EDIT: 11/29/2015: Hi. It's been almost five years since I wrote this review and I've learned a lot about feminism and misogyny and what constitutes GOOD writing to me. So I decided I should come back to this and append this review with a disclaimer: I wrote this before A: coming out as trans and B: realizing that I don't have to defend a writer for the things they do well when their writing is overshadowed by disgusting and horribly backwards views regarding marginalized groups. So while I'm gonna leave this review as I wrote it, (It's seriously weird to me that this throwaway review I wrote years ago still gets likes and is apparently the highest rated review of this collection. Whaaaaat?) I am going to reduce the rating I gave it from three to two stars and put this big red disclaimer on here: Don't read this. I don't care if it's considered a classic of scifi. I don't care if you really liked the game. I don't care about how meaningful the social commentary in it is. The title story shames it's lone female character for being raped and victimized by the other protagonists and another story focuses around the idea that a woman is pathetic because she "lets" one of her shipmates rape her. And the rest of the stories just treat women like utter shit.
Seriously. It's gross.
You don't need to read this. There are plenty of other scifi novels and collections that are just as if not more well regarded that do not have such heinous opinions about women in them. Hell, there are plenty of works that DO have terrible social views that are still far more redeemable than this dreck. Just because IHNMAIMS has name brand recognition does not mean you need to read it or you Fail At Liking Sci Fi.
So yeah okay, now that I've gotten the new and updated review out of the way, here's the original one that has somehow managed to hang on and be the most well received review here. Enjoy!
*****
Harlan Ellison is an asshole.
No really. He is a sexist, condescending, cocky, arrogant prick. His sense of superiority oozes out of every one of the stories' introductions in this collection. Wherever there is a female character, she is portrayed as weak, whorish or manipulative. In the intro to "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes" he casually refers to the woman that inspired the story as someone who he wanted to lay, but didn't get an opportunity to. He constantly talks about his writing as if it was God's gift to science fiction.
Harlan Ellison is an asshole.
But he is an excellent writer! I had long given up on science fiction due to how much garbage there is in the genre, so when I picked up "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" on a friend's recommendation I didn't expect much. I was pleasantly surprised. Ellison's writing has a natural flow to it, very rarely feeling stilted or forced.
His story telling is hallucinogenic in quality; each story in this collection reads like an acid trip. Plots swirl and contort. Characters pass through realities both familiar and foreign like they were just walking to the store, unquestioning, accepting of the alien nature of the worlds around them. Everything about this collection has a dreamlike feel to it, always just real enough to fool the senses into not recognizing the facade around them.
The title story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream starts the collection off with a bang as it tells the story of a cruel, hateful AI that eternally torments the last five humans left alive. It perfectly embodies that hallucinatory quality that I mentioned before; AM manipulates the five poor peoples' DNA, grants them immortality just so it can torture them indefinitely, sets them against giant beasts of legend, all while displaying control over matter and reality that is Godlike in nature. Lonelyache is the story of a man who's depression and regret over the failure of his marriage drives him to adultery, until his sins come together to quite literally haunt him. Delusion For a Dragon Slayer is easily the trippiest of the tales as it weaves through a parable about the afterlife and the horrid beast that hides in the heart of all men.
This is not to say that this collection is perfect. There is a reason why I rated it three stars and not four or five. Not all the stories are worth a second read; Big Sam Was My Friend plods along, and while it makes a poignant point at the end about selfishness and selflessness, it's not quite enough to save it from its boring, plodding pace. Eyes of Dust is a similar situation. Again, it hits home with its commentary on vanity, but the ending is convoluted at best, leaving the metaphor mixed and confusing. And the rampant sexism is very hard to ignore, especially in World of the Myth where Ellison comes just short of justifying rape because a woman flirts or teases a man with no other way to release himself sexually. Seriously I cannot express just how anti-woman this book is, you just have to read it to see what I mean. And his inflated sense of self in the introductions is very off putting. I understand that it's okay to feel good about you work, but Ellison's conceit is obnoxious at best and almost comes to overshadow the stories themselves, particularly when they deal with the dangers of being arrogant and selfish.
So while these stories were, for the most part, exceptionally written, I don't think I will be reading any of them again (except for the title piece, which is easily one of the top ten best science fictions that I've ever read). Ellison's fables, while arguably insightful and thought provoking, suffer greatly from the offensively blatant misogyny and Ellison's own ego. It was worth a read, but borrow it from a library before you decide to buy it.
Levi Cooper
Checked and cringe
Jordan Morales
>You don't need to read this. There are plenty of other scifi novels and collections that are just as if not more well regarded that do not have such heinous opinions about women in them. Hell, there are plenty of works that DO have terrible social views that are still far more redeemable than this dreck. Just because IHNMAIMS has name brand recognition does not mean you need to read it or you Fail At Liking Sci Fi.
>No really. He is a sexist, condescending, cocky, arrogant prick. His sense of superiority oozes out of every one of the stories' introductions in this collection. Wherever there is a female character, she is portrayed as weak, whorish or manipulative. In the intro to "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes" he casually refers to the woman that inspired the story as someone who he wanted to lay, but didn't get an opportunity to.
This is doubly funny since people on the right often think he's a nigger apologist and a proto-SJW, especially in terms of feminism.
Oliver Gomez
kek for misinformation
Hunter Reed
>It's been almost five years since I wrote this review and I've learned a lot about feminism and misogyny and what constitutes GOOD writing to me. So I decided I should come back to this and append this review with a disclaimer: I wrote this before A: coming out as trans Stopped reading there. 1/10 apply you'reself
Brayden Evans
It's strange how it reads like shitty bait you'd read on /pol/ but it's a real person with these very real thoughts
Samuel Hernandez
really good take
James Perry
This holy shit that was actually cringe, as in my face visibly contorted and I felt emotional shame
James Ramirez
>I had long given up on science fiction due to how much garbage there is in the genre >I wrote this before A: coming out as trans
He gave up reading science fiction. Then he became science fiction.
Justin Jones
Added to the review:
It's been a while since I wrote this review, and there's a lot of amusing speculation in the comments people have attached. I have to say, they crack me up. Here's my final word on reviewing on Goodreads (or anywhere); One of the most important elements of reading is that it allows each of us to react in the way we need to react, without judgment, as we experience the book. This is how I reacted to The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway is dead, or I wouldn't have been so up-front with my opinion. He's not insulted, I understand that we all need goals in life, and I've been happily married for a LONG time. Now take a deep breath and smile. Life is too short to be anxious about picayune stuff like this.
Thomas Hobbes Leviathan --------------------------------------------
Not only did I disagree with Hobbes' conclusions, I find his assumptions (his arguments based entirely in Christian perspective) essentially worthless. The only value this tract served to me is to "know thy enemy". This is a classic example of mental circus tricks being used to justify the march of Christian dominance across the globe. I can't think of any written text that I despise more, except perhaps Mein Kempf.
Hobbes is my least favorite philosopher. He embodies everything I despise in Western thought. If I met Hobbes in the street I would flash him my tits and then slap him in the face and call him a pervert.
His whole 'back to nature' & simplistic look at life do have their appeal. I don't subscribe to transcendentalism, but did find his musings broken up by the seasons to be interesting. Like most philosophers, his view on life tends to ignore minor details (like reality) that don't fit into his worldview, but he does stay in the real world most of the time. Luckily, he had some money, good health & people he could borrow from.
I don't particularly like the man, though. His comments on marriage being "a ball & chain" for the man were absolutely offensive. It's no wonder he never married or had kids. His self-centered nature wouldn't allow for such distractions.
Even more offensive was the way he treated the axe he borrowed. I don't care much for tool borrowers anyway, having had too many people borrow mine over the years & then 'treat them as if they were their own'. That means they beat them up or never return them. That's exactly what Thoreau did, ruined a fine axe as if it was of no consequence.
An axe in 1845 was a useful & fairly expensive tool. Generally, handles were handmade by the owner to their pattern. Often the axe head was handmade by the local smith. It required folding one piece of softer steel or iron to create the hole for the handle & then welding the ends back together. Then a higher quality piece of steel was forged on to the blade end. Different tempering was required for the two pieces.
Thoreau used his borrowed axe to both build his cabin & grub roots out with. Usually only a very old axe was used for the latter since hitting rocks & dirt dulled it quickly & shortened its life. After breaking the handle, he BURNED the old handle out of the head, which ruined any temper it had. His ill-fitting replacement handle required him to soak it in water, which expands the wood to fit, but does so only briefly. Once dry, the fit is even looser since the expanding wood fibers are crushed by the iron head. Yuck!
Anyway, this is why I was often distracted from his discourse on nature - I wanted to throttle him too often.
>reviewer dislikes book because it's supposedly overrated by the general population >reviewer dislikes book because it's supposedly overrated on goodreads >reviewer dislikes book because it's supposedly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. >reviewer dislikes book because it was too long >reviewer dislikes book because it was too old >reviewer dislikes book because they had to read it for school >reviewer dislikes book but never explains why and decides to write a blogpost about themselves instead >reviewer only speaks Arabic >reviewer only speaks through animated GIFs
I suffered through about 60 pages, and finally put it down. I very rarely ever leave a book unfinished.
The author narrates and introduces us to Yossarian, who does not want to fly in the war. I get that. I get the whole catch 22 scenerio... You have to be insane to fly the plane. If you can get a dr to say you are insane, you wont have to fly. But in order to tell a dr that you are insane, this actually means you are sane. So you must continue to fly... which makes you insane. blah blah blah.
What I couldnt get past was the author's constant bouts of Attention Deficet Disorder.... He went off on tangents, introducing a new character seemingly every paragraph, and seemed to lose his train of thought only to regain it 2 pages later.
I couldnt take all the jumping around, and was completely lost the whole time... at times rereading the prior page thinking I missed some important tie-in somewhere....
Am I the only one on this planet who is asking myself what heck everyone was smoking when they read this book and actually enjoyed it?
Jacob Hughes
Interesting, it's clearly visible that his writing has degenerated after transitioning
