War With the Newts - Karel Capek (1937)

War with the Newts is a spellbinding classic novella written nearly 100 years ago by Czech writer Karel Capek. Written in 1936, only two years before Capek’s death at the young age of 48, it is captivating in an old, yet effective way, even in the English translation. Any number of analogies, both real and fictitious, come to mind when reading about the imperial oppression of the Newts, a gentle sea-faring creature that is slowly exploited by Man. And since it is the 1930s, it is indeed men participating in this cruelty for the most part. The female characters of the book express gentle reservations about the treatment, but would today be considered complicit in the act.

Imperialism, chauvinism, capitalism, communism, libertarianism, and many more -isms are on full display in War with the Newts. With the book written on the brink of World War II, one cannot help but feel surrounded by history while reading chapters such as “Captain J. van Toch and his Trained Lizards”, “The Clash in Normandy”, and “The Incident in the Channel”.

I write this while reading the book the first time, and have not gotten to the conclusion yet. There is so much deep meaning to this book, that I must take breaks, sometimes for a day or two, to fully process all that I’ve read.

During a short break, I discovered the Karel programming language, invented by American professor Richard Pattis as an educational tool. Karel’s name was anointed to this language, to honor Capek’s introduction of the word “robot” to vernacular.

The valid commands are given below, and fully detailed here.

{last sentence} Capek was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times, but never received it. Capek was the first person to introduce the word “robot” to literature, a word invented by his brother Josef.