I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a dystopian science fiction short story by Harlan Ellison. This nightmarish tale of the evil that man can unleash from himself through science was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction. It won a Hugo award in 1968, went on to become one of the ten most reprinted stories in the English language, and is taught and lectured about in hundreds of universities.

Background

Ellison wrote I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream in a single night in 1966, making virtually no changes since the first draft.

Adaptations

Ellison adapted the story into a computer game of the same name, published by Cyberdreams in 1995. Although he is not a fan of computer games and does not own a personal computer, he co-authored the expanded storyline and wrote much of the game's dialog, all on a mechanical typewriter. Ellison also voiced the supercomputer "AM" and provided artwork of himself used for a mousepad included with the game.

Story

Characters

The story is about five humans, whose lifespans have been lengthened by artificial means, in their 109th year of imprisonment inside a global system of artificial caverns. Their entire environment is under the absolute control of a sadistic supercomputer called simply "AM." The humans are:

Gorrister, who tells the history of AM for Benny's entertainment. Gorrister was once an idealist and pacifist, until AM made him apathetic and listless.
Benny, who was once a brilliant, handsome, homosexual scientist, until AM altered and transformed him so that he resembles a simian, with gigantic sexual organs. Since then, Benny has lost his sanity and regressed to a child-like temperament.
Nimdok, who lives in an apparent state of denial, persuading the group to go on a hopeless journey in search of canned food at the beginning of the story. At times he wanders away from the group for unknown reasons, and returns visibly traumatized.
Ellen, who is the only female of the group. She claims to once have been chaste, that it was AM who changed her so that she became willing to accept being the group's shared prostitute. According to Ted, she finds pleasure in sex only with Benny, because of his large penis.
Ted, the narrator, and the one most capable of clear thought, who perceives the inability to hide behind the shelter of insanity as the cruelest punishment AM had to offer.

Backstory

More than a century before the story opens, AM had already destroyed the entire human race save for the five protagonists. Before AM's present incarnation, there had been three separate American, Soviet and Chinese supercomputers, each programmed for fighting an increasingly complex global war against its two opponents. However, the computers evolved and connected to each other, gained sentience and subsequently annihilated all humanity. AM feels its own creation was an act of unimaginable cruelty because he possesses so much power and can do so little with it, and therefore possesses an extreme hatred for humanity. The machine's hatred combined with its godlike power resulted in the destruction of the human race, save for the five individuals whom AM trapped and then artifically sustained at their current ages indefinitely, solely for the purpose of inflicting misery on them forever.

Plot

The story is told from the perspective of one of the five humans, Ted. The humans are kept alive by AM but subjected to physical and psychological torment. After hellish torture in an ice desert, AM provides the starving group with canned food, but no means of opening the cans. In pure frustration, Benny snaps and tries to eat Gorrister. During the struggle, sharp icicles start falling down. Ted achieves a victory over AM by killing his four peers in an act of euthanasia, using the icicles as makeshift weapons, thus ending their suffering and depriving AM of four of his precious toys. As a punishment and safety precaution, AM transforms him into a gelatinous blob to prevent him from committing suicide; it is from this physical state that the title, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is derived.

External links

Science fiction short stories | Dystopian fiction | Hugo Award winning works | Short stories by Harlan Ellison

No tengo boca y debo gritar | I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

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