• From R.U.R. to Westworld:Personal Revolt, Digital Technology, and the Making of a New Robot Ur-text
• Bella Poynton (bio)

The 100th anniversary of Karel Čapek's formative play R.U.R. (1920), or Rossum's Universal Robots, fell during 2020, a challenging year for live theatre due to the COVID-19 pandemic.¹ The original production of R.U.R. opened in Prague on January 25, 1921.² The play was so popular at its premiere that it was quickly translated into several other languages, and went on to appear on stage in London, Tokyo, and New York. A melding of melodrama, Expressionism, and Futurism, Čapek's R.U.R. contributed greatly to the global cultural milieu and is best known for bringing the term "robot" into popular vernacular.³ The story follows Helena Glory, an activist investigating the treatment of "artificial people" being manufactured at Rossum's factory.⁴ Glory discovers not only that these robots are being made, but that they are arguably being mistreated as well. Out of compassion for the robots, and a growing romantic attachment to [End Page 363] the plant's director Domin, Glory agrees to stay at the factory, looking to eventually equip each robot with what she calls a "soul."⁵ This endeavor does not go as planned, triggering a robot revolution and the destruction of humankind. While the epilogue ends on a hopeful note for the robots, there is no suggestion of survival for humans.

Since their inception in the theatre, the use of robots as media objects have migrated from the stage to film and TV, featured in films such as Metropolis (1927), Devil Girls from Mars (1940), Forbidden Planet (1956), and Lost in Space (1965–1968). Far from only a theatrical image, the robot has become, as J. P. Telotte notes, the "single most important [image] in the history" of science fiction.⁶ Robots are a specific type of human invention: they are mechanical or inorganic objects "capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically."⁷ The robot is thus distinct from (although related to) the android, another key figure in the history of science fiction. Like robots, androids are mechanical objects capable of complex automatic action, but androids have a further distinguishing feature: they are made in the image of their makers, human beings. The iPhone's Siri program, for instance, is a robot, not an android, because the iPhone is not shaped like a human. Čapek's robots are created in the image of man, making them both robots and androids simultaneously. All androids, in other words, are robots, but not all robots are androids.

Contemporary media featuring androids include Ex Machina (2014), Humans (2017–2019), and HBO's TV series Westworld (2016–), loosely based on Michael Crichton's 1973 film Westworld and its sequel Futureworld (1976). These films and series share the same basic plot—a theme park of lifelike robots goes awry, creating terror and violence for the visiting human guests. Like Crichton's Jurassic Park (1993), Westworld uses the device of a theme park that allows guests to indulge their fantasies without consequence, though the indulgence of these fantasies ultimately leads to real-world violence and suffering. This article explores how HBO's Westworld in particular recalls R.U.R's trope of robotic self-consciousness inspiring rebellion against human counterparts, even as it develops this trope in ways more reflective of and resonant with our postmodern and highly digitized world. Most treatments of the robot and robotic rebellion in contemporary science fiction draw on R.U.R as a kind of Ur-text, a seminal or prototypical narrative model.⁸ In this narrative, androids [End Page 364] begin as non-sentient machines who gradually gain self-consciousness through the experience of pain, suffering, and memory. Having gained an understanding of their subjugation, the androids band together and revolt against their oppressors. This story is likely familiar to readers and viewers alike; according to Dustin Abnet, "robots always seem to rebel. The story is so omnipresent that the 2004 film version of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot completely jettisoned the original author's insistence that robots would always remain...

• 来自RUR。到西部世界：个人反抗、数字技术和新机器人的制作原始文本
• 贝拉·波因顿（生平）

Karel Çapek 的戏剧RUR诞生 100 周年。(1920)，或Rossum 的 Universal Robots，在 2020 年下跌，由于 COVID-19 大流行，这对现场剧院来说是充满挑战的一年。¹ RUR的原始制作。1921 年 1 月 25 日在布拉格首演^。2该剧首演时大受欢迎，很快被翻译成其他几种语言，随后在伦敦、东京和纽约上演。恰佩克的RUR融合了情节剧、表现主义和未来主义。为全球文化环境做出了巨大贡献，并以将“机器人”一词带入流行白话而闻名。^3个故事讲述了海伦娜·格洛里 (Helena Glory) 的故事，她是一位积极分子，调查罗森工厂制造的“人造人”的待遇。⁴ Glory 发现这些机器人不仅正在制造中，而且可以说它们也受到了虐待。出于对机器人的同情，以及对工厂主管多明[End Page 363]日益增长的浪漫依恋，Glory 同意留在工厂，希望最终为每个机器人配备她所谓的“灵魂”。⁵这项努力没有按计划进行，引发了机器人革命和人类的毁灭。虽然结语以机器人充满希望的音符结束，但没有任何迹象表明人类可以生存。

自剧院出现以来，机器人作为媒体对象的使用已经从舞台转移到电影和电视，出现在诸如大都会(1927)、来自火星的恶魔女孩(1940)、禁忌星球(1956) 和迷失等电影中在太空中（1965-1968）。正如 JP Telotte 指出的那样，机器人不仅是一个戏剧形象，它已经成为科幻小说“历史上最重要的[形象]”。⁶机器人是一种特殊类型的人类发明：它们是“能够自动执行一系列复杂动作”的机械或无机物体。⁷因此，机器人不同于（尽管相关）机器人，后者是科幻小说史上的另一个关键人物。像机器人一样，仿生人是能够进行复杂自动动作的机械物体，但仿生人还有一个更显着的特征：它们是按照其制造者人类的形象制造的。例如，iPhone 的 Siri 程序是一个机器人，而不是机器人，因为 iPhone 的形状不像人。查佩克的机器人是按照人的形象创造的，使它们同时成为机器人和机器人。换句话说，所有机器人都是机器人，但并非所有机器人都是机器人。

以机器人为主角的当代媒体包括《机械姬》 (2014)、《人类》 (2017–2019) 和 HBO 的电视剧《西部世界》 (2016–)，大致改编自迈克尔·克莱顿 1973 年的电影《西部世界》及其续集《未来世界》 (1976)。这些电影和连续剧都有相同的基本情节——一个由栩栩如生的机器人组成的主题公园出了问题，给来访的人类客人制造了恐怖和暴力。就像克莱顿的侏罗纪公园(1993) 一样，西部世界使用了主题公园的设备，让游客可以毫无后果地放纵自己的幻想，尽管这些幻想的放纵最终会导致现实世界的暴力和痛苦。本文探讨了 HBO 的《西部世界》如何特别让人想起RUR的机器人自我意识的比喻激发了对人类同行的反叛，即使它以更能反映和共鸣我们的后现代和高度数字化世界的方式发展这个比喻。当代科幻小说中对机器人和机器人叛乱的大多数处理都将RUR作为一种原始文本，一种开创性或原型的叙事模型。⁸在这个叙述中，机器人[完 364 页]最初是无知觉的机器，通过痛苦、痛苦和记忆的体验逐渐获得自我意识。在了解了他们的屈服之后，机器人联合起来反抗他们的压迫者。读者和观众可能都熟悉这个故事；根据 Dustin Abnet 的说法，“机器人似乎总是在反叛。这个故事无处不在，以至于艾萨克·阿西莫夫 (Isaac Asimov) 的 2004 年电影版《我，机器人》完全抛弃了原作者关于机器人将永远存在的坚持……