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War with the newts (The Gregg Press science fiction series)

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and Saw a Beast Rise up Out of the Sea.

This apocalyptic vision from the book of Revelations is a fitting introduction to Karel Capek's dystopian masterpiece, War With the Newts. Capek described in an interview how the idea for War With The Newts came to him and serves as a good synopsis of the book:

"I had written the sentence, 'You mustn't think that the evolution that gave rise to us was the only evolutionary possibility on this planet. . . . that cultural developments could be shaped through the mediation of another animal species. If the biological conditions were favorable, some civilization not inferior to our own could arise in the depths of the sea. . . . Would it do the same stupid things mankind has done? Would it invite the same historical calamities? What would we say if some animal other than man declared that its education and its numbers gave it the sole right to occupy the entire world and hold sway over all creation?" Out of this thought process War With the Newts Was Born.

The plot is straightforward. The master of a tramp steamer, Captain van Toch, comes across a rather curious breed of newts in an isolated lagoon near Sumatra. He discovers that they are intelligent and capable of communication. They lack, however, the ability to open easily oysters for food because of their short arms. He takes a knife and shows them how to use it. Next thing you know they have used his knife to open thousands of oysters, enough to provide the newts with food and the Captain with a large supply of pearls. Captain van Toch takes groups of newts and plants them in lagoons across the coastlines and lagoons of Asia. They are extraordinarily industrious. Before long newts become a worldwide rage. Every nation in the world uses newts to perform Herculean tasks of underwater and coastal development. The newts do not demand salaries. They merely ask for heavy equipment and munitions to facilitate these underwater projects. In short order the manufacture and supply of arms and equipment for newts becomes the single most important part of the world's economy.

Despite some increasingly violent skirmishes between newts and man no nation is willing to cease providing weapons to the newts. Before long the newts revolt, led by the Great Salamander (an apparent parody of Hitler), and announce that they will start destroying the earth, continent by continent in order to provide more coastline for the growing newt population. Despite this threat the nations of the earth continue to provide arms to the newts. The resultant battle is over quickly. Mountains are leveled, continents are turned into a series of islands and what is left of man finds its way to the Alps, or Rocky Mountains, or Himalayas.

As the story concludes, the author engages in a dialogue with himself and asks himself whether this is the end of man. After a great deal of soul searching he responds that perhaps the newts will take on all of the characteristics of the human race and find a way to destroy themselves. When that day occurs, perhaps humanity will recover what it gave away so readily.

War With the Newts is a fascinating book on many levels. The idea that the story is premised on the notion of concurrent evolutionary trends predates much landmark work that has been done since the book was written. It is also important to note that War With the Newts was written in 1936. The Nazis had obtained full control of Germany, Mussolini's fascists ruled Italy, and Stalin's purges were in full swing. Capek was devoted to the new Czech Republic and was an ardent proponent of the ideals of democracy. By 1936 the rest of Europe had already taken many strides down the road to appeasement. Capek's pessimistic vision of the fate of humanity is well grounded in contemporary events. War With the Newts may be viewed as much as a parable of contemporary events as a foretelling of a dark future. Finally, Capek is an excellent writer. His prose is full of wit and wry diversions. His chapter on the mating habits of the newts struck me as a classic parody of the human mating habits of his contemporary Aldous Huxley in Brave New World.

The following excerpt from a poem written by Capek after the bombing of the town of Badajoz during the Spanish Civil War serves as a fitting summation of the world view that permeates War With the Newts.

When this century collapses, dead at last,

and its sleep within the dark tomb has begun,

come, look down upon us, world, file past

and be ashamed of what our age has done.

Inscribe our stone, that everyone may see

what this dead era valued most and best:

science, progress, work, technology

and death - but death we prized above the rest.

Almost seventy years after its publication the message of War With the Newts still resonates.

Capek's War With the Newts is a wonderful, thought provoking book.

Though perhaps best known for coining the word "robot" in his wonderful play R.U.R., Capek also wrote a number of stories and novels. Of his novels, War With the Newts is probably the best known. And with good reason. It is an excellent story.

Flirting with the apocalyptic tradition in science fiction, this novel tells the story of the discovery of large, intelligent sea creatures off a small island "west of Sumatra." Initially curiosities, their intelligence makes them excellent workers for underwater projects for humans. Unfortunately for humans, these creatures are in fact quite smart enough and, over the course of a few years, develop to the point where they can challenge people for the domination of the earth. Which they do quite effectively.

Written in a number of styles--journalistic and scientific in addition to straightforward prose that switches points of view--it is very engaging. Granted, the prose is a little more formal as befits a novel written in the 1930's and the translator has kept that formal feeling but I am quite fond of this style. And Capek's perceptive examination of the politics of this period in his tale of newts and man is impressive.

Capek is often thought of as a science fiction writer but, as is the case with many writers of this genre, his appeal is much wider. Otherwise, why would his novels and plays still be read nearly 80 years later. Anyone with a taste for good, intellectual writing would enjoy this novel.

Of all the science-fiction books I read in my teenage years, this is the one that stimulated my mind the most, and the one I've re-read most often. It's the story of a discovery of another intelligent species, not in space but on an island lost in the Pacific. The new species are man-sized newts, with language and smart enough to acquire H. sapiens technology quickly. Eventually the newts and humans go to war, and that's all the plot I'll give you.
I loved to watch newts when I was a kid. In California especially, there are several species with interesting life-styles. Taricha torosa is a pretty brown and red newt with pebbly skin. It lives most of the year on land, but returns en masse to water to mate. It's a graceful, gentle, slow-moving creature with remarkably human "hands" and large eyes. That's the newt I imagine as the prototype for Capek's man-sized newt. T.torosa is also deadly poisonous... if you eat it. There's an evolutionary battle occurring in California right now! The newts' chief predator is the garter snake; snakes have been evolving tolerance for the newt's poison, which would kill the hugest other predator. In turn, the newts have been evolving ever stronger toxins. Recently, a population of snakes was discovered, in an isolated eco-zone, which has evolved better resistance and thus has gained the advantage in the endless evolutionary race.
In any case, reading Capek's book, I felt much like a traitor to my species. In every way, justice seemed to be on the newts' side. Obviously Capek has intuited what might well be the scenario of the future, when H. sapiens encounters another intelligence in the galaxy. Let's hope that species has evolved farther ethically than we humans have.

War with the Newts is an excellent example of the work of Karel Capek, one of the Czech Republic's most beloved authors. In many ways, the book reads like a traditional sci-fi novel, telling of the rise of a species of giant lizards and its eventual conflict with mankind. However, several things set it apart from the rest of its genre.

For one thing, though there are four or five notable characters in the book, you never really see any of them for more than about four chapters. The main players in the novel are not individual people but countries; much of the book is written from a global perspective, in terms of the reactions of countries, societies, and the whole world as they are introduced to the newts.

The book is also notable for its humor. The dry, subtle gibes give the work a similar feel to the novels of British author Terry Pratchett. The comedy comes not only from the tone of the writing style itself, but also in the form of the characters (both individual and regional), whose slightly ridiculous portrayal makes them seem quite human indeed, just like any one of us.

The book is not merely for sci-fi enthusiasts. The reactions to the newts - human, economic, political, and otherwise - are chillingly familiar. In them we see accurate reflections of current and past social climates. This novel is equally valuable from a sociological perspective, or even as an insight into human nature itself. In this grim view of the future, we see our own past and present.

Captain Van Toch finds a bay which is home to a giant salanmander which he soon comes to realize is a very smart salanmander. He ends up training them to hunt for pearls, in return giving them knives to fight off their ancient enemy - the sharks. After he dies the world ends up taking over and exploiting them. These 'Newts' are trained to work underwater, carrying out projects to increase the landmass, clean harbours and build aircraft islands. Soon the military is training them to fight, the schools are training them to read and write, and the newts are also being taught about God, freedoms, history and other subjects that slowly change them to being equal to mankind in every field of science and knowledge.

What happens when MANKIND is the Newts' new enemy?

Is this a warning about exploiting the workers? Or a warning against mankind losing what makes us human? Or maybe a warning against relaying on machines too much? Or is it a warning about how man fights man? No matter what the warning IS it IS also a GOOD SCIENCE FICTION book. If you like Wells you will like Capek. Also lots of humor.

I randomly found this book on Amazon one day, and decided I had to have it. When it arrived, however, I found myself slightly taken aback by the endless stream of footnotes throughout the book - not to mention the sections in another language altogether! And yet from the first page I was hooked - simply from a plot point of view, the story is engrossing all the way through. I found myself mysteriously endeared to the newts and dying to read each section. Capek is a brilliant writer - I find it hard to believe in many parts that it is a translated work. It's incredibly funny in parts and can definitely be very tongue-in-cheek. Capek also holds nothing back when it comes to mocking mankind - as a former scientist, I found his depiction of scientists particularly amusing, but he really lets out an endless stream of satire with no group spared. Germans, lawyers, the British, Hollywood, Big Business, capitalists - they all take a turn. I think if I knew more about world events in the 1930s I would have gotten more out of the book, but I think anyone with a good sense of humor would enjoy this book. Parts of it are written with a very academic tone, but it's quick moving and satirical enough to read through.

This is the worst edition of Capek's War with the Newts I've ever seen. Other editions I've seen are full of interesting illustrations and fake 'newspaper clipping' images to help heighten and convey different aspects of the plot. Not that this is at all necessary as it's a great book on it's own - but if you're putting "illustrated edition" on the cover of the book and only including one or two very poorly executed images, well, all I can think to say is shame on you. Add to this the fact that I counted nearly one copy error per page of the book, and all I can say is don't waste your money on this edition, and in fact, stay away from any titles published by 'the echo library' altogether.

Literally fabulous, this novel belongs in the tradition of Jonathan Swift and his yahoos, as well as in its contemporary's Orwell and "Animal Farm". It is a wild dystopia where, as always, human folly and ambition produce a catastrophe. The main note of the book is an excellent black humor, a permanent mockery which spares no one: Capitalism, science, academy, journalism, Hollywood, nationalistic identities, but above all Totalitarianism, already present in human history when Capek wrote in the 1930's.

Captain Van Toch, a merchant of whatever in Indonesia, discovers one day a species of newts (tritons-salamanders) whom he trains to fish for pearls. They are intelligent and gentle creatures, dispossessed of individuality, whose females reproduce with no sexual intercourse (like has been recently discovered about dragons of Komodo). Van Toch reveals his discovery to his fellow Czech, the millionaire entrepreneur Bondy, with whose help he launches his pearl business in a grand scale. Newts are transplanted to numerous litorals throughout the world, and soon the "Salamander Syndicate" finds out that newts are useful for many purposes, like building dams, repairing ships inside the water, and other industrial tasks. Newts reproduce by the billions and soon there are more of them than humans. Also very soon, politically correct groups appear, demanding a decent treatment as well as education and health for the poor things. Until one day, the humanized newts rebell against us. Several incidents start building up a World War after which humans are relegated to mountain tops and all the world becomes a giant artificial litoral where newts live and prosper. At the end, Capek can only guess that some day newts will become so human that they will develop national identities, rivalries, and war between themselves.

Profoundly disturbing, funny, and cynical, this novel is composed of tales, scientific reports, philosophical essays, press clippings and other literary devices. Now that we seem to be eager to play with genetics and artificial intelligence, it wouldn't be bad if leaders of the world read this jewel of intuition and anticipation and reflected about science, technology and business. Besides, they would have much fun. Totally recommended.

Capek's question, asked around 1935, is a simple one: what if we found someone new to enslave?

He envisions the perfect servant: some dark wog, identifiably sub-human, who lives to work, and who can never supplant our [Western] culture...

And who better to take it from us. The story drags early on, but it builds up a clear notion of the Newts as a legitimate citizens of Nation Earth. Capek spends some time recapitulating the slaughter, love, and other complexities that bring the Newts from jungle obscurity to world prominence - reminiscent of Ebola and AIDS emerging from other jungles not so long after.

He the brings the Newts up into his 20th century. The satirist's mind became satyric at the point, eager to prick the fulsome expanse of German nationalism or to penetrate the legs crossed over America's internal outsiders, Black Americans. Capek allows apologists of many different nationalisms in many ways, but they all show up wanting.

Simple, hard-working, and certain, the Newts prevail. The author struggles, in a self-conscious final chapter, over a happy ending. He finally fails, and we are left to wonder about Newtworld.

It's satire and commentary, but also science-oriented SF. Suppose these beings became available? What then? Capek's answers are very true, but very ugly.

//wiredweird

War with the Newts is a good book not only for its intellectual value but also for enjoyment. The plot is interesting and easily captivating. In an age where exploitation in its many forms (politically, racially, environmentally, etc.) is still prevalent, the books stands as a strong satire to the possible, if not far off, consequences of society's actions. As the satire builds and the newts gain control, the book becomes more interesting, especially in a realistic sense with its constant explanatory footnotes and articles from such established periodicals as National Geographic. The final chapter is noteworthy, as Capek reveals his consciousness of the reader and his/her possible reactions to the brief (some would say sudden) ending. An easy and entertaining read, War with the Newts is defintely worth reading. (Personal note: About time, Mr. Rutstein.)