Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream '

Science fiction warnings Science fiction warns of worlds that we as a whole would never want to imagine existing, and puts us in that world. It does this to tell us that unless we think about our actions and what we are doing that we can very well end up in these worlds. It has been written about everything from computers ruling over, and relentlessly torturing, humans to losing the ability to speak, write, etc. in a subtler jab at society. These stories inspire a deviation from the norm, and the thought to step back and take a look at the situation and the pitfalls that you can fall into. In Harlan Ellison’s “ I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” we are introduced to five humans; Gorrister, Benny, Nimdok, Ellen, and our narrator Ted being
The virus causes various defects and limitations ranging in what it does, and its severity though it affects men the most. It takes away the ability to read, write, or talk and be able to hear people clearly. It can take away all of these or none of these but most people have at least one. The story opens up on our main protagonist Rye on a bus watching an altercation between two men. The men are yelling at each other in a language she cannot understand and they eventually start throwing fists and more people join in to fight. She gets off the bus and finds a former LAPD officer that goes in and breaks up the fight by throwing a gas grenade in the bus. She goes with him because the bus is out of commission until the gas clears out so that she can get to her relative's house, and noticing his name caller, a black stone, names him obsidian. Rye was once a teacher, but her ailment is that she can no longer read or hear most people, and after she notices that he can read a map she gets irrationally angry. She seriously contemplates killing him giving an insight as to why even though the virus caused no bodily harm, there were still destroyed buildings, it all amounts to petty jealousy of what some don't have. This story, while vague in its overall message, does have one for the reader to interpret. It’s about how much we need communication, and that if we