Harlan Ellison's Best Book Is The AI Apocalypse Film We Need (But Only If It Follows The '90s Video Game)
"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream."
It's a disturbing sentence, as well as the title of Harlan Ellison's Hugo-winning 1967 short story about the dangers of AI technology. Though the story was written over 50 years ago, it's still unsettlingly relevant today, perhaps more so than ever before given the explosion in AI that's been driving the modern tech industry of late.
The original tale relays the saga of five humans kept alive in perpetuity by a malicious supercomputer, which was once three separate machines created by Russia, China, and the U.S. to manage their respective militaries during World War III. The AI, known as "AM," is formed from these three assimilating with each other. It then promptly decimates the surface of Earth and wipes out nearly the entire human population. The only apparent survivors are AM's five prisoners, whom it submits to brutal physical and psychological torture in a nightmarish underground cave network. The story picks up a century later, as the unwillingly immortalized five survivors continue to keep going — against their will — after a hundreds years of torment.
How has "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" not been turned into a movie yet? Well, while the story is thematically rich and philosophically fascinated with the potential horrors of AI, it's a little slim on action and plot developments. For that reason, adapting it for the screen could prove a challenge. Fortunately, Ellison himself already expanded the story in a 1995 video game of the same name, and if a studio were to use that version as a foundation, it could yield a haunting AI apocalypse movie.
The Harlan Ellison-guided video game of I Have No Mouth expands on the book in nightmarish ways
Harlan Ellison's original version of "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" has a relatively straightforward plot. The five survivors — Ted, Ellen, Gorrister, Benny, and Nimdok — venture through the underground hellscape they've been trapped in to try to find food in the Ice Caves. Along the way, they're tormented by AM in various forms, and the historical events that led up to their situation are unveiled.
The 1995 point-and-click adventure game "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" expands on this story quite a bit, by sending each character into a fabricated reality to face their greatest fears and failures. Players take control of each of the five survivors, one at a time, and navigate them through specific virtual reality scenarios crafted by AM to push them to the brink. Not only does this expanded structure add a lot of material, but it also diversifies the setting beyond the generic post-apocalyptic wasteland of the short story.
The game also has a much happier ending than the original version — at least, if you get the good one instead of one of the numerous bad endings. Where the short story presents a horrifically grim fate for all five survivors, the game gives players the ability to defeat AM, and even hints that more humans may have survived the apocalypse on the moon.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream has rich visual potential
You could make a movie out of Harlan Ellsion's short story, but it would be severely limited. Most of the action would be traditional horror with a techno-apocalyptic twist — the five main characters playing cat and mouse with AM in an endless series of dark tunnels.
The video game has a lot more to offer for a visual adaptation — being one itself — because of the different scenarios it has AM put the survivors in. From grimdark castles and massive zeppelins to cyber pyramids and caveman communes, the game presents a wide range of different settings and aesthetics. That unique blend, all colored by the overarching energy of an AI cyberscape, could make for an incredible screen adaptation.
As previously demonstrated by massive franchises like "The Matrix" and "The Terminator," it's hard to set a whole movie in the bombed-out aftermath of nuclear fallout and techno-armageddon. That's why those films generally set the main action in less devastated locales or timelines. The creativity that's possible through AM's many false realities is nearly endless, and it could be taken in any number of exciting directions by the right production team. And of course, that's without going into all of the narrative potential, because Ttelling a contemporary AI story with the classical sci-fi stylings of Ellison's work is a promising combo.
The challenges of adapting I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream are numerous, but worth the effort
As much potential as "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" has, it also presents a number of challenges for adaptation. Primarily, it's an extremely dark story.
AM isn't Skynet or the machines in "The Matrix," happy to simply wage war or imprison humanity in a digital world. This particular AI is a cruel, vindictive, and downright sadistic villain. It warps the five human survivors in horrific ways, transforming one of them into an apelike creature and inflicting numerous physical and mental wounds on the others.
The video game adds even more layers to the disturbing circumstances of the story. The different "challenges" that AM puts the humans through evoke their own personal traumas. For Ellen, that reveals a history of sexual violence. It brings Nimdok face to face with the atrocities he committed as a Nazi scientist. These are incredibly difficult topics to handle in a visual medium. How much do you show for narrative and emotional effect, and how much do you obfuscate in the interest of decency?
To be sure, any modern adaptation would need some tweaks. The Cold War climate that inspired the 1967 short story would need to be swapped out for a more modern interpretation of AI technology, and the characters' stories would have to be updated accordingly. But given the nature of Ellison's story, such changes wouldn't harm the overall narrative one bit. It's the core of the story that matters, not the specific details.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
What a movie version of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream could look like
The Hollywood history books are filled with apocalyptic AI stories, so it shouldn't be too hard to envision what an adaptation of "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" might look like. Given the severity of the subject matter, it would fit squarely in the sci-fi horror category. The work of Alex Garland is a good point of comparison, blending the horrors of rapidly advancing technology with a philosophical approach to storytelling. In fact, if there were to be a movie version, Garland would be a great person to have onboard.
But is the big screen really the best venue for "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" to return? The content is definitely concise enough, and a movie budget would help to realize AM's horrifying future in vivid detail. But if we're talking specifically about an adaptation based on the expanded narrative in the video game, a TV series could also work quite well. Consider an anthology series six episodes in length — one for each individual human survivor, and a final episode to bring them all together. Each installment could embrace a different visual style and be helmed by a different director, while also gradually building up to the big finale.
It's hard not to think about "Black Mirror" when reflecting on this particular brand of techno-horror. But whatever exact form an adaptation might take, there's no doubt that "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is full of potential.