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Review: The Harlan Ellison collection: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream – In which there are more mouths than expected

Novel: Sci-fi, Horror, Fantasy. Contains disturbing imagery, violence, and adult situations. 

 Before this book I was unacquainted with Harlan Ellison, and though I was aware of “I have no mouth and I must scream” I just hadn't read it and I didn't know the name of the author. After receiving this collection as a Christmas gift, I soon found that the story exceeded my expectations, mostly because it was quite different then I had expected.

The story is this: Five humans are being kept prisoner by a computer in the not so far away future, after the computer destroys humanity, the computer consumed with a hatred for humanity has chosen these five to live in an environment created by him and be tortured and mocked forever. The computer, named AM, has complete control over the entire world that the humans must survive in and has genetically modified all of them to suit his needs.

There is a sickening sort of awfulness surrounding the things that AM does to them, though he (It) prefers mind games to actually harming them. Each of prisoner is clinging on to the last bits of sanity, they barely have the will to keep on going. And it is shown how much they resent one another, they are real people, and Ellison does a good job of showing us the perspectives of characters in both this story and the other ones in the collection. Despite how grim this and other stories in the collection are, a few of them have a sort of hopeful ending. He says in an author’s note that this is because his earlier work is slightly more optimistic than his later work.

I’d rate the stories in it varying between Good and Brilliant. (If you haven’t read any of my other posts then this shows you how I rate books Awful - Bad - Good - Great – Brilliant.)

On the whole, if you are looking for good sci-fi, then I suggest this book. Each piece of sci-fi has unique settings told from well form perspectives, and the stories are highly imaginative. So if you are looking for a collection of interesting sci-fi, with a little bit of horror mixed into a few stories (Not a distracting level o f horror, but enough to create tension) then I suggest you pick up this title. 

Thank you for reading and have a nice day! 
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