![]() ![]() Harlan Ellison was born on May 27, 1934, in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Louis Laverne and Serita Rosenthal Ellison. However, as the sole survivor, the narrator must live horribly alone, his mind intact but his body rendered into a slimy blob without mouth or expression. His murder of the other four survivors releases them from AM. In the final scene, the narrator triumphs over the machine in a bittersweet victory. Although AM often appears to be godlike, it is no god, for as George Edward Slusser points out in his study Harlan Ellison: Unrepentant Harlequin (1977), AM cannot create life, although it can prevent the survivors from dying. It quickly runs data to kill all on Earth except for five survivors on whom to play out its sadistic and revenge-filled games. ![]() The computers created by humans to fight their wars for them join together into one linked and unified computer, AM, which discovers sentience. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is a horrifying look into a post-apocalyptic hell. Perhaps more accurately, the story can be read simultaneously as all of the above. One of Ellison’s most frequently anthologized stories, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” can be read as a cautionary tale about nuclear proliferation, as a warning about the relationship between people and computers, or as an expression of the destructive power of thwarted creativity. The story won a Hugo Award in 1968 and quickly became a favorite story among Ellison’s readers and critics alike. It was later collected in the book I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, also published in 1967. Harlan Ellison’s short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” originally appeared in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction.
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