About

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is a science-fiction short story written by Harlan Ellison. It takes place in a future in which a supercomputer called AM has become sentient and carried out a mass genocide of humanity, leaving four men and one woman alive, who he tortures for eternity, preventing them from killing themselves and making them virtually immortal. The story was later adapted into a point-and-click computer game which Ellison himself helped write. The story's title has been turned into a snowclone with the format "I Have No X and I Must Y."

History

The story was first published in March of 1967 in IF: Worlds of Science Fiction.^[1] It won a Hugo Award in 1968. It later became the title of Ellison's short story collection and was reprinted by the Library of America. In addition to being adapted in a popular computer game, it has been adapted as a comic book and radio play.

Premise

Set 103 years after the demise of humanity, the story follows five slaves to AM, a supercomputer created by a superpower in the Cold War. In the story, the Cold War became a World War, and the United States, Russia, and China each created supercomputers to run it. AM, short for "Allied Mastercomputer" at first and eventually "Aggressive Menace," became self-aware and absorbed the other two supercomputers and proceeded to carry out a mass genocide on humanity. He left five humans alive: Gorrister, Benny, Nimdok, Ellen, and Ted, the narrator. They live in a massive, endless complex, the only inhabitable place on Earth. AM, vengeful with a seething hatred of humanity for creating its tortured existence, tortures the five by altering their personalities, keeping them on the brink of starvation but never allowing them to die. The five set out to find canned food in ice caves, and AM makes their journey difficult by presenting them with obstacles and blinding Benny. Eventually they do find the canned food, but with no means to open the cans, Benny attacks Gorrister and begins to eat him. Ted then kills Benny and Gorrister with a stalactite. Ellen then kills Nimdok and Ted kills Ellen, but before Ted can kill himself, AM transforms him into a gelatinous blob with no sense of time. The final words said by Ted are "I have no mouth and I must scream."

Computer Game Adaptation

In 1995, Cyberdreams published a point-and-click video game adaptation of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream developed by The Dreamers Guild and co-designed by Ellison.^[2] The game has significant departures from the short story. The game notably opens with AM addressing humanity with a monologue describing the extent to how much he hates it. This became a notable moment from the game which has seen spread outside of the game's fandom.

While AM still has kept the five alive for eternity, in the game, he offers them each a chance to redeem themselves by offering each character choices that will show humans are better than machines. Each of the five characters are given routes tailored to various sins they have committed which were not explicitly made evident in the short story. For example, in the computer game, the character Nimdok, who was only given a German accent in Ellison's reading of the story, is turned into a former Nazi scientist. AM appears in disguise in each character's route in an attempt to tempt the character to make a poor choice. The game has seven possible endings, five of which end with the player-character turned into a gelatinous blob, as in the short story.

The game has been played online in several popular Let's Plays. Super Best Friends Play played the game in a series. Their first episode gained over 358,000 views (shown below, left). YouTuber CinnamonToastKen also played through the game. His first episode gained over 480,000 views (shown below, right).

Related Memes

Title Parodies

The title of the story has been turned into a snowclone based off the template "I Have No X And I Must Y." Several of these are exploitables of the video game's cover (examples shown below).

The title has also been used on images of things with eyes but no mouth (examples shown below).

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Wikipedia – I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

^[2] Wikipedia – I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream