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

De: Karel Capek

Narrado por: Ellis Freeman

Karel Čapek (1890-1938) was a Czech novelist, short-story writer, playwright, and essayist. R.U.R. is a 1920 science-fiction play, of which the title stands for “Rossum's Universal Robots”. The play premiered on January 25, 1921, and introduced the word robot to the English language and to the science-fiction genre. R.U.R. quickly became popular, and by 1923, it had been translated into 30 languages. The play begins in a factory that manufactures artificial people (called robots) from synthetic organic matter. They are living creatures of artificial flesh and blood rather than machines and are closer to the later idea of androids. Happy to work for humans at first, the robots eventually rebel, and the human race becomes extinct.

Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks

The play is great—narration is garbage

I really wish the narration had done the play justice. The play itself is incredible and one of the literary works that helped pave the way for modern-day science fiction/dystopians.

The narration is cringe worthy. It sounds like the same guy just threw his voice for each character and claimed it was different people. The voice for Helena is absolutely horrible. She sounds like Hillbilly Jane with only a second grade education despite the fact that the character talks about being European. Each character has an accent that sounds like they were supposed to be from different countries. Some of the robots have comical voices (like JP off Grandma’s Boy) that do not relate to the play since the robots are synthetic androidesque humans not chunks of metal.

Overall—I was incredibly disappointed. My husband prefers audiobooks, so we listened to it on a road trip. I ended up having to explain the play to him (English teacher here) because the narration distracted from the text so much. This work has such deep historical roots and has influenced so many other plays, stories, novels, shows, and movies (many of the writers may not even know he has inspired them), but this narration was a complete insult to the text and Karel and Josef Capek.