Marvin is the robot from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books. These are some of the things he comes out with.
The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
'I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed,' it said. Its voice low and hopeless.
With a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micromodulation of pitch and timbre - nothing you could actually take offence at - Marvin managed to convey his utter contempt for all things human.
'I won't enjoy it'
'I'm not getting you down at all am I?'
'Life,' said Marvin, 'don't talk to me about life.'
'Ghastly,' continued Marvin, 'it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it.
Marvin regarded it with cold loathing whilst his logic circuits chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing physical violence against it. Further circuits cut in saying, Why bother? What's the point? Nothing is worth getting involved in. Further circuits amused themselves by analysing the molecular components of the door, and the humanoids' brain cells. For a quick encore they measured the level of hydrogen emissions in the surrounding cubic parsec of space and then shut down again in boredom. A spasm of despair shook the robot's body as he turned.
'Come on,' he droned, 'I've been ordered to take you down to the bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't.'
'You watch this door,' he muttered, 'it's about to open again. I can tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates.'
"Let's build robots with Genuine People Personalities," they said. So they tried it out with me. I'm a personality prototype. You can tell can't you?'
'I hate that door,' continued Marvin, 'I'm not getting you down at all am I?'
'Sorry, did I say something wrong?' said Marvin, dragging himself on regardless. 'Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so depressed. Here's another of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life.'
Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning.
'…and then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side…'
'Do we go through?' mimicked Marvin. 'Yes. This is the entrance to the bridge. I was told to take you to the bridge. Probably the highest demand that will be made on my intellectual capacities today I shouldn't wonder.'
'Funny,' he intoned funereally, 'how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does.'
'Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?'
'You think you've got problems,' said Marvin as if he was addressing a newly occupied coffin, 'what are you supposed to do if you are a maniacally depressed robot? No, don't bother to answer that, I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level.'
'Life,' said Marvin dolefully, 'loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.'
'Night's falling,' Arthur said, 'Look robot, the stars are coming out.'
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
'Excuse me,' said Marvin
'One moment I was sitting in your ship feeling very depressed, and the next moment I was standing here feeling utterly miserable.'
'So how are you?' Zaphod said aloud.
'You know something?' said Zaphod to Marvin.
'You see that robot coming towards us?' (Zaphod)
Marvin looked at the gigantic black shape edging forwards towards them over the bridge. He looked down at his own small metal body. He looked back up at the tank.
'Just think,' urged Marvin, 'they left me, an ordinary, menial robot, to stop you, a gigantic heavy-duty battle machine, whilst they ran off to save themselves. What do you think they would leave me with?'
'And me,' said Marvin in a soft low voice, 'with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.'
'What a depressingly stupid machine,' said Marvin and trudged away.
The occasional remark from Marvin of the order of 'This is the sort of thing you lifeforms enjoy is it? I ask merely for information,' did nothing to improve his (Zaphod's) state of mind.
Marvin joined him a moment or so later and lay face down in the dust and rubble, from which position he seemed to disinclined to move.
'I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed,'
'You don't have to pretend to be interested in me you know,' said Marvin at last, 'I know perfectly well I'm only a menial robot.'
' "Reverse primary thrusters, Marvin," that's what they say to me, "open airlock number three, Marvin. Marvin, can you pick up that piece of paper?" Can I pick up that piece of paper! Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to…'
'But I'm quite used to being humiliated,' droned Marvin, 'I can even go stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. Would you like me to go stick my head in a bucket of water? I've got one ready. Wait a minute.'
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'It's the people you meet in this job that really get you down'
'You don't like talking to me do you?'
'Come on over here,' said Zaphod, 'We've got a job for you.'
'Well I wish you'd just tell me rather than try to engage my enthusiasm,' said Marvin, 'because I haven't got one.'
'Don't mention it,' said Marvin, 'Oh you didn't.'
'Perhaps,' said Marvin, 'he was feeling very depressed.'
'It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small.' (Marvin on Arthur's mind)
'Making in up?' said Marvin, swivelling his head in a parody of astonishment, 'Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.'
'I could tell you weren't really interested,' murmured Marvin to himself and slumped into a corner and switched himself off.
'It means,' said Marvin, 'that the ship is going to dive into the sun. Sun … Dive. It's very simple to understand.'
'Hey, Marvin kid,' said Zaphod brightly, 'how you doing?'
Life, the Universe and Everything
'Happy?' said the mattress
'The dew,' he observed, 'has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.' He resumed his walk, as if inspired by this conversational outburst to fresh heights of gloom and despondency. He plodded tenaciously. If he had had teeth he would have gritted them at this point. He hadn't. He didn't. The mere plod said it all.
'You have something on your mind, I think,' said the mattress, floopily.
'I expect so,' said Marvin, 'and I also expect that you find the idea of a robot with an artificial leg pretty amusing. You should tell your friends Zem and Zem when you see them later; they'll laugh, if I know them, which I don't of course - expect insofar as I know all organic life forms, which is much better than I would like to. Ha, but my life is but a box of wormgears.'
'But why do you just keep walking round and round?' said the mattress.
'I was a celebrity,' droned the robot sadly, 'for a short which on account of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition,' he added, 'how narrow my escape was. I was rescued b a scrap-metal merchant, image that. Here I am, brain the size of … never mind.
'This is what I said, I said, "I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can't because my lying circuits are out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinking abuse of all who wantonly cross her."
Apart from anything else, the mere co-ordination of an entire planet's military strategy was taking up only a tiny part of its formidable mind, and the rest of it had become extremely bored. Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except his own, three times over, he was severely stuck for something to do.
'Now the world has gone to bed,' Marvin droned
He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.
'Now I lay me down to sleep,
'Wearily I sit here, pain and misery my only companions. And vast intelligence of course. And infinite sorrow. And…
'Which means I suppose,' said Marvin, requiring only one ten thousand million billion trillion grillionth part of his mental powers to make this particular logical leap, 'that you're not going to release me or anything like that.'
'Why stop now just when I'm hating it?'
'That young girl,' he added unexpectedly, 'is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has ever been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.'
'That would destroy the Universe in total,' added Marvin. 'Good idea, if you ask me.
'Its brilliant,' said Marvin, 'they're not. They got as far as designing it before they were locked it the envelope. They've spent the last five years building it. They think they've got it right but they haven't. They're as stupid as any other organic life form. I hate them.'
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
'Friend!' croaked the robot pathetically. The word died away in a kind of crackle and flakes of rust fell out of his mouth. 'You'll have to excuse me while I try and remember what the word means. My memory banks are not what they were you know, and any word which falls into disuse for a few zillion years has to get shifted down into auxiliary memory back-up. Ah, here it comes.'
'Don't seem to be any doors around at present,' he said, 'but I'm sure that if we waited long enough, someone would build one. And then,' he said slowly twisting his head around to see Arthur again, 'I could open it for you. I'm quite used to waiting you know.'
'Ha!' snapped Marvin. 'Ha!' he repeated. 'What do you know of always? You say "always" to me, who, because of the silly little errands your organic lifeforms keep on sending me through time on, I am now thirty-seven times older than the Universe itself? Pick your words with a little more care,' he coughed, 'and tact.'
'Leave me,' he said, 'go on ahead, leave me to struggle painfully on my way. My time at last is nearly come. My race is nearly run. I fully expect,' he said, feebly waving them on with a broken finger, 'to come in last. It would be fitting. Here I am, brain the size…'
'Every part of me,' he moaned, 'has been replaced at least fifty times … except…' He seemed almost imperceptibly to brighten for a moment. His head bobbed between them with the effort of memory. 'Do you remember, the first time you ever met me,' he said at last to Arthur. 'I had been given the intellect-stretching task of taking you up to the bridge? I mentioned to you that I had this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side? That I had asked for them to be replaced but they never were?'
'I think,' he murmured at last, from deep within his corroding rattling thorax, 'I feel good about it.'
Marvin does not appear in the last installment, Mostly Harmless. However a new robot is introduced,
Colin, the permanently happy robot.
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'I know,' he said. 'Wretched isn't it?'
'But that sunset! I've never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams… the two suns! I was like mountains of fire boiling in space.'
'I've seen it,' said Marvin. 'It's rubbish.'
'We only ever had one sun at home,' persevered Arthur, 'I came from a planet called Earth you know.'
'I know,' said Marvin, 'you keep going on about it. It sounds awful.'
'Ah no, it was a beautiful place.'
'Did it have oceans?'
'Oh yes,' said Arthur with a sigh, 'great wide rolling blue oceans…'
'Can't bear oceans,' said Marvin.
'Tell me,' inquired Arthur, 'do you get on well with other robots?'
'Hate them,' said Marvin.
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'Yes sir,' it snapped, 'can I help you?'
'I doubt it,' said Marvin.
'Yes, sir, well…'
'Not that anyone's tired of course.'
'Is that so,' the insect said tartly.
'Hardly worth anyone's while to help a menial robot is it?'
'I'm sorry, sir, if…'
'I mean where's the percentage in being kind or helpful to a robot if it doesn't have any gratitude circuits?'
'And you don't have any?' said the insect, who didn't seem to be able to drag itself out of this conversation.
'I've never had occasion to find out,' Marvin informed it.
'Listen, you miserable heap of maladjusted metal…'
'Aren't you going to ask me what I want?'
'Is it worth it?' it asked.
'Is anything?' said Marvin immediately.
'What … do … you … want?'
'I'm looking for someone.'
'Who?' hissed the insect.
'Zaphod Beeblebrox,' said Marvin, 'he's over there.'
'Then why did you ask me?' it screamed.
'I just wanted someone to talk to,' said Marvin.
'What?'
'Pathetic isn't it?'
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'Oh fine,' said Marvin, 'if you happen to like being me which personally I don't.'
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'More than you can possibly imagine.'
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'I suppose you want me to stop it,' he said.
'Yeah.'
'Whilst you save your skins,'
'Yeah,' said Zaphod, 'get in there!'
'Just so long,' said Marvin, 'as I know where I stand.'
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'Ooh er,' muttered the machine in alarm, 'something pretty damn devastating I should expect.'
'Expect!' said Marvin, 'oh yes, expect. I'll tell you what they gave me to protect myself shall I?'
'Yes alright,' said the battle machine, bracing itself.
'Nothing,' said Marvin.
There was a dangerous pause.
'Nothing?' roared the battle machine.
'Nothing at all,' intoned Marvin dismally, 'not an electronic sausage.'
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"'The first ten million years were the worst,' said Marvin, 'and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.'"
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Marvin trudged towards them.
'I won't enjoy it,' he said.
'Yes you will,' enthused Zaphod, 'there's a whole new life stretching out ahead of you.'
'Oh, not another one,' groaned Marvin.
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'Very badly I suspect,' muttered Marvin.
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The robot stopped and looked at the mattress. It looked at it quizzically. It was clearly a very stupid mattress. It looked back at him with wide eyes. After what it had calculated to ten significant decimal places as being the precise length of pause most likely to convey general contempt for all things mattressy, the robot continued to walk round in tight circles.
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'More than you can possibly imagine,' dreared Marvin. 'My capacity for mental activity of all kinds is boundless as the infinite reaches of space itself. Except, of course, for my capacity for happiness.'
Stomp, stomp, he went.
'My capacity for happiness,' he added, 'you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.'
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'Just to make a point,' said Marvin, and continued, round and round.
'Consider it made, my dear friend,' flurbled the mattress, 'consider it made.'
'Just another million years,' said Marvin, 'just another quick million. Then I might try it backwards. Just for the variety you understand.'
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He trudged savagely for a few seconds.
'He it was who fixed me up with this leg. Hateful, isn't it? He sold me to a Mind Zoo. I was the star exhibit. I had to sit on a box and tell my story whilst people told me to cheer up and think positive. "Give us a grin, little robot," they would shout at me, "give us a little chuckle." I would explain to them that to get my face to grin would take a good couple of hours in a workshop with a wrench, and that went down very well.'
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'Darkness won't engulf my head.
'I can see my infrared,
'How I hate the night.'
'Try to count electric sheep,
'Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
'How I hate the night.'
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The robot's battered head snapped up a bit as if in though.
'Hmm,' he said, 'what a curious concept.'
He thought a little longer.
'No,' he said at last, 'don't think I ever came across one of those. Sorry, can't help you there.'
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He left a longish pause.
'See if you can guess,' said Marvin, when he judged that the pause had become embarrassing enough, 'which parts of me were never replaced? Go on; see if you can guess.
'Ouch,' he added, 'ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.'
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