You Are Not Just a Reader Anymore : A Transmedial Comparison of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” and its Game Adaptation

Sammanfattning

In 1967, Harlan Ellison wrote "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” a short story set in a dystopian future where a supercomputer has trapped humanity's last five survivors. The story was adapted into a video game released in 1995, with Ellison’s creative input and expanded character stories. This essay examines the transmedial relationship between the short story and the game, arguing that both construct an aesthetic of entrapment through medium-specific strategies. Ellison employs recursive language and narrative instability to situate the reader within cycles of anticipation and doubt. By contrast, the game enacts entrapment through interactive systems, including ergodic structures such as repeated retrials, to trap the player within its mechanics. Drawing on trauma theory, reader-response criticism, and video game studies, the analysis explores how the shift from reader to player transforms the experience from passive observation towards ethical responsibility. By comparing how prose and gameplay operate differently, the essay demonstrates how Ellison’s horror persists across media by shifting from syntactic confinement to systemic constraint.