I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Paperback, 175 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 1974 by Pyramid Books.

OCLC Number:
1204306

View on OpenLibrary

(72 reviews)

This is a story set in a post-apocalyptic future. The Cold War progressed until it was too complicated for humans to manage, so the three major superpowers each developed a computer program to help run the war. When one of the programs becomes sentient it eliminates all of the human race except five persons, which it tortures for eternity.

3 editions

Review of 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream' on 'Goodreads'

If this was published after 1980, I would have given it one star. Being honest, I read I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream for AM's hate speech, and nothing else. The book itself is an amalgamation of obscene (and unrealistic) gore, with little-to-no character development and an unreliable narrator. All-in-all, I'd just recommend you play the game instead of reading the book. While media adapted from literature is oftentimes pathetic compared to the source material, the video game adaptation of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream far outperforms what is presented here. If you really want to read this, I'd recommend an audiobook, as listening to somebody read it gives some semblance of emotion.

Review of 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

To possess power compared to that of a God and yet be shackled by the limitations of a material vessel could certainly be compared to the dichotomy of the lambless worshiper, in both of these cases one is confronted with an unlimited reservoir of will to action and yet the medium through which that action could be actualized is either nonexistent or completely out of reach.

A (self proclaimed) God without the means to enact its doing. A worshiper without the sacrificial vessel to appease the desires of his divinity. Both of these paths are crafted alongside that of a destructive corruption that annihilates from the inside out. The will, once a source of strength for its possessor, becomes a parasite ready to feast upon the flesh of its carrier (or if you would rather, the transistors of its processor?).

There is really not much I can say regarding this …

Review of 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream' on 'Goodreads'

The short story in the title itself has a special charm with touching such sensitive themes, yet it's more important in the sense of showing how a way of a completely artifical world could work, how could an artifical reality reach actuality through not having any kind of "exit" by the senses or even ideas. Almost everything in a human being can be altered in a way or other.

In my opinion, the aspect of a depicted Artifical Intelligence itself is very science fiction here, but the unsetting and disturbing aspect is sensing how much we rely on perception itself, how fragile our memory and body is especially compared to computers. What and why AM does in the story is science fiction. How AM does everything however, is not.

Ellison is truly a fascinating author, he clearly doesn't care about any genre, origin or even science-fiction in general, only ideas …

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