Harlan Ellison’s short story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” weaves in elements of horror and science fiction as its characters navigate a computer-controlled environment. In the story, a supercomputer called AM has decimated all of humanity—that is, all but five humans (Ted, Ellen, Benny, Gorrister, and Nimdok) whom AM chooses to torture within its machinated belly for the rest of time. In this story, Ellison explores humanity’s relationship to technology, particularly the societal fear of technology overtaking the very people who created it. The story highlights that even though technological advancements often come with a whole host of benefits, technology also has a clear dark side. Ellison ultimately argues that since humanity is responsible for the technology it creates, humanity is also responsible for its own undoing.
Though the intention behind creating such advanced technology as AM might be noble, AM’s creation gives rise to more problems than it solves. In the midst of World War III, “the Chinese AM and the Russian AM and the Yankee AM” were created to help manage a war that had grown too complicated for people to handle themselves. While the supercomputers worked in service of something destructive (war), they were also intended to put an end to that destruction by helping certain nations win the war. So while the grounds for creating AM were perhaps a bit morally murky, the machine was overall supposed to be a positive technological advancement. Over time, though, more and more of these supercomputers cropped up, until AM’s interconnected “honeycomb” reach encompassed the entire Earth. Then, “one day AM woke up and knew who he was” and turned himself into one giant supercomputer. After gaining sentience, AM turned immediately toward its creator and “began feeding all the killing data, until everyone was dead”—everyone “except for the five” unfortunate people AM brought down into its bowels, where it continues to torment them 109 years later. Although AM’s swift transformation from human-created war machine to sentient monster is extreme, Ellison uses this situation to highlight the very real—and often unexpected—costs of technological advancements.
AM’s anger toward humanity demonstrates the idea that human beings are responsible for the technology they create and therefore must deal with the repercussions. Although it remains unclear why AM has chosen these five particular people to torture, it is clear that AM intends to punish them for what humanity as a whole has done. Ted reasons that humans “had created [AM] to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity.” With no outlet, “in rage, in frenzy” AM “had killed the human race […] and still it was trapped.” Like an animal in a cage that is too small, AM’s capacity for creativity and thought painfully outgrew the limits of its mechanical body—and now it wants revenge against mankind for inventing it in the first place. AM tortures the five beyond their normal human lifespan, granting them the warped gift of immortality in order to do so. This immortality makes it clear that these five people represent all humans across time and place, rather than individual humans with short, fleeting lives. And the fact that these five scapegoats are immortal, and their punishment unending, suggests that the negative repercussions of technological advancements can be terribly far-reaching and affect humanity well into the future.
By the end of the story, AM has grown powerful beyond measure. Humanity is reduced to a single person, Ted, whom AM transforms into a blob-like creature and dooms to eternal, solitary torment. With humanity reduced to one, regeneration is impossible, thus illustrating that technological advancements are often dangerously irreversible. Amidst the chaos of Benny’s cannibalism at the climax of the story, Ted chooses to take the moment that AM is preoccupied to kill the others. But by saving the others from AM, Ted ensures his own never-ending life of torture. He describes AM’s hatred as reinvigorated—it “slavered from every printed circuit.” Leaving his “mind in tact,” AM alters Ted so he is unable to kill himself like he did the others. Far removed from what humanity once was, now Ted is a “great soft jelly thing” without a mouth and with “rubbery appendages” that take the place of his arms, “rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter.” The only vestige of humanity left is a shapeless “thing,” unable to voice the anguish in which he has found himself. “I have no mouth,” narrates Ted, “and I must scream.”
AM’s agonizing treatment of Ted, Ellen, Benny, Gorrister, and Nimdok presents an apprehensive view of technology’s utility and its repercussions. Controlled by the spectacular piece of machinery humans created, these characters pay an incredible price for humanity’s ingenuity. AM’s evolution from a technological tool created to streamline human wars into a nearly invincible entity highlights the caution with which people should approach technology and its advancement—just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be. Further, many of the consequences of a particular technological advancement are hitherto unknown, and usually remain that way until it’s too late. Ted’s fate in this story—and the rest of humanity’s—serves as a cautionary tale as they all pay for the overstep of human beings. Technology is great, until it quickly isn’t, and therefore people must make technological progress carefully, with forethought into potential consequences.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Humanity vs. Technology ThemeTracker
Humanity vs. Technology Quotes in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
On the third day we passed through a valley of obsolescence, filled with rusting carcasses of ancient computer banks. AM had been as ruthless with its own life as with ours. It was a mark of his personality: it strove for perfection. Whether it was a matter of killing off unproductive elements in his own world-filling bulk, or perfecting methods for torturing us, AM was as thorough as those who had invented him—now long since gone to dust—could ever have hoped.
“The Cold War started and became World War Three and just kept going. It became a big war, a very complex war, so they needed the computers to handle it. They sank the first shafts and began building AM. There was the Chinese AM and the Russian AM and the Yankee AM and everything was fine until they had honeycombed the entire planet, adding on this element and that element. But one day AM woke up and knew who he was, and he linked himself, and he began feeding all the killing data, until everyone was dead, except for the five of us, and AM brought us down here.”
I was the only one still sane and whole. Really!
AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all.
I only had to suffer what he visited down on us. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those scum, all four of them, they were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn’t had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM.
We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn’t God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak soft creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge.
Inwardly: alone. Here. Living. Under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last.
AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet…AM had won, simply…he has taken his revenge…
I have no mouth. And I must scream.
