This vintage book contains Karel Capek's delightful children's tale "Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy". It is a heart-warming story about Dashenka the fox terrier who grows before the reader's eyes in a series of cartoons and photographs. Dashenka remains one of the most popular children's stories, and makes for ideal bedtime reading. Karel Capek (1890 - 1938) was a famous Czech writer of the early-twentieth century. He worked as a playwright, publisher, literary reviewer, and art critic, but is most remembered for his science fiction writing. We are republishing this antiquarian text now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
This book tells the whimsical story of 'Dashenka', a fox terrier puppy with wiry hair who brings both joy and distress to all around him. A delightfully sentimental account, narrated through a combination of words, drawings and photographs, this beloved children s classic has proven to be timeless tale enjoyed across the globe. Its popularity continues to this day. Delightfully simple to read and enjoy, this is a wonderful book to recount to children before bedtime, and is sure to be a family favourite. Karel apek was a Czech writer best known for his science fiction, notably 'War with the Newts' (1936) and his play 'R.U.R.'. ( apek's groundbreaking play now being famous for containing the first use of the word Robot .) This scarce book was first published in 1933 and is now republished with an additional biography of the author."
A new translation of Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.—which famously coined the term “robot”—and a collection of essays reflecting on the play’s legacy from scientists and scholars who work in artificial life and robotics. Karel Čapek's “R.U.R.” and the Vision of Artificial Life offers a new, highly faithful translation by Štěpán Šimek of Czech novelist, playwright, and critic Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, as well as twenty essays from contemporary writers on the 1920 play. R.U.R. is perhaps best known for first coining the term “robot” (in Czech, robota means serfdom or arduous drudgery). The twenty essays in this new English edition, beautifully edited by Jitka Čejková, are selected from Robot 100, an edited collection in Czech with perspectives from 100 contemporary voices that was published in 2020 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the play. Čapek’s robots were autonomous beings, but biological, not mechanical, made of chemically synthesized soft matter resembling living tissue, like the synthetic humans in Blade Runner, Westworld, or Ex Machina. The contributors to the collection—scientists and other scholars—explore the legacy of the play and its connections to the current state of research in artificial life, or ALife. Throughout the book, it is impossible to ignore Čapek’s prescience, as his century-old science fiction play raises contemporary questions with respect to robotics, synthetic biology, technology, artificial life, and artificial intelligence, anticipating many of the formidable challenges we face today. Contributors Jitka Čejková, Miguel Aguilera, Iñigo R. Arandia, Josh Bongard, Julyan Cartwright, Seth Bullock, Dominique Chen, Gusz Eiben, Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Inman Harvey, Jana Horáková, Takashi Ikegami, Sina Khajehabdollahi, George Musser, Geoff Nitschke, Julie Nováková, Antoine Pasquali, Hemma Philamore, Lana Sinapayen, Hiroki Sayama, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski
And although originally written in Czech, the book was commissioned by Catbird Press and was therefore written with foreign readers in mind; in other words, no prior knowledge of Capek's writings or his milieu is required."--BOOK JACKET.
I Had a Dog and a Cat is a delightfully charming book, originally written in Czech. Featuring gorgeous black-and-white illustrations, this is the perfect storybook to share with little ones who love animals. First published in 1940, this wonderful volume is a collation of short children’s stories about our most beloved pets: cats and dogs. I Had a Dog and a Cat was written and illustrated by Czech brothers Josef and Karel Čapek. The comic storybook was then translated into English by Czech couple Marie and Robert Weatherall. The stories featured in this volume include: - Minda, or the Breeding of Dogs - Ben, Benji, Blackie and Bibi - Iris - Dashenka - The Dog Show - More About Dogs and About Cats Too
Capek's best plays, stories, and columns take us from the social contributions of clumsy people to dramatic meditations on mortality and commitment. The Reader includes a new and, at last, complete English translation of R.U.R., the play that introduced the literary robot.
Though animal stories and fables stretch back into the antiquity of ancient India, Persia, Greece and Rome, the reasons for writing them and their resonance for readers (and listeners) remain consistent to the present. This work argues that they were essential sources of amusement and instruction--and were also often profoundly unsettling. Such authors in the realm of the animal fable as Tolkien, Freud, Voltaire, Bakhtin, Cordwainer Smith, Karel Capek, Vladimir Propp, and many more are discussed.
Playful and provocative, irreverent and inspiring, Capek is perhaps the best-loved Czech writer of all time. Novelist and playwright, famed for inventing the word 'robot' in his play RUR, Capek was a vital part of the burgeoning artistic scene of Czechoslovakia of the 1920s and 30s. But it is in his journalism - his brief, sparky and delightful columns - that Capek can be found at his most succinct, direct and appealing. This selection of Capek's writing, translated into English for the first time, contains his essential ideas. The pieces are animated by his passion for the ordinary and the everyday - from laundry to toothache, from cats to cleaning windows - his love of language, his lyrical observations of the world and above all his humanism, his belief in people. His letters to his wife Olga, also published here, are extraordinarily moving and beautifully distinct from his other writings. Uplifting, enjoyable and endlessly wise, Believe in People is a collection to treasure.
Over 3,200 entries An essential guide to authors and their works that focuses on the general canon of British literature from the fifteenth century to the present. There is also some coverage of non-fiction such as biographies, memoirs, and science, as well as inclusion of major American and Commonwealth writers. This online-exclusive new edition adds 60,000 new words, including over 50 new entries dealing with authors who have risen to prominence in the last five years, as well as fully updating the entries that currently exist. Each entry provides details of a writer's nationality and birth/death dates, followed by a listing of their titles arranged chronologically by date of publication.
A visionary work of science fiction that introduced the word "robot" Written in 1920, premiered in Prague in 1921, and first performed in New York in 1922—garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word robot. Mass-produced as efficient laborers to serve man, Capek’s Robots are an android product—they remember everything but think of nothing new. But the Utopian life they provide ultimately lacks meaning, and the humans they serve stop reproducing. When the Robots revolt, killing all but one of their masters, they must strain to learn the secret of self-duplication. It is not until two Robots fall in love and are christened “Adam” and “Eve” by the last surviving human that Nature emerges triumphant. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
