The present and deep past of anti-caste speculative fiction

IN 1920, the Czech author Karel Čapek wrote a science fiction play called R.U.R. – short for Rossumovi Univerzalni Roboti, or Rossum’s Universal Robots. Credited with introducing the word “robot” to the lexicon of science fiction, R.U.R. tells the story of a factory that makes synthetic humanoid workers, who eventually overthrow and exterminate their human masters. Though Čapek was a liberal who opposed communism, it is easy to see his tale as a thinly veiled allegory for class struggle: when the robots carry out their revolution, they kill all the humans except for the factory’s engineer, because he “works with his hands like a robot.”

In another century, in another part of the world, the echo of R.U.R. rings out in the short story ‘Robot S/C 5’, by the famed late Gujarati writer Neerav Patel – recently reproduced in translation in The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF, an anthology that opens a new chapter in both speculative fiction and anti-caste fiction.