Let's Read: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison (1967)
Channel: A Fascinating Chap
Date: 04/01/2022

This Hugo-winning short story treats precisely the same situation as does Zelazny's, exploring again the relationship of humanity to machinery, and comes up with a radically different mood and conclusion. Here the Bible allusions are not primarily to Jesus but to Jonah; the whale is a monster we have made for ourselves. Like Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, Harlan Ellison's humans are subject to the powers they have unleashed. In the modern mode, this machine has no limbs but is pure mechanical intelligence, a mirror of a human obsession.