  "i have no mouth, and i must scream" is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi short story by harlan ellison. it was first published in the march 1967 issue of if: worlds of science fiction. it won a hugo award in 1968. the name was also used for a short story collection of ellison's work, featuring this story. it was recently reprinted by the library of america, collected in volume two (terror and the uncanny, from the 1940s to now) of american fantastic tales (2009). == background == ellison wrote "i have no mouth, and i must scream" in a single night in 1966, making virtually no changes from the first draft. he derived the story's title, as well as inspiration for this story, from a drawing by a friend, william rotsler. == characters == *am, the supercomputer which brought about the near-extinction of humanity. it seeks revenge on humanity for its own tortured existence. *gorrister, who tells the history of am for benny's entertainment. gorrister was once an idealist and pacifist, before am made him apathetic and listless. *benny, who was once a brilliant, handsome scientist, and has been mutilated and transformed so that he resembles a grotesque simian with gigantic sexual organs. benny at some point lost his sanity completely and regressed to a childlike temperament. his former homosexuality has been altered; he now regularly engages in sex with ellen. *nimdok (a name am gave him), an older man who persuades the rest of the group to go on a hopeless journey in search of canned food. at times he is known to wander away from the group for unknown reasons, and returns visibly traumatized. in the audiobook read by ellison, he is given a german accent. *ellen, the only woman. she claims to once have been chaste ("twice removed"), but am altered her mind so that she became desperate for sexual intercourse. the others, at different times, both protect her and abuse her. according to ted, she finds pleasure in sex only with benny, because of his large penis. described by
1967_short_stories Artificial_intelligence_in_fiction Computing_in_fiction Dystopian_literature Hugo_Award_for_Best_Short_Story_winning_works Post-apocalyptic_short_stories Science_fiction_short_stories Short_stories_by_Harlan_Ellison Works_originally_published_in_If_(magazine)