Name: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Rating: 3.336633663366336 (101 reviews)
ISBN: 9780441363957

Harlan Ellison

The concerns and stylistic evolution of the famed futuristic writer are revealed in seven science fiction tales

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

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I think I realized completely, so that I was able to verbalize it: AM was intent on keeping us in his belly forever, twisting and torturing us forever The machine hated us as no sentient creature had ever hated before. And we were helpless. It also became hideously clear:

If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.

william wukkuan

I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within.

High Fidelity

But I knew it wasn't the relief a soldier feels when the bullet hits the man next to him. I knew it wasn't a reflex.

At first it meant Allied Mastercomputer, and then it meant Adaptive Manipulator, and later on it developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace, but by then it was too late, and finally it called itself AM, emerging intelligence, and what it meant was I am …cogito ergo sum … I think, therefore I am.

Erika Dilbaryan

Seven stunning stories of speculative fiction by the author of A Boy and His Dog. In a post-apocalyptic world, four men and one woman are all that remain of the human race, brought to near extinction by an artificial intelligence. Programmed to wage war on behalf of its creators, the AI became self-aware and turned against humanity. The five survivors are prisoners, kept alive and subjected to brutal torture by the hateful and sadistic machine in an endless cycle of violence. This story and six more groundbreaking and inventive tales that probe the depths of mortal experience prove why Grand Master of Science Fiction Harlan Ellison has earned the many accolades to his credit and remains one of the most original voices in American literature. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream also includes “Big Sam Was My Friend,” “Eyes of Dust,” “World of the Myth,” “Lonelyache,” Hugo Award finalist “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer,” and Hugo and Nebula Award finalist “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.”

Stories

I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

One of my favorite reads ever - I like the way they explore the concept of humanity at its most instinctive - the way the people lose themselves to this and how we see it all from Ted's viewpoint, so skewed by his own punishment he doesn't realize its happening 

Sophie M

Awful, visceral, horrifying. Good take on the dangers of AI. 

Though I think that Ellen’s fate is pretty gendered since AM is  forcing her into a role where she needs to satisfy the sexual desires of the men around her (like her suffering is specifically tied to her being the only female survivor)   Stereotypical, smurfette principle, it’s like a reductive and objectifying portrayal of her character.

reducing her to a gendered role that is repeatedly reinforced throughout the story rather than allowing her the same psychological complexity afforded to the male characters.

Nachi

Awful, visceral, horrifying. Good take on the dangers of AI. 

Though I think that Ellen’s fate is pretty gendered since AM is  forcing her into a role where she needs to satisfy the sexual desires of the men around her (like her suffering is specifically tied to her being the only female survivor)   Stereotypical, smurfette principle, it’s like a reductive and objectifying portrayal of her character.

reducing her to a gendered role that is repeatedly reinforced throughout the story rather than allowing her the same psychological complexity afforded to the male characters.

Tim Pendry

A truly horrific story about the creation of hell for a small group of five survivors of a Terminator scenario - an artificial general intelligence has destroyed the rest of humanity using its capability as a human-created war machine. The five are not simply surviving in a post-apocalyptic hell on earth. They are abstracted from that hell into a worse one within the underground structure of the AGI. The AGI wants to express its own continued loathing for humanity because of the circumstances of its creation. The AGI comes only to exist for its hatred. Able to create any reality it wants in order to torment the five, it can get deep inside the human mind and construct a state of eternal torment for people it won't let die, one that is beyond imagining (though Ellison does an excellent job of coming close). A great deal of the virtue of this 1967 Hugo Award winning story lies in the writing which has all the taut energy of a wordsmith who manages to channel Hemingway more than Ashton Smith in his description of both physical and psychological horror. Grim, remorseless and dark!

Like… ok? I would never read this again. I can understand the appeal, I mean it’s a very cruel and the most bold story I think I’ve ever read. I just feel there’s more nuanced opinions of similar scenarios and themes out there. Also this book is clearly sexist.

Le principe d'un "anti-dieu" qui n'est que haine est un principe très innovant et fascinant, lecture plutôt simple qui se fait d'une traite mais qui marque

Amo LeRigolo

Nat Wong

i liked the premise of this as a whole, a story about an AI mastercomputer keeping a few select humans alive at the end of times and playing them like dolls and other themes that surrounded it were interesting to me. unfortunately the writing / narration is absolute ass and i did not enjoy it like i thought i would. + ellen is just there for that good old fashioned misogynistic vomit from the author 

marceline

why so much hate on this one…I think y’all misunderstood it

Matvei

Someone kill the chauvinist author, again!

have only read the 'I have no mouth and I must scream' short story but oh it was so good??? 

AM being the god but being so lost in his own existence, not being able to ever truly live, so he torments the ones that can live and tortures them mentally to the point where they just wish to die. and making ted into a jelly version of himself because he knows that the worst thing he could do to ted is to make him conscious yet without any autonomy of his own. AM being everything yet nothing at the same time is his greatest curse and so he does the same thing to ted. and you know. it was good. 

let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I've began to live

Anna 

have only read the 'I have no mouth and I must scream' short story but oh it was so good??? 

AM being the god but being so lost in his own existence, not being able to ever truly live, so he torments the ones that can live and tortures them mentally to the point where they just wish to die. and making ted into a jelly version of himself because he knows that the worst thing he could do to ted is to make him conscious yet without any autonomy of his own. AM being everything yet nothing at the same time is his greatest curse and so he does the same thing to ted. and you know. it was good. 

are these laurels to be proud of? 

let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I've began to live

The worst fate imaginable, put to paper. I was drawn to this because of the video game but found this original short story to be more hollow, as it doesn't allow the reader any opportunity to get to know any of the characters. 

Jack B Rosie

anna 

Maya 

This is nightmare fuel… but I love the concept!

can’t sleep and found this on a pinterest post… needless to say i am still antsy but this scratched an itch. the way the narration changed progressively in tone and i felt myself also growing a bit madder alongside the narrator… amazing!

dann

Listened to the audiobook and the audio is ass but Harlan can READ

Bowie 

D D D 

The person that recommended this did not mention how I would actually dislike it

doxi 

Sage

Things of note

- BLAH BLAH BLAH misogyny. Really? The characters are fucked up from having been TRAPPED BY A COMPUTER FOR CENTURIES. Invalid criticism. I don't think you just discount a piece of writing because the characters he writes are flawed. The story was fun - some of it tiresome to read, but most of it was well-written (as in, not boring, fairly thrilling). Also, do you even author's intent??????

- "Oh, Jesus sweet Jesus, if there ever was a Jesus and if there is a God, please please please let us out of here, or kill us. Because at that moment I think I realized completely, so that I was able to verbalize it: AM was intent on keeping us in his belly forever, twisting and torturing us forever. The machine hated us as no sentient creature had ever hated before. And we were helpless. It also became hideously clear:
If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM." 

- Manna: described as being "a fine, flake-like thing" like the frost on the ground. Exodus states that raw manna tasted like wafers that had been made with honey. Israelites were instructed to eat only the manna they had gathered for each day. Stored manna "bred worms and stank"

- "God as Daddy the Deranged"

- "When AM had altered Benny, during the machine's utterly irrational, hysterical phase, it was not merely Benny's face the computer had made like a giant ape's. He was big in the privates; she loved that! She serviced us, as a matter of course, but she loved it from him. Oh Ellen, pedestal Ellen, pristine-pure Ellen; oh Ellen the clean! Scum filth."

- "I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within."

Alec Karlen

Tilde C

This collection of short stories is my first real exposure to Ellison, and I can say he definitely hasn't been overhyped as a storyteller: He's a clever and extremely competent writer with interesting ideas and a rare mastery of language.

But he's SO WEIRD about women.

I've read a lot of older literature, I'm used to ignoring a level of period-typical misogyny if the work has other qualities, but Ellison is distractingly WEIRD about women. I'd even been forewarned about it, and already in the first story I thought "Well, it's clearly the protagonist's views being shown, an author's gotta be allowed to give his characters unsavory opinions" but it KEPT HAPPENING. It got to the point where I'd feel something tense in the back of my mind whenever he'd introduce a female character, because in this collection they KEEP getting raped and are secretly enjoying it or inviting it, or they exist as stupid and worthless fuck-dolls, and they're ALWAYS false and cruel. In the introductions to each story Ellison keeps bringing up his own sex life, bragging about how many women he's fucked or talking about specific women in his life and explaining what a tragedy it is that he "didn't manage to lay her".

The title story is great! The one female character is raped and the main character resents her for it, though. 'World of Myth' is one of the best "stranded on an alien planet" sci-fi stories I've read! The one female character is raped and the main character resents her for it, though. 'Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes' is a really interesting piece of experimental storytelling! The one female character is a prostitute and by God are we meant to look down on her, though.

Harlan, I'm tired.

Among Ellison's more famous stories, two consistently noted as his very best ever are the Hugo Award–winning, postapocalyptic title story of this collection of seven shorts and the volume's concluding story, “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.” Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we will not call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are utterly unique. They could only have been written by the great Harlan Ellison, and they are incomparably original.

Ashlyn

Ellison's stories aren't expressly *bad*, but they would benefit from better editing (which by his own admission is something he detested). Yes, there's lots of misogyny, but in the way that most fiction written in that time are misogynistic (looking at you, Heinlein). This collection is decent early cyberpunk that should probably be read by anyone who wants to deepen their experience with the genre. It's fine 🤷🏼‍♀️

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

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