The Hitchhiker's Guide Project

Marvin The Paranoid Android

Marvin the Paranoid AndroidMarvin was made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, and is a prototype robot with the new GPP feature.

He's incredibly smart. Through very odd circumstances involving time-travel, he is thirty-seven times older than the universe itself.

In all that time, the diodes down his left side, which cause him pain, were never replaced.

He's very depressed.

He has been known to pass the time by composing short dolorous ditties of no tone, or indeed tune. For example, here's a lullaby he wrote while his brain was harnessed to the central intellgence core of the Krikkit War Computer:

Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.

Marvin released four singles in the early 1980s. Just as in the radio show, Marvin was voiced by Stephen Moore. Douglas Adams was listed as a 'Consultant' on the singles. "Marvin, I Love You" is available on two Dr. Demento compilations, but the other three were a little bit harder to find. It took nearly fifteen years to track down all four, but here they are:

  1. Marvin (MP3, 2.58 Mb)
  2. Metal Man (MP3, 2.93 Mb)
  3. Reasons To Be Miserable (MP3, 2.45 Mb)
  4. Marvin, I Love You (MP3, 4.41 Mb)