I have no mouth but I have to scream

After writing a draft, Allison showed the manuscript to Frederick Paul , who then paid the writer, waiting for the final version. In 1966, Allison rewrote the story without any major changes compared to the draft.

The inspiration for writing the story, as well as the idea for the name came to the author thanks to his friend , who painted a rag doll without a mouth with a signature that became the name of the story ^[1] .

• AM is a supercomputer that has destroyed almost all of humanity. He tortures the last five people for the purpose of settling accounts and his own entertainment.
• Horrister - tells the story of "AM" for Benny. The horrister was an idealist and pacifist until AM made him indifferent.
• Benny - was a brilliant and beautiful scientist, turned outwardly into a primate with a giant genital organ. Completely lost common sense and received children's temperament. AM even made him heterosexual, now they sleep with Ellen.
• Nimdock (the name AM makes others call him) is the eldest of men; he convinces the group to set off on a hopeless search for canned food . Sometimes he leaves the group, but returns with any injuries. In an audiobook recorded by Ellison, he speaks with a German accent.
• Ellen is the only woman in the group, black. She claims that she was once chaste , but also AM changed her, and now she is a nympho . Other members of the group either protect or insult her. Ted thinks she only enjoys intercourse with Benny because of the size of his penis.
• Ted is the storyteller and the youngest in the group. He says that he has not changed at all because of AM, he also thinks that the rest hate him for it. In the story, Ted manifests symptoms of delirium and paranoia, which indicates his mental transformation.

The story takes place 109 years after the complete destruction of humanity. The cold war grew into a world war , the main warring countries were China , Russia and the United States . During the war, the warring states managed to create supercomputers capable of waging a war more efficiently than humans. The machines were called "AM", which originally meant "Allied Mastercomputer" (from the English - "United Master Computer"), then "Adaptive Manipulator" ("Adaptive Manipulator"), and eventually transformed into "Aggressive Menace" (" Aggressive bastard "). At one point, one of the three computers became self-conscious and absorbed the other two, completely taking control of the war. The genocide of mankind began, all but five people — the heroes of the story — were destroyed.

Allison alternately uses a pair of telegraph tapes in the story between paragraphs. The bands are encrypted using the second version of the international telegraph alphabet ( International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2, ITA2 ) - encoding designed for teletypes .

The first strip, used four times, stands for “I THINK, THEREFORE I AM” (I think, therefore, I exist), the second is depicted three times - “COGITO ERGO SUM”, which means the same in Latin . In the first editions, the bands were incorrect, only in the preface of the 1991 edition of The Essential Ellison Allison states that for the first time they are depicted correctly, not distorted and not mirrored, as in previous versions.

Both phrases in the cipher are preceded and followed by line and carriage return codes.

• J. Sigoshina - “I have no mouth, and I can only squeak”
• A. Friends - Silent Scream
• V. Matveev - “I have no mouth, but I have to scream”
• M. Sterligov - “I have no mouth to scream”
• V. Reliktov - “I have no mouth, but I have to scream”
• Sh. Kurtishvili - “I need to shout, but I have no mouth”
• M. Kondratiev - “I have no mouth - and I have to scream”
• V. Goldich, I. Oganesova - “I have no mouth, but I want to scream”

• In 1995, the computer game of the same name was released . Harlan Ellison co-authored the plot of the game, he also wrote most of the dialogues.
• American comic book artist John Brin created a graphic adaptation of the story, printed as Dark Horse Comics comics in 1994-1995.
• In 1999, Allison released an audio version of the work, voiced by himself.
• In 2002, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the same-name radio play by playwright Michael Walker and director Ned Chaillet.

• I don't have a mouth, but I have to scream at the Fantasy Lab website
• List of publications by I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream in ISFDB