tiresome in language and structure, probably suffering the twin disadvantages of being translated from the Czech and the time difference from the original writing, 1920 and 1936.