When Karel Capek took up the theme of androids, the creation
of human-like robots, most of what he wrote was sheer fantasy or
what was soon to be called science fiction. Gene splicing and
silicon microchips were decades in the future. The few examples of
automation circa 1920 look small and primitive, indeed, by today's
standards.
 
    A selection from the opening of _R.U.R._ will show the
gist of Capek's intention with this play.  Capek was no mere
spinner of space operas, but many of his works had deep philosophical roots. He cared about truth and justice, and these values were informed by his readings of philosophers, especially the then-modern philosopher Henri Bergson.

    Bergson's still-controversial questions about the nature of time
as we experience it versus time as a physics process inspired Capek
to use a refractive approach in his narration of tales. Not only time
was able to be seen from different angles but the entire scene of human action. Capek didn't accept that one character could see the truth and thus communicate it to the reader. In some novels and stories, Capek used the same event told by different narrators, to show what he considered to be the truth: that which lay between all the participants' versions of the tale. One such Capek novel was "Meteor", wherein six eyewitnesses and acquaintances of the victim describe the same plane crash in hopes of piecing together the identity of the plane's survivor. 
  
    Whose truth do we get in such a play as _R.U.R._?

    Who were those robots and what did they have to say
    to the world of 1920?