We
call to order the first meeting of the Devo fan club. Sorry
about that. The above is a scene from Rossum's Universal
Robots.
As you can see, it's a real laugh riot that makes No Sex
Please, We're British look like a wake.
The plot of RUR
is so basic to robot literature that it's sunk to utter cliché, yet in
1921 it was quite the sensation, which, if you've read the script, is
saying something. A scientist named Rossum invents a process for
creating artificial workers (in this case biochemical rather than
mechanical) and the company that bears his name starts cranking them
out by the hundreds of millions to lift mankind from the burden of
labour. The robots discover that they are superior to man, start
to chafe under their metaphorical yoke, rise up, and wipe out the
human race. The only fly in the ointment is that man took the
secret of the robots' manufacture with him and the robots appear
doomed until a pair of robots discover love and the last man on Earth
gives his blessings to the new Adam and new Eve.
How love is supposed to
result in working gonads is left unexplored.
