"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" | |
---|---|
Short story by Harlan Ellison | |
![]() | |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Post-apocalyptic, Science fiction |
Publication | |
Published in | IF: Worlds of Science Fiction |
Publication type | Periodical |
Publisher | Galaxy Publishing Corp |
Media type | Print (magazine, hardback & paperback) |
Publication date | March 1967 |
"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is a post-apocalyptic science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction .
The story is set against the backdrop of World War III, where a sentient supercomputer named AM, born from the merging of the world's major defense computers, eradicates humanity except for five individuals. These survivors—Benny, Gorrister, Nimdok, Ted, and Ellen—are kept alive by AM to endure endless torture as a form of revenge against their creators. The story unfolds through the eyes of Ted, the narrator, detailing their perpetual misery and quest for canned food in AM's vast, underground complex, only to face further despair.
Written in one night in 1966, Ellison's narrative was minimally altered upon submission and tackles themes of technology's misuse, humanity's resilience, and existential horror. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" has been adapted into various media, including a 1995 computer game co-authored by Ellison, a comic-book adaptation, an audiobook read by Ellison, and a BBC Radio 4 play where Ellison voiced AM. The story is critically acclaimed for its exploration of AI's potential perils and the human condition, underscored by Ellison's innovative use of punchcode tapes as narrative transitions, embodying AM's consciousness and its philosophical ponderings on existence.
The story won a Hugo Award in 1968. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring this story. It was reprinted by the Library of America, collected in volume two of American Fantastic Tales .
As the Cold War progresses into a nuclear World War III fought between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, each nation builds an "Allied Mastercomputer" (AM), needed to coordinate weapons and troops due to the scale of the conflict. These computers are giant, underground machines which permeate the planet with caverns and corridors. Eventually, one AM emerges as a sentient entity possessing an extreme hatred for its creators. Combining with the other computers, it subsequently exterminates humanity, with the exception of five individuals, whom it tortures inside its complex. The humans, four men (Benny, Gorrister, Nimdok, and Ted) and one woman (Ellen), have been rendered virtually immortal and unable to die by suicide.
The story, narrated by Ted, begins 109 years after the start of the humans' imprisonment. They are kept half-starved by AM; when Nimdok has the idea that there exists canned food in the complex's ice caves, they begin a 100-mile journey to retrieve it. Through the journey, AM tortures the humans: Benny's eyes are melted after attempting escape, a huge bird that creates hurricane gales with its wings is placed at the North Pole, and Ellen and Nimdok are injured in earthquakes.
When the five finally reach the ice caves, they find a pile of canned goods, but no tools with which to open them. In an act of rage and desperation, Benny attacks Gorrister and begins to eat his face. In a moment of clarity, Ted realizes that even though they cannot kill themselves, there is nothing AM can do to stop them from killing each other. He fatally impales Benny and Gorrister with a stalactite of ice and Ellen kills Nimdok in the same manner; he then kills Ellen. Unable to resuscitate the others, AM stops Ted from killing himself and focuses the entirety of its rage on him. Several hundred years later, AM has transformed him into a gelatinous, amorphous blob, unable to harm himself. AM alters his perception of time to cause him further anguish. However, Ted finds some comfort knowing that he was able to spare the others further torment. The story ends with his thought: "I have no mouth. And I must scream."
Ellison wrote the 13-page short story in a single night in 1966 while making almost no changes from the first draft. [1] [2] Afterwards, his editor Frederik Pohl dealt with the story's "difficult sections", toning down some of the narrator's imprecations and eliminating mentions of sex, penis size, homosexuality, and masturbation; said elements were nonetheless eventually restored in later editions of the story. [3] Ellison derived the story's title, as well as inspiration for the story itself, from his friend William Rotsler's caption of a cartoon of a rag doll with no mouth. [4]
Ellison uses an alternating pair of punchcode tapes as sections – representing AM's "talkfields" – throughout the story. The bars are encoded in International Telegraph Alphabet No 2, a character coding system developed for teletypewriter machines. The first talkfield translates as "I think, therefore I am" and the second as "Cogito ergo sum", the same phrase in Latin. They were not included in the original publication in IF, and in many of the early publications were corrupted, up until the preface of the chapter containing "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream" in the first edition of The Essential Ellison (1991); Ellison states that in that particular edition, "For the first time anywhere, AM's 'talkfields' appear correctly positioned, not garbled or inverted or mirror-imaged as in all other versions." [5]
Ellison adapted the story into a video game, published by Cyberdreams in 1995. Although he was not a fan of video games and did not own a PC at the time, he co-authored the expanded storyline and wrote much of the game's dialogue, all on a mechanical typewriter. [6] Ellison also voiced the supercomputer AM and provided artwork of himself used for a mousepad included with the game. The comics artist John Byrne scripted and drew a comic-book adaptation for issues 1–4 of the Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor comic book published by Dark Horse (1994–1995). The Byrne-illustrated story, however, did not appear in the collection (trade paperback or hardcover editions) entitled Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, Volume One (1996). In 1999, Ellison recorded the first volume of his audiobook collection, The Voice from the Edge , subtitled "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", doing the readings – of the title story and others – himself. [7] In 2002, Mike Walker adapted the story into a radio play of the same name for BBC Radio 4, directed by Ned Chaillet. Harlan Ellison played AM and David Soul played Ted. [8]
Much of the story hinges on the comparison of AM as a merciless god, with plot points paralleling to themes in the Bible, notably AM's transplanted sensations and the characters' trek to the ice caverns. [9] AM also takes different forms before the humans, alluding to religious symbolism. Furthermore, the ravaged apocalyptic setting combined with the punishments is reminiscent of a vengeful God punishing their sins, similar to Dante's Inferno . [10] However, in spite of its magnificent feats, AM is just as trapped as the five humans it tortures: as Ellison puts it, "AM is frustrated. AM has been given sentience, prescience, great powers" and yet "it's nothing but plates and steel and gauges and other electronics", which means "it can’t go anywhere, it can’t do anything, it’s trapped. It is, itself, like the unloved child of a family that doesn’t pay it any attention." [11]
According to Ellison, the short story is a warning about "the misuse of technology" (especially military technology), [12] and its ending is meant to represent how there's "a spark of humanity in us, that in the last, final, most excruciating moment, will do the unspeakable in the name of kindness", even sacrificing oneself for others' sake. [11]
Another theme is the complete inversion of the characters as a reflection of AM's own fate, an ironic fate brought upon themselves by creating the machine, and the altered 'self'. [13]
Harlan Jay Ellison was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known works include the 1967 Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", considered by some to be the single greatest episode of the Star Trek franchise, his A Boy and His Dog cycle, and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman". He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.
Surgat is a minor demon mentioned in The Grimoire of Pope Honorius, The Secrets of Solomon and the Grimorium Verum. He is listed as "Surgat who opens all locks." His angel opposite is Aquiel.
The Slough of Despond is a fictional, deep bog in John Bunyan's allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, into which the protagonist Christian sinks under the weight of his sins and his sense of guilt for them.
Cyberdreams Interactive Entertainment was a video game publisher located in California that specialized in adventure games developed in collaboration with famous names from the fantasy, horror and science fiction genres between 1990 and 1997.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a 1995 point-and-click adventure horror game developed by Cyberdreams and The Dreamers Guild, co-designed by Harlan Ellison, published by Cyberdreams and distributed by MGM Interactive. The game is based on Ellison's short story of the same title. It takes place in a dystopian world where a mastermind artificial intelligence named "AM" has destroyed all of humanity except for five people, whom it has been keeping alive and torturing for the past 109 years by constructing metaphorical adventures based on each character's fatal flaws. The player interacts with the game by making decisions through ethical dilemmas that deal with issues such as insanity, rape, paranoia, and genocide.
"Demon with a Glass Hand" is an episode of the American television series The Outer Limits, the second to be based on a script by Harlan Ellison, which Ellison wrote specifically with actor Robert Culp in mind for the lead role. It originally aired on October 17, 1964, and was the fifth episode of the second season. In 2009, TV Guide ranked "Demon with a Glass Hand" #73 on its list of the 100 Greatest Episodes.
Alone Against Tomorrow: Stories of Alienation in Speculative Fiction is a collection of short stories by American writer Harlan Ellison. Published in the United States in 1971, it as a ten-year retrospective of Ellison's short stories. It was later published in the United Kingdom in two volumes as All the Sounds of Fear in 1973 and The Time of the Eye in 1974. All of the stories in this collection center around isolation and alienation, and were selected from previous short story collections to fit this theme.
The 26th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), also known as Baycon, was held on 29 August–2 September 1968 at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California, United States.
Paingod and Other Delusions is a collection of short stories by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was originally published in paperback in 1965 by Pyramid Books. Pyramid reissued the collection four times over the next fifteen years, with a new introduction added for a uniform edition of Ellison books in 1975. Ace Books issued an edition in 1983. The collection's only hardcover edition is The Fantasies of Harlan Ellison, which compiles it together with Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream".
Machines That Think is a compilation of 29 science fiction stories probing the scientific, spiritual, and moral facets of computers and robots and speculating on their future. It was edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Patricia S. Warrick.
Artificial intelligence is a recurrent theme in science fiction, whether utopian, emphasising the potential benefits, or dystopian, emphasising the dangers.
"The Discarded" is a science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in the April 1959 issue of Fantastic and was later included in the 1965 short story collection Paingod and Other Delusions and the third volume of the audiobook collection The Voice From The Edge.
The Voice From the Edge is a series of audiobooks collecting short stories written and narrated by American author Harlan Ellison. The first two volumes were published by Fantastic Audio; they were republished by Blackstone Audio in 2011. The uploading of these audio books to a newsgroup on the internet led to a court case to decide the liability of a service provider according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The fourth volume was published by Audible.
"How's the Night Life on Cissalda?" is a science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison, first published in 1977, in the first volume of the Zebra Books anthology series "Chrysalis". It was subsequently reprinted in Ellison's 1980 collection Shatterday, in OpZone no. 8 in the 1990 Ellen Datlow-edited anthology Alien Sex, and, in Italian, in Fantasex and in Idrogeno e idiozia.
American Fantastic Tales is a set of two reprint horror anthologies, released as American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps and American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now. Both anthologies were edited by Peter Straub. They were published by Library of America in 2009. The anthologies contain horror stories by American authors from the 18th century to modern times, split at 1940. The anthology pair itself won the 2010 World Fantasy Award—Anthology. The pair were also released as a boxed set in 2009.
AI takeover—the idea that some kind of artificial intelligence may supplant humankind as the dominant intelligent species on the planet—is a common theme in science fiction. Famous cultural touchstones include Terminator and The Matrix.
"The Function of Dream Sleep" is a fantasy short story by American writer Harlan Ellison, first published in his 1988 anthology Angry Candy. Ellison stated that it was inspired by an actual dream.
"How Interesting: A Tiny Man" is a 2010 science fiction/magical realism short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in Realms of Fantasy.
This is a list of works by Harlan Ellison (1934–2018). It includes his literary output, screenplays and teleplays, voiceover work, and other fields of endeavor.
I wrote 'I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream' in one night, in one blue-white fit of passion...and it's remained virtually unchanged from that first draft