Portal vs. the Hitchhiker's Guide

[Qwertygiy]

Which is better? (Better in this case probably means "more [witty] witty quotes.)

Both have their pros and cons. The Hitchhiker's Guide is not really kid friendly ("So Long and Thanks For All the Fish" definitely isn't PG-13), but while Portal 2 does have a few bits that wouldn't make it onto PBS Kids, it doesn't get worse than GLaDOS's "What the hell is going on?" or Cave Johnson's "I don't need your damn lemons!"

However, The Hitchhiker's Guide is not only longer, but has a lot more in the series. Writing out all the dialogue in Portal almost certainly wouldn't fill up 10 pages, let alone several hundred. Portal 2 is a lot longer, but you still couldn't get a hundred pages out of it unless you tried to make a novelization of the entire gameplay. And you can imagine what that would be like, since Chell, Atlas, and P-body never talk.

Both revolve at least partially around a controversial corporation (Aperture Science was founded to create shower curtains for the US Navy and ended up making portal devices when the CEO got mercury poisoning from 6 curtains meant to be specially fitted for US Senators. The Hitchhiker's Guide was founded on the premises of truth and honesty and promptly went bankrupt. It then was re-founded on the premises of truth and honesty and where you can stuff them both, and that lunch is the center of the spiritual life, after the CEO spent several years in darkened rooms in illegal states of mind and spent time with a group of monks.) and impossible technology (the Infinite Warp Drive, the Sub-Etha Signaling Device, the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, the Excursion Funnel, and my personal favorite, the Aperture Science Thing That We Don't Know What It Does), and sometimes you can try to make connections between the main characters (Arthur Dent and Wheatley, perhaps?).

So which do you think is the better piece of fiction?

[Glome]

Cave Johnson can never be beat.
I really love the multiverse quotes the best. c:

[Qwertygiy]

I like the quote from the Panels Short best, I think.

"Aperture Science Panels are guaranteed to help your test subjects every step of the way!"

*the co-op robots climb up a set of panel stairs, and just as the round one begins to take the last step onto the platform, they all retract into the ground*

"And are guaranteed 100% safe!"

*a giant square piece of metal slams onto the co-op robot, crushing it*

"That's not a panel. That's a crusher. We sell those too."

[Glome]

I like the quote from the Panels Short best, I think.

"Aperture Science Panels are guaranteed to help your test subjects every step of the way!"

*the co-op robots climb up a set of panel stairs, and just as the round one begins to take the last step onto the platform, they all retract into the ground*

"And are guaranteed 100% safe!"

*a giant square piece of metal slams onto the co-op robot, crushing it*

"That's not a panel. That's a crusher. We sell those too."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPG3eDTy-yo#t=10m09s

[Qwertygiy]

Okay, I have a new favorite Cave Johnson quote.

"Meow, meow, meow meow, meow meow, meow. Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow, meow meow."

I always knew all cats were crazy.


I like the ones that are parodies of Cave Johnson lines from Portal 2 too. Blark-Barg and man-mantises and Michigan Slim FTW.

---

The Hitchhiker's Guide has some pretty nice stuff too, though.

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed from combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them.

The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any sort of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existance of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own argument, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear", says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

[Who]

"Alright this next test may involve trace amounts of time travel. So word of advice: if you meet yourself on the testing track don't make eye contact. Lab boys tell me that'll wipe out time - entirely. Forward and backward. So do both of yourselves a favor and let that handsome devil go about his business."

When I first heard that, I couldn't stop laughing

[Qwertygiy]

Going over all of the quotes in my head, I have to agree with Glome here. Cave Johnson is best. 6-packs of Zaphod Beeblebrox aside.

He really reminds me of Ruff Ruffman, though, specifically the podcasts.

I've always liked the "Ruff's Autobiography" best.
[no, he is not bypassing any filters. his assistant's name is Chet.]
[sound]http://pbskids.org/fetch/show/rss/media/FETCH_12_Audiobooks.mp3[/sound]