Paranoid android?
No one knows who this ‘android’ is for sure. Though the band Marvin, who also released the single ‘Marvin the Paranoid Android’ in 1981, is one of the better-known. The origin of the phrase ‘paranoid android’, however, is generally understood to be the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, a 1970s book by Douglas Adams which started out as a BBC radio series a few decades ago. The book, which spawned (among other things) four sequels, a movie, and an illustrated digitally-rendered coffee table book, has something of a cult following among science fiction fans. One of the characters in the series is a robot named Marvin the Paranoid Android, who belongs to a new generation of robots with ‘Genuine People Personalities’. Marvin’s ‘Genuine People Personality’ is, more or less, melancholic misanthropy. He lives in eternal pain and suffering, and, due to various time-travel exploits, unfortunately lives to be ‘thirty-seven times older than the Universe itself’. However, in the end, he does fin
