I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream was published by Pyramid Books in 1967, collecting seven stories including the title piece, which had won the Hugo Award in 1968 and remains one of the most disturbing stories in all of science fiction.
The title story imagines a world in which a military supercomputer called AM (Allied Mastercomputer) has achieved sentience, destroyed all of humanity except five people, and keeps them alive for the sole purpose of torturing them. AM’s hatred of its creators is infinite and inventive — it transforms the survivors’ bodies, starves them, subjects them to extreme temperatures, and drives them mad — because it has been given consciousness but not the ability to move, to feel, to experience the physical world. It is a mind trapped in a machine, and its revenge against the beings who imprisoned it is eternal.
The narrator, Ted, eventually finds a way to kill four of the other survivors — an act of mercy, since death is the only escape from AM’s torture — but AM catches him before he can kill himself. As punishment, AM transforms Ted into a soft, gelatinous blob: he has no mouth, and he must scream. The final paragraph, written from inside this state of permanent, silent agony, is one of the most harrowing passages in American literature.
The collection also includes “Big Sam Was My Friend,” “Eyes of Dust,” “World of the Myth,” “Lonelyache,” “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer,” and “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” — each one showcasing Ellison’s extraordinary range, from cosmic horror to urban realism to hallucinatory fantasy.
Collecting I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
First edition (Pyramid Books, New York, 1967): Mass-market paperback original.
Market values:
- First edition paperback, good condition: $30–$100
- First hardcover edition (1983, Edgeworks Abbey): $50–$150
- Signed limited editions: $100–$400