SOURCE: "Revelling in Hope," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4565, September 28, 1990, p. 1036.

In the following review of Nine Fairy Tales and One More Thrown in for Good Measure, Warner notes the didactic nature of the stories and compares them to those of the Grimm brothers, concluding "the Grimm Brothers led quiet lives, but in their fairy-tales dealt more in fatalism; Čapek's revel in hope, against all the odds.

The Czech playwright, novelist and fantasist Karel Čapek coined the word "robot", and in his drama of 1920, RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots) imagined the death of the world after robots have been manufactured to spare man labour; a few years later, in spite of international success as a dramatist, Čapek decided to concentrate on journalism: "Now I must help educate the nation". Čapek's methods were cunning, mischievous, full of a magician's legerdemain and a comedian's verve. Just as RUR warns bitterly against...