I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream Read online

  I HAVE NO MOUTH & I MUST SCREAM

  is an Edgeworks Abbey™ Offering in association with E-Reads®.

  Published by arrangement with the Author and The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

  I HAVE NO MOUTH & I MUST SCREAM

  by Harlan Ellison®

  Copyright © 1967, 1979 by Harlan Ellison

  Renewed © 1983 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 0-7592-8662-0

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7592-8662-7

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical—including photocopy, recording, Internet posting, electronic bulletin board—or any other information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Author or the Author’s agent, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio, television or in a recognized on-line journal. For information address Author’s agent: Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., 171 East 74th Street, New York, New York 10021 USA.

  All persons, places and organizations in this book—except those clearly in the public domain—are fictitious, and any resemblance that may seem to exist to actual persons, places or organizations living, dead or defunct is purely coincidental. These are works of fiction.

  First E-Reads publication: June, 2008

  www.ereads.com

  Front Cover Illustration by Leo & Diane Dillon.

  Copyright © 1966 by Leo & Diane Dillon.

  Renewed, © 1994 by Leo & Diane Dillon.

  Harlan Ellison website: www.harlanellison.com.

  “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream” originally appeared in IF: Worlds of Science Fiction, March 1967; copyright © 1967 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Copyright reassigned to Author 3 December 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Harlan Ellison.

  “Big Sam Was My Friend” originally appeared in Science Fiction Adventures, March 1958; copyright © 1958 by Royal Publications, Inc. Copyright reassigned to Author 18 September 1959. Copyright © 1959 by Harlan Ellison.

  “Eyes of Dust” originally appeared in Rogue Magazine, December 1959; copyright © 1959 by Greenleaf Publishing Co. Copyright reassigned to Author 18 May 1965. Copyright © 1965 by Harlan Ellison.

  “World of the Myth,” “Lonelyache,” “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” (in a somewhat abbreviated version) and “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” originally appeared in Knight Magazine, August 1964, July 1964, September 1966 and May 1967 respectively; copyright © 1964, 1966, and 1967 by Sirkay Publishing Co. Copyrights on the former three titles reassigned to Author 16 April 1968; copyright on the final title above reassigned to Author 19 September 1967. Copyrights © 1967 and 1968 by Harlan Ellison.

  NOTE: Each of the preceding titles has been revised for this edition for the first time since publication of the original edition of this volume. All rights reserved by the Author.

  CONTENTS

  ECHOES OF SCREAMS, 1983

  INTRODUCTION

  FOREWORD

  I HAVE NO MOUTH & I MUST SCREAM

  BIG SAM WAS MY FRIEND

  EYES OF DUST

  WORLD OF THE MYTH

  LONELYACHE

  DELUSION FOR A DRAGON SLAYER

  PRETTY MAGGIE MONEYEYES

  ECHOES OF SCREAMS, 1983

  Virtually every line of this collection of stories has been revised for this new publication. What I consider to be at least four of my best stories are included in this volume. Those four needed very little attention, a comma here, a semicolon there. The introduction and the foreword have not been altered. Ted Sturgeon’s dear words were very important to me in 1967 when they were shining new and this collection became the instrument that propelled my work and my career forward. To alter those words, or to solicit a new introduction by someone else, would be to diminish the gift that Ted conferred on me. This book has been in print constantly for sixteen years. And I take no small pleasure and pride in its contents. Only this need be said: I have learned the difference between “lie” and “lay,” Ted.

  I lay the success of these stories in part at the feet of Sturgeon; and that ain’t no lie, kiddo.

  HARLAN ELLISON

  14 April 1983

  Los Angeles

  INTRODUCTION

  THE MOVER, THE SHAKER

  My report on Harlan Ellison’s Paingod in National Review evoked the following, from a right–wing gentleman in Pennsylvania:

  Harlan Ellison, contrary to the otherwise astute Theodore Sturgeon, is no more a major “prose stylist” than the editorial writer of the Plumber’s Journal or The New York Times. Instead, he stands unchallenged as the god–awfullest writer ever to become submerged in the vaseline of synonyms and antonyms.

  What Mr. Sturgeon mistakes for “image–making” is merely the slick conundrum of an empty–headed self–lover who, unhappily, believes that the bathroom ritual of personal daily resurrection, when inflated rhetorically, is 14” pegged prose. What emerges is not a “style” but rather a sort of neologistic bawling from the belly. It reminds one of the yips and yaps to be heard in the war councils of imbecilic demonstrators, from Berkley [sic] to Boston.

  Ellison’s “mad, mixed metaphors” are only less puerile than those of a certain Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice, and his “unfinished sentences” no different in construction than those to be found in the diary of a lady golfer or political speech writer suffering from Liberal emphysema.

  If our penitentiaries offered courses in creative writing we would soon be inundated with little Harlan Ellison’s [the apostrophe also sic], all of them, to be sure, “groovy” and all of them ghastly. His unconcealed hostility toward his betters is evident in nearly everything he has ever written. That he is reviewed in a magazine noted for correct English (and often bad French) will probably embarrass the fellow. It does me.

  To which I replied:

  I find no hesitation in deeping Mr.——’s embarrassment by demonstrating that he could not possibly have read my review of Paingod and Other Delusions with care, which leads inescapably to the deduction that he has not carefully read Ellison. For the tenor, sum and substance of my report was not that Harlan Ellison is a major prose stylist, but that in three to five years he shall be. Further, I did not in the review concede that Ellison is capable of atrociously bad writing—I proclaimed it. I said in effect that this extraordinarily energetic young writer is a man on the move, so watch him. Style, like taste, is resistant to lucid definition; however, both, as living things should be, are subject to constant change. For example, I can clearly recall the time when it was regarded as both stylish and tasteful to capitalize proprietary terms like Vaseline and God (at any degree of awfulness) and hardly tasteful to admit to any expertise on the style of ladies’ diaries.

  You hold in your hands a truly extraordinary book. Taken individually, each of these stories will afford you that easy–to–take, hard–to–find, very hard–to–accomplish quality of entertainment. Here are strange and lovely bits of bitterness like “Eyes of Dust” and the unforgettable “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes,” phantasmagoric fables like “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream” and “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer.”

  I have something interesting to tell you about that last–mentioned story. Almost anyone who has been under the influence of a (and Purists please note: I tried) hallucinogen can recognize the “psychedelic” quality of this story and its images, even to a fine detail like the almost total absence of sound during the shipwreck sequence, and of course the kaleidoscopic changes of persona and symbol. Yet I know for a fact that Harlan has never had this experience, and is one of those who co
uld not be persuaded under any circumstances to undergo it. I got a special insight on this one night at a party when his hostess graciously offered him the opportunity to “turn on.” “No, thanks,” he said. “Not until I come down.”

  Which would remain a good–humored whimsy but for something a biochemist told me a couple of years ago. It seems that there is a blood fraction which is chemically almost identical with the hallucinogen psilocybin. It’s manufactured in the body and like most biochemicals, differs in concentration in the bloodstream from person to person, and in the same person from time to time. And, said my biochemist friend, it is quite possible that there are some people who are born, and live out their lives, with a consciousness more aware, more comprehending, more—well, expanded—than those of the rest of us. He cited especially William Blake, whose extraordinary drawings and writings, over quite a long life, seemed consistently to be reporting on a world rather more comprehensive than one we “know” he lived in.

  There are a great many unusual things about Harlan Ellison and his work—the speed, the scope, the variety. Also the ugliness, the cruelty, the compassion, the anger, the hate. All seem larger than life–size—especially the compassion which, his work seems to say, he hates as something which would consume him if he let it. This is the explanation of the odd likelihood (I don’t think it’s ever happened, but I think it could) that the beggar who taps you for a dime, and whom I ignore, will get a punch in the mouth from Harlan.

  One thing I found fascinating about this particular collection—and it’s applicable to the others as well, once you find it out—is that the earlier stories, like “Big Sam,” are at first glance more tightly knit, more structured, than the later ones. They have beginnings and middles and endings, and they adhere to their scene and their type, while stories like “Maggie Moneyeyes” and “I Have No Mouth” straddle the categories, throw you curves, astonish and amaze. It’s an interesting progression, because most beginners start out formless and slowly learn structure. In Harlan’s case, I think he quickly learned structure because within a predictable structure he was safe, he was contained. When he got big enough, good enough—confident enough—he began to write it as it came, let it pour out as his inner needs demanded. It is the confidence of freedom, and the freedom of confidence. He breaks few rules he has not learned first.

  (There are exceptions. He is still doing battle with “lie” and “lay,”

  FOREWORD

  HOW SCIENCE FICTION SAVED ME FROM A LIFE OF CRIME

  So I decided if there was a God, his name had to be Lester del Rey, and if Satan was indeed a fallen angel, his real name was Dr. Shedd. I’ll tell you about it.

  I had just come back from tomorrow. Really exhausted. These five poor bastards living in a kind of Dante’s Inferno inside the belly of a computer; and a giant bird, the Huergelmir Poul Anderson called it, the one from Norse mythology; and all kindsa vomity stuff happening to them. So I was really whacked out, plonked straight outta my jug, and I flopped down for some sleep; but I couldn’t.

  First of all, because the story kept intruding. It’s in this book, and I hope it messes your mind similarly, because Joanna Russ, the writer, suggested that if she was to go back and read my stories a second time they wouldn’t bash her head as strongly as they had the first time; that she wished I would write a little more precisely so she could go back to the stories and sort of walk around them admiringly, noticing the details, as if they were statues. To which I replied that my stories were by no means “statue” stories, immobile, fixed, permanent. They were assaults, and if they ruined her equilibrium only once, I’d settle for that. I wanted explosions, not cool meditative thinkpieces. There are other writers who do those in abundance; what I do is something else.

  So there was the story, “I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream,” with the bird and the computer and those five poor slobs, which I had just finished writing, having had to go into the future to write it—as all writers must when telling a science fiction story of times to come. And second, keeping me from Morpheusville, was the realization that abruptly I was a Writer of Stature. And how Lester del Rey had helped get me started writing, teaching me as much of what he knew about the craft (which is considerable) as my pea–sized adolescent brain could contain, back in 1955. I’m sure Lester never really thought I would become a Writer of Stature. In fact, he still doesn’t. But what the hell does he know!

  He oughtta be damned glad I’m a WofS, because WofSes don’t have to borrow subway fare from Lester del Rey. The fact that it took me eleven years to become an overnight success should also reassure him. It’s not my fault success has brought my unseemly arrogance and braggadocio to the surface: I was always thus tainted, but when you’re poor and unsuccessful it’s just vulgar ostentation to flaunt such character flaws: success wears very badly on me: I’m a sore winner. But those who have known and loved me through the Dismal Swamps of all the lies that are my life will testify that it is not merely the acquisition of pocket money that has made me an elitist. The seeds were always present. Only becoming a Writer of Stature has made them flower.

  I’m thinking of taking up Japanese flower arrangement.

  I digress.

  Lester is God. Dr. Shedd, who was at Ohio State University and told me I would never become a good writer, is the fallen angel. And science fiction saved me from a life of crime. Honest.

  Portrait of the Artist as a Maladjusted Guttersnipe. Fresh–mouthed out of Painesville, Ohio, with the marks of Cat’s Paw heels all over my tuchiss. Some kinda weird freak–out in the days before the teenie–boppers invented the phrase. All hungry big eyes and fingers twitching to get said what was banging around inside my skull. Bounced out of Ohio State for lousy grades and having been pinched for shoplifting a 45 rpm of Oscar Peterson playing “Poor Butterfly.” Come to absolute dead end with the world, at the age of twenty. Having booted around the country in myriad disguises. Having gotten most of what I knew out of books boosted from a very nice man who ran Publix Book Mart in Cleveland, who understood enough about kids and their voiceless desires to make something of themselves that he did not call the badges when he caught me trying to edge out the door with a copy of Pilgrims Through Time And Space under my pea–jacket. I’ve never been back to see him; I don’t think I could face him even now, twelve/thirteen years later; but he is one of God’s good guys, and perhaps he can draw some consolation from knowing that his human behavior resulted in the undersigned moving on through the years and doing all the writing that has been done. If he likes the stories, it will even amount to something for him.

  Ashamed apologies and a gentle thank you.

  I do not digress. It was science fiction that kept me straight. I mean, what do you do, when you find that things are not what you were taught they’re supposed to be? What do you do with the desperation that boils up from your stomach when you know there’s a road out there with your destination at the end of it, but it’s too damned dark to even find the road? You turn and turn and turn around like a dog trying to escape. Shrieks in the cavity of your head that so urgently needs to be filled with facts and challenges. Until you get grabbed up by the back of the neck, and something’s got you that points you off into the murk. Run like a muthuh! And one day it gets lighter and you see you’ve managed to escape the slammer and bad scenes, and you’re heading toward being a Writer of Stature, or something equally as lovely.

  Then you turn around and you yell back in the direction you came. You yell, hey! Thanks! Dammit, thanks!

  Thanks Ben Jason and Frank Andrasovky and Nan Hanlin and Alice Norton who is really Andre Norton. Thanks Don Ford and Roy & DeeDee Lavender and Doc Barrett. Thanks Lee Hoffman and Lester, and AJ. Thanks Larry Shaw and Paul Fairman and Hans Santesson. Thanks Silverbob. Thanks Ted Sturgeon. Thanks Bill Hamling and Ralph Weinstock and Dorothy Parker who reviewed Gentleman Junkie in Esquire and never knew that she had provided the world’s most insecure writer with the first tangible proof that he was one whit as good as he
had been telling everyone he was. Thanks to Theron Raines and Bob Mills who agented something that was ten times more trouble than it was money–making. The thanks rise like thick wood smoke. They never end. No one gets through the dark and into the light by himself. So it becomes incumbent upon me to pass along the help, to do what I can for other writers trying to get a foot up. That’s the honor among writers. Because no writer is ever really in competition with any other. Not even here in Hollywood, where the guerrilla warfare is generally pretty depressing.

  But the largest thanks go to two who can’t say thanks back. One is New York City that took me in and said, “Get straight, kid.” The other is science fiction.

  Science fiction is people, of course, not just a genre. It is Walter Fultz when he was editor at Lion Books, because he took a chance and bought my first book. It is Fred Pohl who grits his teeth and says he has more trouble with one little 6500 word short by me than a quarter–million word trilogy by Jack Vance. It is even Judy Merril who—save once—ignores me in her annual best–of–the–year collections; because if she didn’t infuriate me, I wouldn’t push as hard as I do to bug her with a story so good she couldn’t overlook it next year.

  It is all the people who took me in, so to speak, and could never have known anything worthwhile would come from their kindness. It is for all these people, for the field of science fiction, for the city of New York, and for the few who have died without seeing me make something worthwhile of the guttersnipe, that I write. For all of them, and for myself. When I was much younger, I made the error of saying I wrote from the gut. The obvious ripostes that image provokes have haunted me almost as obstinately as “Mad dogs have kneed us in the groin,” a cataleptic non sequitur I managed to get off almost ten years ago. But it is still true. If not anatomically, then poetically. The “assault” concept of writing, as opposed to the “statue” concept.