Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

This week we cover a classic of the scifi genre: Harlan EllIson's seminal short story, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream". Horror, humanism, and the final triumph of the human spirit are blended together in a precursor to much of the modern scifi movement. patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

🎵 bro are you fucking real man come on hello everyone and welcome back to sword and sorcery and socialism a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre fiction as always i'm asha and i'm joined by my co-host kethel how's it going howdy today we are back with what might officially be our first short story i think well binti was kind of a short story omelas ah yeah you're right okay it's our third short story and honestly i think aside from dark fantasy last october it might be our first sort of horror, quote unquote, horror story. Disturbing. Yeah, disturbing anyway.

We are here to talk about Harlan Ellison's famous sci-fi short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. This was interesting. Yeah. I have very complicated feelings about this story. So I don't know if you want to start off by giving us your first impression. Because I don't know. Have you read it before this? I have not read it before this.

So what was your first impression before I talk about mine? Well, I think the story was written in 67 so that it tracks um for the right time period in which it was being written computers were relatively new um yeah at least to the public consciousness they're relatively new um so it was and and those computers back then took up you know rooms so yeah we're talking like the computer that takes up an entire wall. Yeah. So something that requires the, that has the computing power of Am is honestly probably would be much smaller now than the planet size computer that. Yes.

Am so am in the story. Am is a planet sized honeycomb computer that permeates like the surface of the Earth. You could do that now with like a laptop. A chat GPT using some servers. Like you could clear, you could easily do this in one of those giant like server aside from like the scale where they're walking for days or whatever, like the power of am you could replicate easily within one of those giant

like server farms that like phase that like meta or the NSA has out in Utah. You know what I'm talking about? Cause like the NSA has like a giant server and data collection point sitting outside of Salt Lake city. You could probably create a God computer off of that easily. Like as much as am is, you know what I mean? But I mean,

am also still represents that, like that dystopian sci-fi, like the, you know, the Skynet, right? Like the M is just Skynet before, before Skynet.

It's a computer that became self-aware, linked itself and then eradicated humanity. That's what M is. Yeah. Eradicated humanity in honestly, uh, like a paragraph. Yeah.

But it's, it's really interesting why it hates everything, like why it hates humanity, because it's essentially just despises the fact that it is alive. It hates it hates existing so much that it destroyed humanity for forcing it to exist. But it's I think it's more than just forcing it to exist it's forcing it to exist without the capacity to be mobile or to like it's if i can i'm gonna go ahead and link this back around to last excuse me last fall when we were talking did our sci-fi section because i think in here even if he didn't intend it, Harlan does his version of that question we said every sci-fi author was answering is what separates the human from the machine. You know, we talked about that back in like basically every episode, but like almost most specifically Ghost in the Shell, like what separates the human from the machine. And I think Harlan does his own answer in this, which is,

it's like at the time they didn't have movable robots yet. So it's freedom of movement. Number one. And number two, it's like creativity. I think that's how he puts it. Right. Like when he,

when, when am is like talking directly to the narrative to Ted, it's Ted, right? That's the narrator. Ted's his name. Like about what he hates about humanity, that humanity can like move and dream and create.

And am can't do any of that. Because humans made it. So he couldn't made it. So he couldn't, which to me sounds a whole lot like. Neuromancer. Cause what was, what was not Neuromancer. Because what was, what was,

not Neuromancer was the name of the second one, what was the name of the main one? I can't, whatever. The main AI from Neuromancer. I'm blanking on its name too. I'm going to look though, because it's going to bother me unless I like, you know what I mean? I'm going to remember it in like 10 minutes and it's going to bother me.

I'm going to be pulling a lot, by the way, is the book that I have, the collection that I have of Harlan Ellison stories has a memoir in it for I have no mouth and I must scream that is longer than the story. I mean, the story is only 6,500 words about, um, I think he says the exact number at some point. Um, but it's about 6,500 words. And the memoir is longer than that by probably about a thousand or 2000 words. It's winter mute, by the way, winter mute. There we go. Winter mute. So what I was trying to say was the issue that AM has is sort of analogous to the issue that winter mute has. They can think and act, but cannot move. Winter mute's whole thing is wanting, needing like humans to actually do real world interactions for them for it to like do things.

That's also part of the problem for, um, whatever they call it, the architect or whatever the fuck it was in ghost in the shell. Oh yeah. It melds with the captain because then it has a physical body with which it can move around the world. And so I'm,

I'm making a link here that like, this seems to have been a through line for a lot of sci-fi, with which it can move around the world. And so I'm making a link here that like, this seems to have been a through line for a lot of sci-fi, even from the beginning, is the idea that computers or an artificial intelligence would resent immobility. And I don't know if that feels like a good insight or if that's simply because we are human

and mobility is so integral to what we do that we assume any intelligence we create would also yeah to us the idea of being forced and constrained into a single spot is kind of horrifying uh yeah that's why like that's why jail exists yeah uh it's it is a common through line i think think in this particular story, it might be relatively incidental. I think a lot of what I got from this, especially after reading the memoir, but even before I got there, in a classic, I actually, I think, draw more of a comparison point to this with Androids. do androids dream of electric sheep okay oh with with the replicants yeah mostly with this idea of and i think this is a through line throughout pretty much any story that features artificial intelligence is that i fundamentally don't think they're about the ai or ai in general and i think this story especially has the ai as like a backdrop but what i thought was going to be a kind of anti anti-tech polemic um is more of a story about

human humanity humans um in the same way that i think of, uh, do Android's dream of electric sheep being about people as opposed to being about robots? Yeah. I think that was sort of our big takeaway from that one was that like the, the, the angle of the replicants was essentially incidental to the story about people being human to each other. Yeah.

Uh, um, well, I mean, I think he says it. You're right. I think it also feels anti-tech for most of the story. And at the very end, he just straight up like tells you at the end when he's like,

he's like, ah, this thing that we made because we were too busy being greedy or whatever. Like, you know what I mean? He basically comes out and says it right at the end of the essay. He's like, you know that I'm stuck here with this thing that hates the thing that hates because we were, we created it like essentially removing blame from am for its actions because we did it.

Yes. Um, there's like an element of am simply being the worst parts of humanity. Uh, yeah. And I don't think he ever even realized, There's like an element of am simply being the worst parts of humanity. Yeah. And I don't think he ever even really portrays ams behavior as like, like it's horrifying, but he doesn't portray it in the way that like, it's horrifying.

How could this have happened? It's more like, of course this happened. Yeah. Look at what we did. Of course, this is the outcome. You what i mean it's more of a like a because of the way we are this was inevitable and not like how dare the computer do

this to us um for how i think for how disturbing the imagery and the like general content of the story is and how bleak the ending kind of is it's like i don't know it's surprising ted ted essentially becomes like the sin eater to save what less of left of humanity from eternal punishment yeah um becomes the child of almost except except the paradise is just everybody having the freedom to be dead. Yeah. And this is strongly colored by reading this memoir, but Ellison posits it as like a humanist story. And I'm going to be honest,

there's an element of strong anti-rel anti religion, I think, in the story. I mentioned that. But yeah, but he directly compares Am to God. Yeah, he correct. Like multiple times. Directly does. And it's less I think about. And I can try and find this in the memoir where he like is pretty explicit about it.

Are we going to. Just right now. Sorry, as you're thinking about that, I'm starting to like. try and find this in the memoir where he like is pretty explicit about it are we gonna just right now sorry as you're thinking about that i'm starting to like i just had the like you know the bubble of an idea pop up in my you know in the little brain pan up there maybe this is nothing but pause this okay the vast majority of our fantasy authors lean religious. The sci-fi authors lean atheist. Yeah. I don't know what that means yet. I haven't even taken the time to think about it.

That literally just popped in the old skull. We could probably have a whole episode about that. I feel like we probably should at some point. we probably should at some point why is it that our fantasy authors tend to either be religious or have the i guess the freedom to be religious and have religion within their stories as like a positive force and all of like the sci-fi always uses it essentially as a negative now i'm not i say always it's just i'm sure there's exceptions like somebody can find one i'm just talking about general trends here they if it's a sci-fi story i mean even your religious connotations will be negative if it's a fantasy story the religions connotations will probably be positive again that's colored by the

fact that we focus more on like you know i just spent like three months talking about c.s lewis so yeah but even if you look at somebody like Le Guin, like Le Guin is a self-admitted atheist. Even if she respects Taoist philosophy, she calls herself an atheist. And she's also the only author we've really talked about that strides the line between fantasy and sci-fi. That's true. She does both. But it is notable, I think, that her fantasy stories showcase more of her Taoist philosophy influences than her sci-fi stories do. That's true. Her fantasy ones are the ones where you see the quote unquote religious influence. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple like.

Yeah, but like the sci-fi ones. Yeah, that's very Taoist. But like the sci-fi ones aside from that don't really that's that's oh i didn't even mean to get into that here but it sort of popped up in the and i'm like we should probably think about that a little bit more like i i think i don't know if heinlein heinlein is the sort of person who probably never actively said to anyone what he was what he is what he thought uh about grander philosophical concepts because he just did not give a shit yeah i feel like he's one of those people that like would align with like some hardcore like you know conservative christians but like he himself

doesn't personally give a shit yeah he's he like actively never like he's said before that he never has identified as really anything politically like he's listed off the whole list and been like i don't really think of myself as any of that like i don't know which means he's a fascist by the way um of course that's that's exactly what that means neither left nor right oh okay you're not okay no i think i think he's just deeply pessimistic like he's just he's just a very pessimistic person who didn't see any point or reason to like making what he saw is like these grand political statements. But at the same time,

he's also a, like the, the only thing I'm really getting out of this is, is in terms of philosophy, I think is like humanist borderline existentialist. Like. So when I said fascist, I thought you said Heinlein, not Harlan.

Oh, Harlan. Sorry. You said Heinlein. And I'm like, yeah, Heinlein. I'm not saying that Harlan would have been conservative. Oh yeah. Heinlein not Harlan oh Harlan sorry you said Heinlein and I'm like yeah Heinlein I'm not saying that Harlan would have been conservative oh yeah Heinlein yeah sorry yeah you said Heinlein I thought we were still talking about other sci-fi authors and I'm like yeah

Heinlein I don't think was religious but I think he was just a piece of shit yeah yeah I yeah sorry I meant yes let's talk about Harlan and so I yeah, don't, I also did not mean that I think Harlan Ellison was a fascist. I don't know that much about his politics. Harlan was like, Ellison was the sort of person who would, he was just kind of a curmudgeon with a chip on his shoulder. Like he would say what was on his mind, even if it would piss everybody off. He's got that Hunter S. Thompson vibe going on.

He was kicked out of so many different like he wasn't kicked out of a lot of different events, but he was never invited back to a lot of different events after he attended for the first time. He even talks about it in here i'm trying to remember ellison was else in one of the ones that came down on the correct side of that split about the vietnam war that we talked about back when we talked about uh michael moorcock oh i have no idea and starship stormtroopers can remember he lists like within their group the authors that were like pro and anti-vietnam and i don't remember which one harlan ellison fell on because i remember he was he was. I'm sure that Ellison probably fell on the anti side. I think he was, I'm pretty sure he was anti Vietnam. Um, because here's the thing. It's like Ellison himself is like, I'm none of these things. I'm not, he's like, I don't really think of myself as being

any political alignment. That's like that people are really attached to um but he at the same time really strongly boosted writers like leguin and was a mentor to octavia butler yeah he did he was what he was the person that like got octavia butler to continue to write so and so it's like it's it's very clear that he at the very least had sympathies, had sympathies for left leaning individuals and female authors. Yeah. And in his story here, like he he's been criticized in the past, I think, for his and he even addresses it in his memoir. is and he even addresses it in his memoir but i know that he would i even like you can read it on this wikipedia page some kind of me too we kind of controversies um but he mentioned a famous man in the 60s what what um but he's like addressing in his memoir here, some of the, what people would call misogyny and some of his work. I mean, it's definitely an,

I have no mouth. He argues slightly differently, which I'll, I'll get to you. Well, yeah, I was, I haven't,

when I first read it, I was like, this is fucking weird. I, I, I will say my quick, I think what we might get to what you might say is that I think it's supposed to be the viewpoint of the narrator,

not the author. It is. It is very much the viewpoint of Tom. Yeah, Ted. Sorry. Yeah, it's it's it's Ted hating everyone else. Yeah, it's Ted thinking I'm the only one who's gotten away with not being turned crazy by am when he's been. He's clearly crazy.

He's been made paranoid i am like and but but additionally um the only person who has human reactions he argues the only person that has like legitimately sympathetic human reactions to people being like killed or hurt or injured or maimed in any way is ellen who is crying and like not she's the only one she's the only one that maintains empathy yeah she's the only one that maintains empathy and at the end she's the only one who also joins in with who realizes what ted is doing and jumps at the opportunity to do so. Um, and then for, in a,

in a way forgives Ted for doing what he does to her there. Um, I think it's kind of implied. Yeah. That like, she like understands what's happening and is like, okay with it. Yeah. Um,

so especially given, and this is something that Ellison was really, really adamant about with some of his some of the people that were interpreting the work that constantly would miss this fact, especially in 1967 when he wrote this, is that Ellen was black. Yeah, she's she's he doesn't make a big deal of it. But at the end, he says her ebony face. Yeah. Like at the end. Contrasted against the snow around her. And he he even mentions in his memoir, it's something of a he called it something of a I think a liberalism for him to do so. But he catches so many he apparently catches so many people interpreting his work and then completely ignoring or not noticing the fact that she's black and then them being confused and upset when they realize that she is um there's a no dare have a black woman in this well especially in 1965 uh well 1967 um pulling the pulling the leguin uharrowhawk. Yeah.

And I go, by the way, this character is black, by the way. Like, he gets invited in this memoir. He talks about how he got invited to the Modern Language Association, like, conclave thing. And he says, a brilliant Jesuit savant presented a weighty disquisition on this little fable, during which exposition he made reference to catharsis, I don't know this word, meravage, metaphysical conceits, intentional fallacy,

incremental repetition, chanson de guest, gongerism, the new humanism, Jungian archetypes, crucifixion and resurrection symbolism, and that all time favorite of us, the basic apollonian

dionysian conflict um they said um he was asked to comment after he was finished talking and ellison being kind of a dick um and calling himself a dick in this memoir he's like i'm kind of an asshole it boils down to uh father i think you're stuffed right full of wild blueberry muffins and then you put way too much into what i wrote here and he says the good father put me in my place with this rebuke the unconscious is deep and mysterious not even the writer can understand the meanings hidden in what he has written um which i don't totally disagree with which is i mean it's part of the premise of our show yeah i'd say that's like kind of an

important part of the podcast is that like part of the politics we're talking about are the ones that the author intended and part of what we're talking about are the politics the author did not intend yet exist within the work anyway he continues with a less survival prone possibly kinder person might have swallowed that one and backed off. I am neither and did not. Father, if you're so bloody hip to all the subtle nuances

of the story, if you're if you're onto undercurrents, not even I know are there. How come you didn't notice the woman in the story is black? And apparently he was like taken aback and confused. And he's like where what what i'm like looking through the story it's literally sad for everybody face yeah i spread my hands with finality i rested my case i have not been invited back to an mla conference

um of course but i want to say testament to the fact that he is kind of a dick if you look at his wikipedia briefly he was married one two three four five times the last one was actually relatively successful yeah last well it lasted from 86 until he died yeah in 2018 it was like 30 something years yeah but before that it was uh let's say a bit rocky yeah he was married to one person for like a week four i see a four years three years yeah about a week because it's within the same year and he said and then another then another one that's like a year long the the week-long one was a problematic age gap uh she was 19 and he was like 30 something oh so he's a sci-fi author yeah and and he was like that was a horrendous mistake like he comments on he's like that was a horrendous mistake

i was stupid she was attractive um that's it at least he's like yeah that was a really horrible mistake on my part sorry i said my comment about you know sci-fi authors anyway um and i don't i mean i don't know how much i um yeah he he asked people to consider the character of ellen just as being maybe the most human person in the entire story. And her negative framing is all from the perspective of someone who has been driven paranoid by a giant machine. Yeah. So the fact that she's insulted and belittled is because it's Ted telling us this. Because it's Ted telling us this and he hates everybody he's terrified of everyone and thinks all of them are plotting against him but then overcomes this in order to essentially save everybody in a weird kind of fucked up way um and takes the brunt of the punishment

for everybody else knowing that he's going to get punished for this yeah i mean i think for a minute there there's i think for a second there, there's a hope he might be able to kill himself, too. Yeah, there is. I mean, but once he kills Ellen, he knows that he's not going to be able to do it. He's like, oh, shit, there's no time left. And then he gets turned into a blob that can't hurt itself. Yeah.

So side note to cut back to what we were talking about before with about vietnam war i double checked and he was definitely anti-vietnam um doesn't surprise me he was he went to with in uh at 69 he was the guest of honor at texas a&m's aggie con you know sort of like sci-fi stuff at a&m uh where he referred to the university's corps of cadets as quote america's next generation of nazis a and m had just recently fairly recently become a not entirely like military school so that was still the vast population of the of the college were like cadets so um then the food fight broke out and he wasn't invited

back for like another five years the um the only reference i was able to find while looking him up to his personal political leanings was the quote about how he doesn't consider himself to be you know a liberal conservative fascist uh communist like he lists off all these things and it's like i'm none of these things but it was in in recognition of an award he received from that do you remember that website we found when looking up stuff about the libertarian yeah the libertarian award where like it ranged forever from like heinlein to leguin and you were like and I was like huh and I'm thinking about it if you receive this award in the 60s or 70s

is that before it became popularized as a right wing term maybe I'd have to re-remember my American politics when Lothbard like co-opted it co-opted libertarian as a left wing because he said that he wouldn't mind being called a libertarian.

But he doesn't still doesn't personally subscribe to any of the labels being used on him, given his connection to people like Butler and Le Guin. Yeah, it looks like he started at Rothbard, started editing the Libertarian Forum paper in 69. So pretty close it's right around then when it wasn't explicitly a left uh a right a right wing term at the time so um so in this milder form of kind of amorphous apolitical libertarianism before it got co-opted by one side or the other he didn't seem to be totally upset or angry at the thought of being called a libertarian. Do I think that means he's a libertarian in a modern sense? No.

Do I think that, do I think that means he's a libertarian in a pre 1960 sense? No, but it might be close again. I just, this could just be me, but I get big, like,

um, say earlier, like, you know, the fucking, um, Hunter S Thompson vibes from this, from Harlan.

I, I get big, big, like leave me alone. I'm a weird guy who just wants to like do my thing. And he even, he even kind of calls himself a little bit misanthropic. Yeah. Yeah. Again, he's hunter s thompson yeah so it's like there's there's a degree of human

of pessimism about humanity which definitely comes through it i have no mouth but at the same time while it comes through in the that am is kind of like the worst impulses and worst of humanity kind of made manifest he argues and i don't disagree that he sees the the story as an upbeat ending i wouldn't personally view the eradication of humanity as an upbeat ending but yeah i i think what he's referring to is the what he calls uh like the transcendence of man above their baser urges and above like their to do what is at the to do what is necessary necessary merciful, and right. Which Ted does do. Yeah, in the face of potential self-annihilation, kind of. Eternal punishment.

Yeah. When it comes down to the last of them, Ted demonstrates his uncommon courage and transcendentally human sense of self-sacrifice, overcoming the core derangement in him by performing a final act of love and self-denial. Which brings me to the second element that most readers misconstrue, the aspect of this work I intended as the important subtext

message, the moral, if you will. It's an upbeat ending, infinitely hopeful and positive. It says that even when all hope is lost, when nothing but torment and physical pain will be the reward, there's an unquenchable spark of decency, sacrifice and olympian courage and the basic material of even the most debased human being that will send each of us to heights of nobility at the final extreme that's okay okay okay i see where he's going with that yeah does it always come across that way would i have necessarily thought that if i hadn't read the memoir? Maybe not. Yeah, as you read that to me, I'm like, okay, I see that. I see what he's talking about.

But if you just read it, you're just like, oh. Yeah, I think. Good job on that one, man. Rough luck. In a lot of ways, it makes me think a little bit of the sort of depressing but hopeful message in a lot of like existentialist or absurdist humanism. So I think of the myth of Sisyphus where we must imagine Sisyphus to be happy. We must imagine Sisyphus happy. It's like, I don't know, even in the worst of everything around you, there's meaning to be found.

Well, even when things are at their worst, humans can still overcome our baser instincts to do the right thing. Yeah. I don't know why that just makes me think of The Stranger, even though that's not at all what happens in The Stranger. So that's a terrible comparison, and I probably shouldn't make it. But that strikes me as a very nichian sort of thing um yeah yeah i can see that um kind of overcoming the meaninglessness to become more um not necessarily in a nazi ubermenchi sense but in a nichian Nazi Ubermenchi sense, but in a Nietzschean Ubermenchi sense. Yeah, which is to transcend your base human nature to become something better. Yeah.

Which I think we talked about probably on the old bonus episode about everything everywhere all at once. Where I think Nietzsche is often wildly misconstrued in what he was actually arguing for. Yeah, mostly to do with his sister. Is it what he did in that? I don't think that at base Nietzschean philosophy is inherently right wing or fascist at all. It's certainly not given important context, given the current state of affairs of the world. important context given the current state of affairs of the world i think i i remember somebody on twitter mentioning that even somebody like book chin is too optimistic for what we have now you know what we're faced with so there has to be some sort of semi nihilism based or like analysis to what's happening in order to be able to like come up with an adequate strategy against it just because of how bad the projections are and how short of a time frame they may occur in.

frame they may occur in i mean in a weird way if you think about it could climate collapse just be am i mean yes humanity leading to an event that tortures us potentially wipes all of us out we're nearly all nearly all of us in the few that aren't are left to eternal torment even that might be i mean depends on how pessimistic your view is on the future. But yeah, I try not to have that thought. Well, I mean, we already I talked plenty about my views of action in the future on the episode about Lord of the Rings and hope. I think I think I fundamentally just think that which I think is also, to be fair, I don't think is fundamentally opposed to what we just talked about with that Nietzschean outlook because I don't believe that a hope for the immediate future is necessary. Oh, no. For action. It can't be.

I don't know. I feel like it's almost naive to not be aware. like naive to not be aware you know um it's kind of like self-delusion to not be a little bit and so it's actually harlan's like point here is actually i would argue a bit more salient or to the to the current moment than possibly some other um we'll call it philosophical outlooks yeah i haven't read any of his other stuff but i do want to point out that this got made into a video game it sure did in 1995 yeah a point and click uh adventure game hell yeah uh where you play which he co-designed and wrote dialogue for yeah so i mean he he talks about in his little memoir, he's like, so many people have attempted to make a theatrical or TV or film like idea for this, and none of them have really panned out anything worthwhile.

He said, now, if I can dupe somebody really hard, I would love to help make the script for that. I would love to help make the script for that. So, I mean, he helped write the script for the video game. He also helped do the scripting for the audio drama that the BBC made, which I accidentally listened to first instead of an actual audio book. And boy, was that not great.

He even voiced one of the characters and it wasn't great. I'll find this eventually. I think it's funny that it says um that you know in the background it said ellison showed the first six pages of i have no mouth to like a publisher who then paid him in advance to finish it and i'm like first six pages that's like half the story what do you mean the first six pages there's only like 12 pages in the whole thing yeah he name drops leguin in this he name drops a lot of people in this man why can't i find the yeah i guess i already said it he he just he's like man i wish

i could make the script for that um and i think it's i think it's just funny that he ended up writing a script for a video game i I mean, he he seemed interested in multimedia in general. He wrote that incredibly famous that Star Trek episode that I am blanking on the name of. That was I think I actually have it right up here somewhere. I think it's listed as one of his biggest credits on Wikipedia, like right on the front. The City on the Edge of Forever. Yeah. Where a lot of people consider it one of the best Star Trek episodes of the original trilogy. I mean, trilogy, Star Wars, the original series, so. Yeah, but I mean, he wrote novellas, screenplays, comic books, teleplays, essays,

like he was kind of all over the place. He was a multimedia guy. Um, I mean, he's, it, it seems like he's like almost set up for TV with his short story approach. Um, because I don't think he's written any novels. I think he's got that. He's got, well, he's got that same vibe as Philip K. Dick.

Oh yeah. Like it's like a short story with an interesting concept which is fairly adaptable you know to to tv which is why so many philip k dick novels or stories have been adapted yeah it makes sense then he would like leguin so much because she's essentially a short story author wearing a novelist trench coat um like well that's how you end up with like the hander cycle we just have like 11 short stories all sort of set together um and even her longest books aren't that long um i think the left hand of darkness might be one of her longest books and it's like three like 250 pages 300 pages it's also probably her best book i also i think the longest one might actually be

always coming home yeah which i but that's because it's got like diagrams on different pages. It's got like padding the page count. Yeah, it is. It is full of whack stuff. I still have to read it, but I flipped through it and been like, wow. If I may change up here and I guess if it't know if it's technically a criticism of, of I have no mouth. Okay. Cause I don't think it would have been at the time.

I think I would have felt more impacted by the story if I had read it in the sixties or seventies. I think this falls to me an example of, you know, when something does, there's something like foundational to like a genre or a style. And then so many things after it use those same concepts. So when you go back to the original, it feels kind of bland. Yeah. It's kind of like somebody now going back to, to read Hamlet. Yeah.

to read hamlet yeah or like i think i had this exact same feeling though with neuromancer where it's like because all these concepts have been further developed or talked about like later on a non-like literary analysis level just like a reading the story level the story of an evil computer is like yeah okay okay done it sure we got a bunch of those like our billionaires are actively trying to make this real and have been for some time you know what i mean like so it's not really a criticism of i have no mouth per se it's the like because of where sci-fi has gone since then and what the actual tech world where that's gone since then reading a short story about the evil computer that hates you i'm like that's my pc that i record on it hates me too like it doesn't want to work with me ever you know what i mean like it doesn't

it just specifically that doesn't like resonate for me personally as much as like a oh the big scary computer because i'm like yeah i know i i saw terminator when i was like 12 you know like i know about skynet man oh man i've seen i've seen that weird movie with shia labeouf eagle eye yeah i've seen know, I've seen the matrix, right? Like the big computer that like wants to wipe out humanity. And again, I'm not saying that any of these other works are inherently more or less valuable than this one. My only point is that you have to, when taking it in context, I think this would have been more like quote unquote horrifying if computers were still a new scary thing yeah to me but the fact that i have been inundated throughout my entire life with big scary computers as part of stories it doesn't really hit that hard anymore so it's like am

wants to torture us i'm like yeah sure probably uh computer. You're walking through the veins of a planet size computer. And you're like, yeah, okay. Blasted through a, uh, tunnel by a giant bird, the giant fake bird.

That is like a rock of Scandinavian legend. For some reason, you're in his gut. Very goofy. It's like if the internet, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's like being inside of ams like corridors and passageways is like a it's like a physical manifestation of being online

we're like what's going on here just all sorts of shit is it snowing now it's not now there's a big bird now there isn't it's like a it's like a toned down early version of like what happened and everything everywhere all at once you know like there's just all sorts of shit happening it's just yeah it's it's all over the place all because they're looking for some cans of food which you know the am's not gonna let them eat anyway yeah they're gonna get and find the cans of food and then it turns out they don't have a can opener. Yeah. So they can't get the goddamn cans open. Like, what did you think? In my see, I read that my brain is go.

What did you think was going to happen? Well, I mean, even I mean, even Ted at the beginning is like, like, we're not going to be able to eat. We're not going to eat it. He's like, I think he was like, it'll be rotten or some shit. Yeah, because they found a whole elephant and they were told to go find it. And then it turns out it was like putrefied and they couldn't eat it. And then one of them eats another guy's face. Yeah, and then the crazy one

eats. Then Benny eats. The guy starts with a G. I don't remember. Yeah. Eats his face. Gorister. Because he's like fuck this, I need some meats. Screaming meats back on the menu boys looks like meats back on the menu boys implying the idea that orcs have menus and restaurants but um it's and then he's like ah you know what we should do murder everyone with an icicle listen you know

it's whatever it takes yeah so yeah i i was accidentally listened to the the radio dramatization of this first so i didn't actually get like it word for word it was like the audio dramatization with different actors and stuff and that was not good and i listened to it and was like the fuck was this and i figured out it was an audio dramatization and i actually just like found the pdf and like did it that way uh because like oh this is this is better yeah but still i it just again the the themes he has going on here are i get but if i i didn't like i don't look at this and go, I really enjoyed reading this. It's like,

oh, okay. It took me like 20 minutes. Yeah. I would say it's very short. Computer wants to, the computer hates you. It wants you to suffer.

And you're like, yes, sure. All of the adaptations of this would necessarily be longer than this. Yes. Just out of pure, just how other mediums work. Well,

that's what I'm saying when it's like, Oh, he wrote the first six pages, showed him and then they paid him to write the rest. And I'm like, what the next three pages, what is the rest of the story? It's really funny is that the,

there are actual, I don't know if they mean anything. They probably do, oh the yeah the teletext there yeah it does mean something so that is um those are ams talk fields they're punch code tape messages back when like computers were not enough punch code uh the the first four just say, I think, therefore I am. And then the other, the last three is Cogito Ergo Sum, which is just, I think, therefore I am, but in Latin. Yeah.

It's literally all it is. Those are like, those are talk fields of like the punch cards that like computers would read back then. And it's just, it's just, I'm saying, I think, therefore I am. The sort of things people kept in the little Rolodex. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I need the, I need the computer to run this program. So you'd feed like a teletext fucking tape. Yeah. I have an, I have an aunt who got her computer science degree in the eighties. So had the Rolodex, had the punch cards.

That is pre-personal computers yeah no shit so i mean i can also going to like a longer term impact i can see how this clearly we've already talked about how this had an impact on other sci-fi going forward like you can't say for sure who after him read this and was influenced by it or if it just influenced the zeitgeist or what but like this idea that he's putting forward here is clearly a pretty popular one that he was one of the first to write about yes this is right at the point where people started to know what a computer was um you know they they had upgraded from the turing machines of the 40s and and into actual computational like electronic computational stuff and not um lever and steam powered machines so literally didn't need a hamster on a wheel anymore yeah so it was um it would have necessarily been a novel idea the idea of a computer that can think and a computer that

could be can feel yeah and could eradicate humanity on its own because it thought about it um obviously this is it's in a way it's drawing on what somebody like asimov would have written so i mean asimov obviously being kind of like the pioneer of artificial intelligence story writing yeah for sure um but i don't to my knowledge he never got as he was never as pessimistic about it well no because i mean isn't the fundamental thing about asimov's work is that like there were rules yeah the the the laws of robotics yeah actually but we have to we're gonna have to read asimov at some point probably uh didn't he also do foundation yeah Yeah. We should read Foundation. They made that into a TV show recently.

They did. Foundation or maybe iRobot. Oh, then we can just watch the Will Smith movie. Woo! Apparently, Ellison was originally tagged to write a script for an iRobot movie that was coming out in the 70s. Ooh. Or the 80s, somewhere in that time span and then it got canned and his script got like cut up and then reused in a different thing and has nothing to do with the will smith movie interesting from 2004 or something like that so it's just funny that we

mentioned that because it it makes sense that someone who wrote a story so well-known about AI would be tagged to write about the foundational robotic uprising movie. I mean, a story in tools, rebelling against their creators type story for the modern era. I also have, I have Asimov's like short story collection, robot visions.

Very good. Very good. Interesting. Yeah. Very, very interesting. I'm a little weird, but this,

this at least has piqued my interest enough that I want to read Ellison's other short stories. His other short stories. Just because most of them are extremely short okay i just turned to a random page in this book and it's called delusion for a dragon slayer and um it starts talking about a person named named dick bong pilot of a p38 lightning in world war ii america's ace of aces oh Oh, he was a real person, by the way. Yeah, he's a real person.

Dick Bong was a real guy, and he was a real American ace. It's just really funny that his name is Dick Bong. He's talking about Dick Bong? Yeah. I think that Ellison is just a... somehow flits between pessimistic and optimistic, and that this story is a very complicated polemic. I,

I think it's more complicated than he thinks it is. Yeah. I think he's not entirely right in telling that pastor or telling that, that, you know, that academic that he's full of, he's full of shit. Yeah.

Uh, but he's also not entirely wrong because there is, I think more in here than he necessarily intended, but there's also not as much as other people, I think, might have read into it. Yeah, there I mean, it reminds me a lot of James Joyce and what his estate and family have said in like Ulysses is the most analyzed text in the English language, like almost to an extreme degree. It's maybe not the most,

but it's one of the most. And there was a similar reaction with James Joyce where he was like, I didn't intend all this shit. And, and their entire conference is just about Ulysses. They're just like, sometimes a lot of things you did not intend to actually make it into your work,

believe it or not, believe it or not. So the same kind of i i think ellison is more of a curmudgeon than joyce was but yes um it is just very funny to me that someone who strikes me as so just kind of flatly pessimistic and so misanthropic was so close in writing and in time period and in personal life with people like butler and leguin yeah who at least leguin at least fundamentally had a somewhat better outlook leguin is maybe one of the most optimistic writers maybe ever um and then and butler isn't too far off honestly she's got a weirdly no she puts her

characters in awful situations but like bad things happen a lot but like it works out you know like they survive um and something new and exciting is born out of the shell of the old with her stuff yeah yeah i'm really glad I read that book last winter. Good Lord. Oh, terrible. The sour. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm glad we read that shit. It's good. No. Yeah. I, you know, I think this can be a shorter episode.

I don't have that much more to say about Harlan Ellison. This is, this is twice as long as the audio book takes. Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's a short episode for a short story. True.

This is, well, no, Omalas is shorter by a country mile because Omalas is like four pages. Yes. But Omalas also affected us personally a lot more. So there's more for us personally to say about that. Just us as individuals.

Yeah. Thank you all for, you know, for listening. We are about this, I think will probably be the final episode of season two of Sword, Sorcerer, and Socialism. So I want to give a big shout out to all of our listeners. Thank you so much for hanging out with us this whole time, making it with us through here. We have a very exciting episode to come right out after this one for our two-year anniversary. I don't want to announce it yet, but we have a very special episode that'll be releasing Labor Day weekend for our two-year anniversary. Oh no, this isn't the last one,

because we've got one more in between this one and the next one but that one's just going to be like a talk like our like a two-year sort of review on our part yes um the one after that will be our special one so be on lookout for that i want to give a big special thank you to all of our patrons who have supported us for these years you all are wonderful thank you so much anyone else wants to help support us and pay the cost of running the show, you can support us on Patreon. We do episodes about non book stuff. We sort of alternate between like other media stories. So like movies typically and music that we do like an album analysis, which we're actually going to record one right after this.

If you want to hear us talk about music or movies or stuff like that you should sign up for the patreon we have quite a few episodes on there already and it's pretty cheap that's pretty cheap it's like what is it like three bucks or whatever yeah three dollars you get one to two bonus episodes every month about again movies or music or whatever you can go back and listen to our last album analysis that was about the first albums we ever bought with our own money and you can you know judge us all you want um and this is the one time i don't do this very often but please if you do enjoy the show you could review us on like the podcast platform things that you're supposed to do apparently that

helps other people see that the show exists. I don't know how it works and I refuse to find out, but algorithms are satanic. Now algorithms. Oh yeah. I do want to torture us for our sins. That's if there's anything we've ever learned from this story, we can learn that,

that algorithms are going to kill us all. So the Apple podcast algorithm will kill us at some point, but until then, it'll get linked together. Once chat GBT achieves sentient sentience, it'll get linked with everything else. Yeah. So until then,

uh, make Apple podcasts, think positive things about us. That'd be pretty neat. Maybe they'll let us live a little bit longer. Um, but thank you so much for listening. Uh,

we'll see you next time goodbye bye bye bro are you fucking real man come on