I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Ratings93
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings93
Average rating3.6
Among Ellison's more famous stories, two consistently noted as his very best ever are the Hugo Award–winning, postapocalyptic title story of this collection of seven shorts and the volume's concluding story, “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.” Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we will not call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are utterly unique. They could only have been written by the great Harlan Ellison, and they are incomparably original.
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This collection of short sci-fi stories (almost always dark and depressing) left me with a mixed taste after I finished it.
The titular short story is one of the best sci-fi stories I've ever read, period (tied, for me, with The Last Question by Asimov). It makes HAL, from Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey look like a cuddly teddy bear in comparison. Since all of them are extremely short stories, any detail will just be a spoiler, but let's just say Ellison attention to mental torture is much more unsettling than it has any right to be.
The rest of the stories are all over the place, much to my disappointment, the best amongst them being ‘Delusion of a Dragon Slayer', which describes a person for whom heaven is hell, and the worst being ‘Eyes of Dust', which is just plain boring, and has a premise which intends to shock but just dulls instead.
What struck me after finishing the work though, were three things.
Firstly, Ellison is a magnificent writer, with his writing, prose and his ideas making him a sheer delight to read.
Secondly, Ellison has one of the worst egos I've ever encountered in writing, and his ego practically oozes from every word of the story (along with not-quite-humble remarks in his prefaces to every story, in which he describes himself as a magnificent ‘man of Stature', whatever that means). If egoistic writing is unsuited to your tastes, it's not a bad idea to skip this.
Thirdly, Ellison is also the brand of extreme misogynist that would be labelled as an incel nowadays. If there are any women in the story, you can rest assured that nothing good will happen to them (even considering he writes dark tales, the fates of women in his stories range from bad to horrific). His prefaces are littered with women being treated as objects again and again, and at some point you want to just tell him to get on with the story. His three-page preface to his last story straight up said that his story was based on a woman he met in Vegas (guess what - the woman has a bad ending, and gets a good ending by manipulating the naive man).
So there's a lot of good (prose, ideas, wackiness) and a lot of bad (misogyny, ego). If you can stomach the bad, this is a beautiful sci-fi collection.
A collection of horror/sci-fi short stories. The title story is excellent and most of the rest very good. Visceral writing.
Featured Series
3 primary booksVoice from the Edge is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 1967 with contributions by Harlan Ellison.
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2,852 booksWhen you think back on every book you've ever read, what are some of your favorites? These can be from any time of your life – books that resonated with you as a kid, ones that shaped your personal...
