Week 10 - I Have No Mouth and Must Scream

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Harlan Ellison's short story, I Have No Mouth and Much Scream, might probably be one of my favourite science fiction readings so far. I found this story haunting and gruesome, and the concept of AM torturing these five people and somehow keeping them alive forever was horribly interesting.

The way each character was described so well, that I could almost feel their pain and you can tell that AM really destroyed these people in ever aspect possible. Something that really caught me off-guard though was the ending. I was really searching for some ray of home that Ted would be able to free himself from AM, but I was horribly wrong seeing that he was turned into an eldritch horror.

While I was looking into the story, I noticed there was a point and click adventure game based off this story and was worked on by Ellison as well. I watched some people play the whole game and how it was done was actually really cool. The game kind of poses as an extension of the short story, because you play as each of the characters and the five sections of the game showcase AM's torture methods for them. Each character basically has to face their own personal hell while facing their past regrets and traumas. After you beat each section, you basically take one of the characters into AM's inner systems and defeat him. I also found that the personalities of each characters were drastically different from the short novel. It kind of seemed like it would be an alternate universe of the short novel, or like a "what could have also happened" situation.

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