Medium and Message in Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"

Cobb, Joann P. "Medium and Message in Ellison's 'I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.'" The Intersection of Science Fiction and Philosophy. Robert E. Myers, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983.

"Irrational treachery is the message" of Ellison's story, "and the 'medium,'" including the computer-tape inserts into the text, "functions to communicate it and provoke the desired response. The reader becomes the victim of mechanical madness and gratuitous torture." On the very short sentence, "Worms" for Ted's meal: "Humans do not live . . . in the abstract world of computer technology, but in the physical experience of worms for dinner" (164-65).

RDE, Title, 17Aug19