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. The story was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction. The story won a Hugo award in 1968. In addition, the story was adapted into a computer game in 1995. Ellison wrote story and dialogues for the game, and voiced the supercomputer "AM".

Related Topics:
Dystopia - Science fiction - Harlan Ellison - 1967 - Hugo award - 1968 - Computer game - 1995

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The story is about five humans who are trapped inside the belly of the supercomputer "AM", namely

Related Topics:
Humans - Supercomputer - AM

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• Gorrister, who knows the history of AM. He was once an idealist and pacifist, until AM made him apathetic and listless.
• Benny, who was once a brillant, handsome, homosexual scientist, until AM transformed him into a simian with gigantic sexual organs and took away his sanity.
• Nimdok, who lives in a state of denial, persuading the group to go on a hopeless journey in search of canned food at the beginning of the story.
• Ellen, who is the only female. She claims to once have been chaste, but AM made her more or less willingly accept being the group's prostitute.
• Ted, the Narrator, who seems to be the only one capable of thinking straight, and perceives the inability to hide behind the shelter of insanity as the cruelest punishment AM had to offer.

AM has destroyed the rest of the human race. In the beginning, there was an American, a Soviet and a Chinese supercomputer, each programmed for a global war against its two opponents. But then, the computers connected to each other, gained sentience and annihilated humanity. AM feels its own creation was an act of unimagineable cruelty, 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 five humans which AM saved solely for the purpose of inflicting endless suffering upon.

Related Topics:
Sentience - Humanity - Cruelty - Hatred - Suffering

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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 using the icicles as makeshift weapons while the computer is distracted by the struggle, thus ending their suffering and depriving AM of four of his precious toys. However, as a punishment and safety precaution, AM transforms him into a gelatinous blob in order to prevent him from committing suicide; hence the title, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream."

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