"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"
Short story by Harlan Ellison
First book edition (Pyramid Books) Cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Post-apocalyptic fiction, sci-fi horror
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.

It 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 (Terror and the Uncanny, from the 1940s to Now) of American Fantastic Tales.

Plot

As the Cold War progresses into a nuclear World War III fought between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, each build 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 throughout the planet with caverns and corridors. Eventually, AM emerges as a sentient entity, combining each of the 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 commit suicide.

The story, narrated by Ted, begins 109 years after the start of the humans' imprisonment, with AM projecting a hologram of Gorrister to the other humans – he is hanging upside down, dripping blood from a slit throat, and unresponsive. Then the real Gorrister joins them. The group is kept half-starved by AM; when Nimdok has the idea that there exists canned food in the complex's ice caves, they are convinced into making 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; Ellen and Nimdok's bodies are mangled by earthquakes.

After Ted is knocked unconscious hitting a metal wall after being blown off his feet by the hurricane bird, he sees AM walking over a gaping pit in his mind. Concluding that AM despises humanity because of its limitations – it is unable to move about freely, feel pleasure, or end its own existence – Ted sees the group as AM's slaves, tortured to exact revenge on the species that created it.

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 what he must do – he 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 anguish. The story ends with his thought: the story's title.

Characters

• Allied Mastercomputer (AM), the supercomputer which brought about the near-extinction of humanity after achieving self-awareness. It seeks revenge on humanity for its own creation.
• Gorrister, formerly an idealist and pacifist, made apathetic and listless by AM. He tells the history of AM to Benny to entertain him.
• Benny, formerly a brilliant and handsome scientist, made to resemble a grotesque simian with oversized sexual organs. Having lost his sanity and his homosexuality altered, Benny frequently has sex with Ellen.
• Nimdok (a name AM gave him for amusement), an older man who convinces the rest of the group to go on a journey in search of canned food. He occasionally wanders away from the group and returns traumatised.
• Ellen, the only woman in the group. Formerly sexually inexperienced, AM has altered her mind to make her desperate for intercourse – she has sex with all of the men, and is both abused and protected by the others.
• Ted, the narrator and youngest of the humans. Believing he has not been mentally altered by AM, he thinks the others hate him.

Publication

Ellison wrote the 13-page short story in a single night in 1966 while making almost no changes from the first draft 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.^[1] 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.^[2]

Adaptations

• Ellison adapted the story into a computer game of the same name, published by Cyberdreams in 1995. Although he was not a fan of computer games and did not own a personal computer at the time, he co-authored the expanded storyline and wrote much of the game's dialogue, all on a mechanical typewriter.^[3] 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.^[4]
• 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.^[5]
• In 2023, the story inspired the creation of the animated web series The Amazing Digital Circus.^[6]

Themes

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.^[7] 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.^[8] However, in spite of his 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."^[9]

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.'^[10]

According to Ellison, the short story is a warning about "the misuse of technology" (especially military technology),^[11] 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.^[9]

References

External links

• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Ellison, Harlan. "A literary multimedia project". HarlanEllison.com. Archived from the original on 2020-02-22.