Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Read this because of a trivia question, and found Ellison’s style very strange. Sci-fi, yet poetic, and with a lot of 2D female characters. It was okay. I liked the titular story and only read the rest to appease my inner completionist.

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dvnngyn's review against another edition

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dark informative mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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emotionalbabe's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated

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surdiablo's review against another edition

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dark sad tense fast-paced

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

2.0

Well, that was.. underwhelming at best. I had a feeling it was going to be a rough ride when the title story involved plenty of sexism ( Yes yes, I know

those people were already half-crazy with their minds twisted by the AI

) but the rest of the stories, including the endnotes confirmed my suspicion that it's just the author's views seeping into the book. It was simply distasteful and had me rolling my eyes on numerous occasions. I understand that he's a 'product of his time', except I wasn't impressed by the short stories at all to make up for the problematic elements. They are for the most part well-written, but I found the concepts to be much more interesting than the execution of it. The stories I enjoyed were too short with unsatisfying endings, while the rest of them left a bad aftertaste due to the misogynistic notions possessed by the majority of characters. I can see these concepts being innovative back then, but I don't see much in here otherwise that explains or justifies the reverence he gets.

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archaicrobin's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

3.0

A truly terrifying read about a super computer saving 5 humans for the sole purpose of torturing them. This was written in 1969 and its stance on technology and relying too much on AI is still relevant today. Unfortunately this story had a very misogynistic look at the female character, like many older novels, but it’s very aggressive in this one, and as a result it affected my enjoyment of the story.

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