Quote:
Originally Posted by kacir
One of the greatest Czech authors Karel Capek (properly spelled Karel Čapek) has died exactly 70 years ago and the information about his books going to the Public Domain have even made news in the main evening news program.
He was most famous for his Science Fiction books long before the Science Fiction became an established genere. He was the very first person to write about robots. The very word ROBOT was invented by Mr. Karel Capek in his play "Rosum's Universal Robots".(**)
He also wrote books for children that are still very popular, detective stories, novels, fairy tales and theatre plays
So now, I can safely post link that has two links to his books
R.U.R. - Rossum's Universal Robots (1920)
and
The War With The Newts (Valka s mloky) (1936)
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/capek/karel/
(**)
For the nitpickers here, Mr. Capek claimed that the word Robot was actually invented by his brother. See here: http://capek.misto.cz/english/robot.html |
Sorry, but this is incorrect.
In all "life + 70" countries, works enter the public domain at the start of the year
after the 70th anniversary of the author's death. These books will enter the public domain in such countries (which includes the whole of the EU) on 1st Jan 2009. I'm afraid you'll have to wait another week
.