The torment of hunger certainly worked on me as reader. When AM gives them the opportunity to have some fresh meat, it comes in the form of a live roc-which AM has apparently created in its boredom, just to torment the last survivors of its creator race. However, when AM prefers to keep them hungry, it can also keep them alive, even as the pangs gnaw at their innards. The captives are given filth to eat, and they eat to fill their stomachs. On the other hand, some of the tortures the characters endure are quite creative-unexpected. (This is compounded by the fact that Ellison himself is not known for his appropriate behavior toward women.) There is a tacit assumption that this is the kind of setup the characters would fall into, when left to their base natures. The one woman Ellen, whom the four male characters alternately protect and terrorize, has to satisfy them sexually through a hundred and nine years of captivity. However, I cannot rationalize away the discomfort I have with the way the sexual relationships among the characters is portrayed. Their capacities for rationality and civility are impaired the prisoners are made to hate each other, for the amusement of their even more hated captor. One of the most important ways that AM tortures the five surviving humans is by making them become less than human, in a variety of ways. To a certain extent, this is certainly intentional. Or, at least, the narrator is quite sexist. Ellison presents just enough information for the reader to understand the basics of what is going on, but on that account, it just feels too staged. The way the history is laid out seems too brief it doesn’t feel like a narrative that is repeated over and over again, becoming almost ritualistic. Most jarring was context of the brief tale told by Gorrister, one of the five survivors, explaining AM’s origin. Some of the scenes do not really work that effectively, in my opinion. I’m not sure whether Ellison meant this as an homage toward the older story or a jab.Īfter reading the “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” a few times, I think it’s quite good, but it wasn’t quite the masterpiece I was expecting based on its reputation. The computers in both stories were seemingly godlike, although with practically opposite temperaments toward humanity.
I have no mouth and i must scream am meaning series#
To me, this seemed to be a deliberate references to the AC computer series from Asimov’s “ The Last Question” (which I have previously discussed). One thing I immediately noticed was that the evil computer’s name is AM. However, there are a lot of unusually effective elements, and there is also quite a bit of subtext to the narrating character’s account. In some ways, that makes it a rather conventional example of the “vision of hell” genre. It keeps the final five alive, virtually immortal, to be subjected to every kind of torture that its machine brain can devise. The narrative tells of the last five survivors of the human race, who are imprisoned by a defense computer network that became sentient and wiped out everyone else. If you haven’t read it yourself, have a look it’s not very long. (There are other versions online, but beware: some of them are missing a key piece of dialogue, as well as the graphical elements that Ellison inserted as scene break markers.) It’s quite a story-a vision of with some really unusual elements.
The short story, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” is quite famous, and it’s available here. I decided to remedy this just a little last week, when I stumbled on one of his most famous works freely available on the World-Wide Web. However, I have not actually read that many of his stories. Harlan Ellison is one of the most respected living authors of science fiction.
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