Reviews

I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

Only show reviews with written explanations

hapikohw's review

adventurous dark emotional sad tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I can't believe I finally got to this short story because of a Tik Tok comparing Anya of Mouthwashing to Ellen of IHNMAIMS...

I read it in full on Tik Tok too...goodness.

But of course, I knew when I would get to it, it would be amazing.

Content Warnings

mrmokek's review

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Tl dr not worth it

Look I get why the premise would have been interesting back in the day but I find it tired (personal preference) and certainly not the philosophical/dystopian masterpiece it is hyped up to be
It could have gone somewhere more thematically interesting if it had focused more on character depth but instead it focused on descriptions and horror, which to be fair it did kinda nail - it did actually managed to make me feel some physical revulsion

Most of my revulsion however was reserved for the misogyny. The rest of this review will be about that
This is easily the worst sci fi/dystopia media I've consumed in terms of misogyny (beating even blade runner, which frankly I thought was impossible). Typically I can death of the author this kind of shit and go "if you analyse it this very specific way it becomes commentary on [patriarchal fuckery]" but I couldn't even do that because again, this story has themes in it like flavoured mineral water has fruits. There was no reason to do any of that, let alone this level of excess. It's not even an interesting kind of misogyny to analyse, it's just gratuitous and gross