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I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (MARCH 2025 EDITION)
Well, look, you get what you pay for.
War with the Newts by Karel Čapek
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Though I’ve known for some time that Karel Čapek is credited with coining the term ‘robot’, I’ve never read him before, mainly because I’ve never come across any copies of his books – until I found this, arguably his other famous SF book that doesn’t involve robots. War With The Newts is a dystopian satire centred around the discovery of an intelligent, evolved breed of sea-dwelling salamander in Indonesia.
The newts are discovered by Captain J. van Toch, who finds a capitalist backer, G.H. Bondy, to exploit the newts’ talent for pearl-diving and their ability to learn speech and use tools. As the newts multiply exponentially and absorb human culture, Bondy eventually expands the operation into the “Salamander Syndicate” that turns the newts into a global hydroengineering workforce for hire – or, in plain terms, slaves. The newts are simultaneously exploited, exoticized and fetishized, until finally the newts decide to push back.
Along the way, Čapek uses this as a platform to satirise racist colonialism and rampant, exploitative capitalism and the politicians, media pundits and academics that facilitate and justify both. And he does it well – to the point that much of the novel still resonates today, particularly the ending, which (without giving anything away) postulates that at the end of the day, when the world is hurtling itself towards a global catastrophe of its own making, sooner or later, it’s going to be your problem, and you’ll have to pick a side.
View all my reviews
This means war,
This is dF
War with the Newts by Karel ČapekMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Though I’ve known for some time that Karel Čapek is credited with coining the term ‘robot’, I’ve never read him before, mainly because I’ve never come across any copies of his books – until I found this, arguably his other famous SF book that doesn’t involve robots. War With The Newts is a dystopian satire centred around the discovery of an intelligent, evolved breed of sea-dwelling salamander in Indonesia.
The newts are discovered by Captain J. van Toch, who finds a capitalist backer, G.H. Bondy, to exploit the newts’ talent for pearl-diving and their ability to learn speech and use tools. As the newts multiply exponentially and absorb human culture, Bondy eventually expands the operation into the “Salamander Syndicate” that turns the newts into a global hydroengineering workforce for hire – or, in plain terms, slaves. The newts are simultaneously exploited, exoticized and fetishized, until finally the newts decide to push back.
Along the way, Čapek uses this as a platform to satirise racist colonialism and rampant, exploitative capitalism and the politicians, media pundits and academics that facilitate and justify both. And he does it well – to the point that much of the novel still resonates today, particularly the ending, which (without giving anything away) postulates that at the end of the day, when the world is hurtling itself towards a global catastrophe of its own making, sooner or later, it’s going to be your problem, and you’ll have to pick a side.
View all my reviews
This means war,
This is dF