/lit/ - Literature

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is the most misogynistic story I've read in a month of Sundays. The tragedy is that it didn't need to be that way. The misogynistic parts add nothing to the story whatsoever, although this is not to say that the added appeal of being able to hate women while reading sci-fi didn't necessarily contribute to the story's success when it was published. But from a purely literary standpoint, the author could have removed the one female character and the story would have been vastly improved right then and there. Though it still wouldn't have been good, by my personal subjective standards.

IHNMAIMS is the story of the last five human beings on earth living trapped in underground caverns ruled by a sentient supercomputer who was created to destroy humanity during an escalating Cold War. The computer carried out its job a little too efficiently, and salvaged the last five humans left in order to torture them for eternity and take out its/his hatred on the race that created it/him. These humans have been kept alive, sorta-immortal, and physically and mentally altered, for 109 years. And they're not enjoying themselves very much, because of all the torture. Fair enough.


The story opens on four of the five survivors being shocked and horrified at the apparent suicide of a fifth member, before he shows up and it turns out to have been a cruel joke by the computer. It's an effective opening that sealed my interest in the story. But then we have to immediately segue into the misogyny with the introduction of Ellen, who weighs in on a dispute about whether or not to go on an expedition to find canned goods:

Ellen decided us. “I’ve got to have something, Ted. Maybe there’ll be some Bartlett pears or peaches. Please, Ted, let’s try it.”
I gave in easily. What the hell. Mattered not at all. Ellen was grateful, though. She took me twice out of turn. Even that had ceased to matter. And she never came, so why bother? But the machine giggled every time we did it.

Meet Ellen. Ellen's entire purpose in this story is for the four men to have a woman to have sex with over their 109-year confinement. (This study guide I found online for the story? Almost every mention of Ellen has the words "sex", "sexual", or "hypersexual" in the same sentence. With good reason, because that's pretty much her entire presence in the story.)

>oh boy cant way to get into /lit/ to discuss contemporary literature and how affect us in a socio-political way

>only see threads discussing Dead white men

>implying that anything written by them are relevant to our society and culture

>MUH CLASSICS

>what purpose do they have if they cannot speak for the struggle of the unprivileged?

Why are you such shitlords, /lit/?
Don't you have shame?

Daria is /lit/ tan

>implying Daria is not /lit/ tan

>>5477005
No.
is fucking hell.

"Hell is other people"

Do you agree?

>>4824053
That was horrible.
But in 100 years it will be praised as magnificent.

>GK Chesterton.
>Forgotten.

If their books are still being published, then they haven't been forgotten at all.