Robot Apocalypse, 86 years in the making

On this day in 1921, a new play called "R.U.R" (short for "Rossum's Universal Robots") premiered in Prague. The play, by Czech playwright Karel Capek, is mostly famous coining the word "robot", from the Czech word for "slave".

In the play, a scientist created a race of artificial beings to do our bidding. The robots, predictably enough, soon noticed their superior strength and speed made humans easy prey. Before long, they killed almost everyone and had taken the world for themselves.

Of course, this plot has been recycled into God only knows how many stories, from the R.U.R.s of Capek's play to the Twilight Zone to Blade Runner to the Matrix and beyond.

Unfortunately, history has been less kind to Capek's other science fiction epic, entitled "War with the Newts."

ABOVE: Best title ever.

And so was born one of the greatest stock characters of science fiction: the Evil Robot. Evil robots are everywhere in these stories. For every R2-D2, there's a Terminator, and every friendly Asimov-type robot has, well, an unfriendly Asimov-type robot.

I always loved to remind the Frau of characters such as these. Her tremendous fear of robots is such a fun and easy target. But I have to admit that these days, it's getting harder and harder to argue with her. Robots have their own museums, they think we're made of bacon, and, perhaps worst of all, they're taking up precious art history professorships.

And now, this article from New Scientist: Street-fighting robot challenge announced. In brief, the government of Singapore is sponsoring a contest to "build a robot that can operate autonomously in urban warfare conditions, moving in and out of buildings to search and destroy targets like a human soldier."

Just what the world needs. If science fiction has taught us anything (and, truth be told, it probably hasn't), the last thing robots need is lessons on how to kill us; they'll apparently figure it out for themselves soon enough.

Our only hope is the good robots will win out over the bad. Optimus Prime, probably the most beloved robot of all time, has been saving us from evil robots for over 20 years now. And two out of three T-800s end up working for the good guys. Maybe they will triumph over the forces of evil, but harsh experience tells us not to be too optimistic.

Speaking of experience, I want to be Bruce Campbell when I grow up.

And in closing, a new commercial portrays Kevin Federline working in a fast food restaurant, and fast food workers are insulted by the comparison. Beautiful.