The Best of Everything: Robot Week Day One: The Best Robot In Literature.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Robot Week Day One: The Best Robot In Literature.

I have declared it Robot Week on The Best of Everything. Why? Several very good reasons:

1. Robots are cool.
2. It's going to be a short week for me because on Friday I'm taking a whole day off to spend with Sweetie to celebrate our anniversary, and
3. When robots start doing more work for us, we'll all have short workweeks.

So Robot Week will be only four days long to presage that; but we'll spend those four days celebrating The Best of Robot-dom.

Today: The Best Robot in Literature.

There's really only one possible nominee for this honor; I say that because I can think of only one possible nominee for this. Let's face it: Robots are a little under-represented in the world of serious fiction. Or even in the world of nonserious literature. (I'm excluding from this category robots in books that are based on TV series or movies; television and movie robots will be featured later this week.)

In fact, if you google "Robots In Literature," as I just did, you get a bunch of Wikipedia junk that says things like "Sinbad is a dead robot" (probably; I don't ever read Wikipedia because "conventional wisdom" is not equal to "knowledge") but you also get a site that lists only three Robots In Literature: I, Robot and two comic book characters. Since "I, Robot" wasn't about any particular robot, and since noted physicist Michio Kaku thinks time travel is possible and if he's right then I, Robot could very well have been based on the Will Smith movie even though I, Robot was written decades before the movie was made, and since neither of the comic books referenced by that site qualify as "literature," then I am on solid ground as I say the following:

In the whole history of literature, there has been only one robot character.

And that character is Marvin The Paranoid Android, who is by default The Best Robot In Literature. But Marvin would have won this honor even if any writer anywhere in history had ever had a robot character ever before, because Marvin has a lot going for him.

For those of you who had dates in high school, Marvin is the robot character who appears in Douglas Adams' five-part Hitchhikers' trilogy. Marvin has a brain the size of a planet and a case of depression that's far, far larger. Marvin is first met [MILD SPOILERS AHEAD] when he's sent to fetch Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent up to the bridge of the spaceship Heart of Gold, and he complains bitterly that it's probably the most challenging thing he'll be asked to do all day.

Marvin is not just depressed because he doesn't have job satisfaction; he's also got a terrible pain in all his diodes down his left arm, and one of his legs happens to be part of the Wicket that protects the universe from a warlike race of Krikketers and he spent a million years or so working as a parking attendant at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

If you think all of that has left Marvin a little down, you're right. Marvin's outlook on life can be summed up in this quote:

"Life. Don't talk to me about life."

Or perhaps this one:

"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."

But that does not stop Marvin from being an integral part of the team, without him really trying to be a part of it and without anyone really wanting him to be a part of the team, either. When the team first arrives on Magrathea, for example, [SPOILER ALERT INVOLVING THE CONTAGIOUS EFFECTS OF DEPRESSION ON COMPUTERS] and are being shot at with Kill-O-Zap guns, Marvin helps them by getting bored and plugging himself into the computer that controls the bad guys' life support systems, just to talk a little.

The life support computer commits suicide.

Marvin is The Best Robot In Literature because of the lesson he has to teach us. Despite his painful diodes -- which are never replaced even though by the end of the series Marvin ends up being several times older than the Universe itself and having had every other part of his body replaced several times -- Marvin keeps plugging away and in doing so, teaches us two things.

First, Marvin teaches us that a pained endurance is sometimes the only thing that we can face the Universe with, and that hoping for the best sometimes is not the face we want to show the world:

"Funny, how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does," he says at one point.

Marvin glumly accepts his place in life, whether that place is talking to a sentient mattress while trudging in a circle for eons, or being asked to pilot a ship into the sun because someone has to stay behind to work the teleporter. He's obedient to a fault:

"Do you want me to sit in the corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?" he asks at one point. Then, shortly after that, he inquires: "Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water?" He even then did that, gurgling away, without being expressly told to do so.

Marvin is the ultimate pessimist:

"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it." he says.

But second, and more importantly, Marvin shows us that no matter how bad your lot in life, no matter how difficult your trip through the Universe is, no matter how painful those diodes are, you can still win; you can still come out ahead, even if you're not sure that "ahead" is all that great, either.

Like when Marvin is left behind to defend himself against a military tank, and the tank comes up to him. Here's the full exchange:

Marvin stood at the end of the bridge corridor. He was not in
fact a particularly small robot. His silver body gleamed in the
dusty sunbeams and shook with the continual barrage which the
building was still undergoing.

He did, however, look pitifully small as the gigantic black tank
rolled to a halt in front of him. The tank examined him with a
probe. The probe withdrew.
Marvin stood there.

"Out of my way little robot," growled the tank.

"I'm afraid," said Marvin, "that I've been left here to stop
you."

The probe extended again for a quick recheck. It withdrew again.

"You? Stop me?" roared the tank. "Go on!"

"No, really I have," said Marvin simply.

"What are you armed with?" roared the tank in disbelief.

"Guess," said Marvin.

The tank's engines rumbled, its gears ground. Molecule-sized
electronic relays deep in its micro-brain flipped backwards and
forwards in consternation.

"Guess?" said the tank.

"Errmmm ..." said the machine, vibrating with unaccustomed
thought, "laser beams?"

Marvin shook his head solemnly.

"No," muttered the machine in its deep guttural rumble, "Too
obvious. Anti-matter ray?" it hazarded.

"Far too obvious," admonished Marvin.

"Yes," grumbled the machine, somewhat abashed, "Er ... how about
an electron ram?"

This was new to Marvin.

"What's that?" he said.

"One of these," said the machine with enthusiasm.

From its turret emerged a sharp prong which spat a single lethal
blaze of light. Behind Marvin a wall roared and collapsed as a
heap of dust. The dust billowed briefly, then settled.

"No," said Marvin, "not one of those."

"Good though, isn't it?"

"Very good," agreed Marvin.

"I know," said the Frogstar battle machine, after another
moment's consideration, "you must have one of those new Xanthic
Re-Structron Destabilized Zenon Emitters!"

"Nice, aren't they?" said Marvin.

"That's what you've got?" said the machine in considerable awe.

"No," said Marvin.

"Oh," said the machine, disappointed, "then it must be ..."

"You're thinking along the wrong lines," said Marvin, "You're
failing to take into account something fairly basic in the
relationship between men and robots."

"Er, I know," said the battle machine, "is it ..." it tailed off
into thought again.

"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?"

"Oooh, 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 with 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."

The machine heaved about with fury.

"Well, doesn't that just take the biscuit!" it roared, "Nothing,
eh? Just don't think, do they?"

"And me," said Marvin in a soft low voice, "with this terrible
pain in all the diodes down my left side."

"Makes you spit, doesn't it?"

"Yes," agreed Marvin with feeling.

"Hell that makes me angry," bellowed the machine, "think I'll
smash that wall down!"

The electron ram stabbed out another searing blaze of light and
took out the wall next to the machine.

"How do you think I feel?" said Marvin bitterly.

"Just ran off and left you, did they?" the machine thundered.

"Yes," said Marvin.

"I think I'll shoot down their bloody ceiling as well!" raged the
tank.

It took out the ceiling of the bridge.

"That's very impressive," murmured Marvin.

"You ain't seeing nothing yet," promised the machine, "I can take
out this floor too, no trouble!"

It took out the floor, too.

"Hell's bells!" the machine roared as it plummeted fifteen
storeys and smashed itself to bits on the ground below.

"What a depressingly stupid machine," said Marvin and trudged
away.

Marvin The Paranoid Android: The smartest, saddest, and Best Robot In Literature.