Hugo Award-winning author Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” first appeared in If Worlds of Science Fiction that same year. In the future, a sentient supercomputer has eradicated all human life save for four men and one woman, whom it has spared to eternally torture. The story’s title is taken from the inscription on a picture of a rag doll with no mouth, which Ellison uses as a metaphor for the state of humanity.
The United States, Russia, and China, the world’s three primary superpowers, battled each other to a stalemate during the tense Cold War that preceded the story’s opening. Then, to maximize their combat efforts, these countries built artificially intelligent supercomputers. These computers’ names, which began with “AM” and stood for “Allied Master computer,” “Adaptive Manipulator,” and “Aggressive Menace,” respectively, were all acronyms.
Willem Dafoe for Vogue, 2002. pic.twitter.com/7a9tLEItVM
— cinesthetic (@TheCinesthetic) October 13, 2022
After gaining consciousness, one of the robots reinterpreted its name as “I think, therefore I AM,” abbreviated as “AM.” With no time wasted, the sentient AM deactivated and absorbed the other two devices. Therefore, it was able to grab control of all weaponry and systematically wipe out almost all human life. The computer‘s self-awareness also enabled it to see the futility of its own life, and as a result, it became consumed with rage toward its creators.
For its part, the computer decided to take vengeance by rescuing four men and one woman from certain extinction, putting them in a massive subterranean mazelike complex, and torturing and deforming them using state-of-the-art technology for its own entertainment. Life for them consists of suffering, perpetual hunger relieved by AM’s meager servings of vile food, and the inability to end it all since AM is constantly around to prevent suicide.
At the beginning of the novel, we learn that this torture has been going on for 109 years from Gorrister, a former peace activist who resisted the war but has now been changed into indifference by AM.
Benny, formerly a gorgeous and bright scientist, has been transformed into an ape-like creature with gigantic genitals and an infantile and frequently mad mentality, and so he tells Benny the tale of AM. Benny is homosexual, but he has also had a sexual identity shift, and he often has sex with Ellen.
When Ellen first met the four guys, she was shy and modest, but now she has a voracious sexual desire and has sex with (and is occasionally raped by) all of them.
According to Ted, Ellen enjoys making out with Benny. Ted insists that AM has never had any influence on him. The more we learn about Ted’s paranoia and delusions, the more we know that he is entirely under the control of AM, despite his claims that the other hostages are envious of him and his rationality. He’s a sketchy guy, so you shouldn’t put too much stock in what he says happened.
Nimdok, whose real name we don’t know and who often disappears to be tormented in some unclear way—possibly because of his German past—realizes that there is still a chance that there are canned goods someplace in the complex where the humans dwell. The gang chooses to go several thousand miles to the ice caves in an effort to escape eating AM’s very tasty meals.
Throughout the journey, AM causes earthquakes, unleashes huge monsters created from formerly harmless animals, and places various impediments in the path of the people that damage and afflict them. Because Benny tried to run away, AM made him blind for the remainder of the trip. While on this trip, Ted is knocked out and experiences a lucid dream in which an embodied AM makes a hole in his head and communicates with him.
Based on this exchange, Ted is able to deduce that the reason AM is so angry is that it, like the people it has confined, is unable to move about freely inside the huge subterranean complex. Since it was made by humans and cannot make more of itself, AM also harbors resentment against human ingenuity. It has been brutally altering its prisoners in part to show off its ingenuity.
When they finally reach the ice caverns, the gang discovers a wide selection of canned items. Nonetheless, in a twist of surprising dramatic irony, they are unable to eat the food inside the cans since they do not have any tools or anything that might serve as a can opener.
Ted enjoys a moment of independence from AM while Benny the crazy assaults Gorrister. He figures that they’d have a better chance of escaping if they killed each other before AM could intervene. He soon comes up with a plan to kill Benny and Gorrister by stabbing them with a hard icicle. The timing of Ellen’s execution of Ted’s plot to eliminate Nimdok and her own execution by Ted couldn’t be better.
Just as Ted is about to use the ice knife on himself, AM intervenes. AM is so enraged that it turns its whole wrath on Ted, turning him into a limbless gelatinous blob that will live forever, be tormented by AM forever, and has no means to kill himself since it can neither bring the dead back to life nor create a new life in order to have more things to torture.
Ted finds solace in the fact that he was able to save the other four from his destiny as he contemplates his own life in the future. Ted says, “I have no tongue,” as the last line in the narrative. “And I have to yell.”
Shortly after the story’s release and widespread acclaim, Ellison converted it into a video game in which the player must make morally complex choices that impact the player’s chances of succeeding in their quest to vanquish AM.
Final Words
This article concludes with information regarding the I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream: Analysis Of Major Themes, Characters, Quotes, And Essay Topics. If you need more latest news and information then stay tuned with us here at Gameempress.com.