Transcript
Speaker: You know who else is interested in anarchism?
Speaker: Who's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Can't ask him.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, you can't get more anarchistic than that.
Speaker: Uh, and as you may have guessed today, we're talking about, uh, I have no mouth and I must scream, which is probably a very often, I feel like the title is referenced more often than anything else about the story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: It's like kind of a pun or a joke or whatever.
Speaker: I think more people have referenced the title than have read it by a lot.
Speaker: By a lot.
Speaker: By a lot, a lot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, we're talking about two things of that title today.
Speaker: We're talking about the short story that he wrote back in the 1960s.
Speaker: 67.
Speaker: 67.
Speaker: And we're talking about the game, I Have No Mouth on a Must Screen, the point-and-click adventure, graphic adventure game.
Speaker: that was released in 1995.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that is, so Phil, just to start us out,
Speaker: Who the hell is Harlan Ellison?
Speaker: Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: Who is Harlan Ellison?
Speaker: That's actually probably the topic of its own podcast.
Speaker: It could be.
Speaker: Harlan Ellison is a sci-fi genre writer legend, essentially.
Speaker: The man has written...
Speaker: So much, you know, he's of all the people we have read, talked about, even people like Brandon Sanderson and Alan Dean Foster and that kind of thing.
Speaker: Harlan Ellison outranks them all, both in just legendary status and probably just breadth of work.
Speaker: The man did everything.
Speaker: He wrote short stories.
Speaker: He wrote for Star Trek very famously.
Speaker: He wrote like a lot of episodes of Star Trek.
Speaker: and was well known for the stuff that he did on that.
Speaker: He has a very, on one hand, a very pulpy style to him, but at the same time, also very, very interested in social change and metaphor and that sort of thing, as we are absolutely going to see.
Speaker: A bit of a problematic man.
Speaker: Probably one of the greatest...
Speaker: Angry old bastards of the writing world.
Speaker: And that's saying something, because if there is any art form that is filled with angry old bastards, it's writing.
Speaker: He is they did a documentary on him.
Speaker: Specifically, sci-fi pulp writers between the 40s and the 70s is just littered with the angry old bastard.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And these are people who were pulp writers and were paid by the word.
Speaker: And so there is a very moneyed background behind it.
Speaker: He was very well known.
Speaker: There's a rant you can find of him online.
Speaker: I believe people call it pay the writer.
Speaker: And it's just this rant that he goes on.
Speaker: about writers accepting exposure for their work when they need to get paid.
Speaker: And as a writer, it brings a tear to one's eye.
Speaker: He left us in 2018, but he does not leave unscathed.
Speaker: The man was severely problematic at different times.
Speaker: was known for literally assaulting people who he didn't like.
Speaker: He, in 1985, got into an actual fight with another writer.
Speaker: And they were both running con circuits and stuff like that.
Speaker: So there was this worry that he was going to pull this kind of shit every time they saw each other.
Speaker: And so they literally signed a gentleman's agreement, a non-aggression pact.
Speaker: saying like, we're never going to talk about it again.
Speaker: We're going to pretend it didn't happen from this moment.
Speaker: They literally signed a contract to that effect.
Speaker: He was a very aggressive, angry sort of dude.
Speaker: And like most aggressive, angry dudes, sometimes they say things where you're going, hey, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: That is bullshit.
Speaker: You're absolutely right, Granddad.
Speaker: And just like aforementioned Granddad, sometimes he opens his mouth and you go, you can't say that anymore.
Speaker: That's not a thing.
Speaker: You shouldn't say that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, yeah.
Speaker: Needless to say, if he was still alive and more involved in...
Speaker: genre fiction today he would be the sort of person that we probably would just go we're not gonna we might not talk about this dude yeah no but he's dead so he's dead so fuck it fuck it he can't do anything more no no
Speaker: He can't hurt us anymore.
Speaker: I am fascinated by the fact that his literary trust or whatever it is, is executed by J. Michael Straczynski.
Speaker: I am, why do I know that name?
Speaker: He, sci-fi writer, J. Michael Straczynski, he's, he did like, he's done a bunch of Marvel comics.
Speaker: He's actually one of the more.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He's, yeah, that's weird, right?
Speaker: Yeah, it's just funny how the circles of this stuff, it's such a small community.
Speaker: Like so many art forms.
Speaker: We've had two writers on this show who were contemporaries of Ellison's who have worked with him.
Speaker: It's a small community.
Speaker: And he was just one of the...
Speaker: loudest and biggest ones of them.
Speaker: He's won a billion awards.
Speaker: He's won the Bram Stoker award a bunch of times.
Speaker: He's won Hugo award and Edgar.
Speaker: Like he's, he's won a bunch of shit and, and he'll, he'll let everyone know.
Speaker: And, and if he thought you were trying to screw him over in any way, he was not quiet about it.
Speaker: Probably one of his most famous,
Speaker: controversies, if you want to call it, that it was him basically claiming that James Cameron ripped him off for the plot line of The Terminator based on an episode of an old sci-fi show he had written, I think, a short story too.
Speaker: And at first, it's kind of one of those things that make you go, okay, Harlan, anything you say, everyone's ripping you off.
Speaker: And then you read and you're like, oh, that is actually... Might have actually ripped him off.
Speaker: Yeah, that actually might have some legs to it.
Speaker: Caroline Ellison was one of those guys that just the volume, the sheer volume of stuff he put out, it's like one of those things where, okay, well, maybe they ripped you off, but maybe it's just, you just do so much shit that it could be parallel thinking.
Speaker: He is the sci-fi writer equivalent of The Simpsons, basically.
Speaker: Harlan Ellison did it first.
Speaker: He's done it.
Speaker: He's done it.
Speaker: And that's particularly funny because he has been a guest star on The Simpsons.
Speaker: Some of his other controversies include supporting the founder of Dragon Con.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Who was a pedophile.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And vociferously.
Speaker: supporting Ed Kramer, who was a convicted pedophile.
Speaker: Harlan Ellison picked mostly the wrong hills to die on.
Speaker: A lot of wrong hills.
Speaker: Until he died.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He had a good long life, too.
Speaker: Good long life.
Speaker: Anger can preserve almost as well as positivity.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Good long life, pretty good writer.
Speaker: Mostly a piece of shit.
Speaker: But this is an important adaptation.
Speaker: But he falls right into that problematic fave category where you like his work, but...
Speaker: You like his work and he's also 8,000 years old, even after death.
Speaker: So it's not to suggest that old people get a pass, but I do find that with most people, they find it a whole lot harder to get too angry about it when they find out that he's an octogenarian.
Speaker: It's sort of like the Lovecraft problem.
Speaker: I mean, Lovecraft, big old bag of shit.
Speaker: Oh my god, terrible person.
Speaker: But he's very, very, very dead.
Speaker: And you can work through his work in any way you see fit.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be the way that he might have intended it, which is...
Speaker: Fear of the other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the other in his case was usually the Jewish people who moved in down the street.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's one thing to – we have actually – and I'm not going to bring up what it was, but Kevin and I have actually –
Speaker: gone through in choosing books for this show, we have found authors and books that we're just like, oh yeah, no, we're not going to cover that.
Speaker: This person is a piece of shit and I'm not interested in talking about them.
Speaker: And it comes down to the fact that those people are completely replaceable and what they have made is really not all that special.
Speaker: People like Ellison and Lovecraft, as problematic as they are,
Speaker: are actually irreplaceable artists.
Speaker: Yeah, they're kind of foundational to their respective genres.
Speaker: It's important to know who they are and what they do, even if they are assholes.
Speaker: And at least that's my opinion.
Speaker: Other people might go, no, still don't give a
Speaker: shit.
Speaker: And that's cool.
Speaker: That's cool, too.
Speaker: I mean, that's just that's just kind of the coin, the side of the coin that we landed on.
Speaker: So if you're so basically, if you're a living piece of shit and you're also not that special, we're not going to cover your adaptation of video game material.
Speaker: And let's face it, most of you aren't.
Speaker: Most of you are.
Speaker: Most of you are not that special.
Speaker: So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Except the people who like us.
Speaker: Except for you guys.
Speaker: You guys are listening.
Speaker: You're very special.
Speaker: If you're listening to us, you're special.
Speaker: I think we saved that one.
Speaker: I think we got it.
Speaker: I think we got it.
Speaker: I think they bought it, Kevin.
Speaker: So we're talking about both the game and the story.
Speaker: And we'll start out with the story as it's the shorter of the two.
Speaker: Very much so.
Speaker: The story is, for as much as it's talked about, is exceedingly brief.
Speaker: And it's set in a post-apocalyptic future.
Speaker: This robot, big old robot named Am...
Speaker: which the name changes a few, what AM stands for changes a few times.
Speaker: Allied Master Computer, though, was, I think, the original name for it.
Speaker: So this supercomputer is basically torturing
Speaker: The five there's like five human beings left in the entire world.
Speaker: And this supercomputer is torturing them because it hates humanity.
Speaker: It hates what humanity is because it it became it's a supercomputer that was built up to solve all of humanity's problems and it became sentient and.
Speaker: And then it just learned that, well, it cannot move.
Speaker: It cannot do anything.
Speaker: It's just a piece of machinery, but it knows everything.
Speaker: So it developed this absolute misanthropy towards humanity and kills everyone except for five people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I mean, this is during the Cold War.
Speaker: So there's an American AM and a Russian AM and a Chinese AM.
Speaker: And we're all at a standstill.
Speaker: There's nuclear war on the horizon.
Speaker: And they all just join.
Speaker: All the supercomputers merge to become one big supercomputer called AM.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And so there's five people left.
Speaker: The story is narrated by a guy named Ted, who in my head is Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, sure.
Speaker: I mean, that's it.
Speaker: It sounds OK.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a real piece.
Speaker: He's a real piece of shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Ted is this guy who claims to be the most rational and the only one of the group that's been unaltered.
Speaker: And when I say unaltered, I'm
Speaker: Basically, AM has full capabilities to change everything about everything everywhere.
Speaker: It's like living on a holodeck with the safety, the safety's off, you know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It can do whatever the fuck it wants, including alter parts of your personality, alter parts of your anatomy, as we'll see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Things like that.
Speaker: So Ted claims that he is unaltered, which is not the case.
Speaker: Ted is a paranoid asshole.
Speaker: Like he is.
Speaker: He's just a massive dick.
Speaker: Figuratively.
Speaker: It's a very difficult narrator to have.
Speaker: Very difficult, difficult narrator to have because you don't like him at all.
Speaker: Because of the way he frames everyone else.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Especially his viciously paranoid and viciously paranoid, super misogynistic.
Speaker: And which, you know, there's only one woman to hate.
Speaker: So he she really gets a lot of his hate.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So there's Ted.
Speaker: He's the narrator.
Speaker: Otherwise, there is Benny, who at one point was a scientist and gets transformed into a gorilla man with a gigantic penis.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Just a massive dong.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Harlan, I guess, was working some stuff out.
Speaker: He was this whole book.
Speaker: You could say that of everything that happens in this story.
Speaker: He's just working out a lot of shit.
Speaker: There's Ellen, who is the only black woman or is the only black character in the story.
Speaker: only non-white character in the story, to be specific, who basically in her normal life before M was like prim and proper and very, you know, like...
Speaker: didn't like she she would claim to be a virgin and all that and then in the in the post am world oh she's thirsty yeah she said she's had sex twice she calls herself a virgin twice twice removed yeah yeah yeah which you know
Speaker: We won't get into the... Yeah.
Speaker: And this is another thing.
Speaker: This is another thing where Harlan Ellison is a little bit problematic is he has the only female character who is a black woman who is just insatiable for sex.
Speaker: And it's kind of...
Speaker: It's like a perverse stereotype that used to be leveled at black women in a lot of stories and like through the years.
Speaker: It's not a great thing that he the way he characterized this character.
Speaker: It's a it's a it is, as we said earlier, Harlan Ellison's problematic.
Speaker: This is also specifically a problematic part of the story.
Speaker: It's tough because he does make it clear that this was not her personality to begin with, that she has been changed into this by Am.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it still makes it tough.
Speaker: This is my feeling throughout the story.
Speaker: There are all these moments where you're like...
Speaker: Okay, he's saying that this guy, this is not a good thing.
Speaker: He makes a point to say this is not good.
Speaker: Ted, for example, is super misogynistic towards Ellen.
Speaker: We talk about Benny and his big dick, and Ellen services all of them, but particularly likes it from Benny because he's got a big dick.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Ted talks about that.
Speaker: Of course, that's what she wants.
Speaker: That's all she ever wants.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's stuff like this.
Speaker: It's all stuff that he makes a point of saying, these are not good characteristics, but there's so much of it and it's constant that you're just like- How much of- It's like Jesus.
Speaker: It's constant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it makes it tough to ignore.
Speaker: Or if not ignore, it makes it tough to just go, well, that's just how-
Speaker: the characters are supposed to be because there's so much of it.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And, and let's, let's let me say it right out front.
Speaker: This is not an easy story to read.
Speaker: No, it's 15 pages long.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is short.
Speaker: But it takes a minute because it's like, it's, it's like swat.
Speaker: Sorry, Alanis Morissette, but I'm stealing that jagged little pill.
Speaker: It's a, it is a, it's like, it's like a swallowing a sharp object.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's not comfortable.
Speaker: It doesn't go down smooth.
Speaker: Which was never Harlan Ellison's intention.
Speaker: This dude did not write like feel good shit.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: That's just not what he did.
Speaker: But fuck.
Speaker: Then there's two other guys, Gorister, who is, he's just kind of a, he's a dude who's just kind of there.
Speaker: He's kind of lame.
Speaker: And Nimdok, who is, who has been named Nimdok because Am likes the way it sounds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And probably calls him Nimdok all the time.
Speaker: How can you not with that?
Speaker: It has to be Nimdok.
Speaker: You have to.
Speaker: There's no choice in that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the story opens with them finding Gorister's dead body.
Speaker: And but it's not Gorister's dead body.
Speaker: It's just like a duplicate of Gorister that Am made because to fuck with them.
Speaker: And that is kind of sets up the entire story.
Speaker: And it is kind of hilarious how they set it up because like they're they're all going, oh, because they've they've been alive for like over 100 years at this point.
Speaker: Yeah, it's been over a century that he's been torturing them.
Speaker: And they're like, damn it, he did it again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's been keeping them alive, you know, all this time.
Speaker: And so they see one of them dead and they're like, oh, my God, it finally happened.
Speaker: One of us died.
Speaker: That's insane.
Speaker: And they're horrified.
Speaker: And then he just, of course, to kind of just like.
Speaker: He's like, what are you guys looking at?
Speaker: Huh?
Speaker: What's going?
Speaker: Hey, guys, what's going on in here?
Speaker: It actually is kind of hilarious.
Speaker: Oh, am.
Speaker: Oh, am.
Speaker: So there's like this rumor that there are canned goods over on the other side of the world, basically, in an ice cave.
Speaker: And they're like, well, we're all hungry and we've been hungry for like 50 years or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, because they can starve and not die.
Speaker: They can starve and not die.
Speaker: Am just keeps them alive in a perpetual state of starving.
Speaker: So they go on a journey to get their canned goods on the other side of the globe.
Speaker: And over the course of this journey,
Speaker: A lot of shit happens.
Speaker: Benny gets blinded.
Speaker: I think this is temporary.
Speaker: His eyes get basically lasered out by him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he also starts like devolving more and more to be less human.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, at one point there's a storm and Ellen and I want to say Ellen and Nimdok get pulled away into the storm and then they find their like they have to keep walking.
Speaker: So the other three keep walking and they find that like mangled dead, deadish bodies of Ellen and Nimdok on the ground and they just keep walking.
Speaker: And eventually Ellen and Nimdok are like healed and catch up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because that's just what Am does.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they didn't get a rise out of him.
Speaker: So he goes, ah, fuck, bring him up.
Speaker: He just, he just constantly fucking with him.
Speaker: He's like, he's like Beetlejuice, but worse.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker: He's like an extra malevolent, less fun Beetlejuice.
Speaker: He's Beetlejuice without a sense of humor, which is the cruelest cut of all.
Speaker: The cruelest cut of all.
Speaker: They come across this big old pillar of where Anne basically does the Garth Marenghi.
Speaker: I know authors who use subtext and they're all cowards where he basically spells out his like why he hates them.
Speaker: Like in clear as day.
Speaker: He's like, in case you guys are wondering, here's a big old tablet.
Speaker: Written on the side of a skyscraper of why I hate you.
Speaker: Yeah, he just says it.
Speaker: Yeah, he just he just gives them a speech about why he hates them.
Speaker: So they read it.
Speaker: Because what else are they going to do?
Speaker: They're bored as shit.
Speaker: There's nothing to do.
Speaker: And they're walking.
Speaker: And they, here's, this is the wild thing.
Speaker: Eventually, they just get to the caves.
Speaker: I mean, that's pretty much all that happens in the book, in the story, is they start,
Speaker: Fucked up shit happens.
Speaker: Ted's a misogynist.
Speaker: They get to the caves.
Speaker: They get to the caves and realize, oh, it's canned goods and we don't have a can opener.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: I started to talk about this earlier, but it's like,
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: He's a good writer enough that I forgot the era that I'm reading.
Speaker: But like this is a time like if I wrote that story now, people go, go fuck yourself.
Speaker: That is so cliche.
Speaker: That is so.
Speaker: But it wasn't cliche at the time.
Speaker: Like, yeah, the point has, you know, it's not about, well, why don't they use this?
Speaker: Why don't they use that?
Speaker: That's not the point.
Speaker: The point is that, you know, Am is finding ways to be extra cruel and all that stuff.
Speaker: And it's just it's this example of of the cliche before it existed as a cliche.
Speaker: But reading it in 2022, you can't help but go, Jesus Christ, is that it?
Speaker: There's no can opener.
Speaker: You don't have a rock.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'll eat SpaghettiOs off a rock.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: There's literally no way to... I mean, I'm pretty sure if I was hungry enough, I could crack a can open with whatever's around me.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Come on, guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cans are not impenetrable.
Speaker: But maybe, of course, back then...
Speaker: I want to say back then cans were made of like a heavier, like it was like they were heavier duty.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Especially if it's Cold War era.
Speaker: Cold War era.
Speaker: These like cans made of like iron.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Five pounds each.
Speaker: It's not like aluminum cans nowadays.
Speaker: It's, yeah.
Speaker: So maybe, I don't know.
Speaker: The long and short of it is this pisses Benny off, the ape man, to no end.
Speaker: And he jumps onto, what is it, Gorister's face?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And starts eating Gorister's face.
Speaker: Yes, yeah.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: And things pretty much escalate quickly.
Speaker: Brick kills a guy with a trident.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's pretty much what happens.
Speaker: It's just chaos.
Speaker: It's like, like we can't open our dinty moors.
Speaker: Someone's going to die.
Speaker: Benny attacks and is like eating Gorister's head.
Speaker: So Ted is like, this is the moment.
Speaker: And he takes like a stalactite, which could have been used to open the cans, but whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he kills Benny and Gorister.
Speaker: And then he kills Nimdok and
Speaker: And then Ellen's like, or Ellen kills Nimdok.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then he kills Ellen.
Speaker: But before he gets to kill himself, Am turns him into a gelatinous blob of a man who basically can just wander around the wasteland that Am has created.
Speaker: thinking.
Speaker: He's still himself in there.
Speaker: He's totally 100% himself.
Speaker: He's thinking, but he doesn't really have any appendages.
Speaker: What's the word I'm thinking of?
Speaker: He doesn't have...
Speaker: a hole in his face.
Speaker: Yeah, his mouth is sealed shut.
Speaker: He doesn't have a hole in his face in which he would elicit a vocalization.
Speaker: That's like a yell.
Speaker: The aristocrats.
Speaker: The aristocrats.
Speaker: No, the book literally ends with, I have no mouth and I must scream.
Speaker: That's the title of the book.
Speaker: The title of the story is the last line in the story.
Speaker: I totally missed what you were doing and nearly fucked that all up.
Speaker: So the father takes the, no, I'm not going to do the aristocrats.
Speaker: It's, yeah.
Speaker: And that's the story.
Speaker: It's, you know,
Speaker: It's brief, it's bleak, and it all, you know, a lot of it.
Speaker: This is before the internet where everyone would gather together to, like, analyze and pick apart every little thing.
Speaker: It was accepted more that you were going to have some plot holes and that sort of thing.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: You know, the idea, for example, like Kevin pointed out, that they couldn't just bash open some cans, like it would drive them that.
Speaker: And also the idea that, because it's, he's- That would be a CinemaSins ding, right there.
Speaker: Right, right, right.
Speaker: And-
Speaker: And he's turned into this horrible amorphous blob thing because, as punishment, basically, because he helped exterminate these humans, which were Am's entertainment.
Speaker: He's played things.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: And it kind of undercuts the idea that Am is this god if they can get away with that kind of thing.
Speaker: You would have thought they would have done this by now.
Speaker: There are a lot of little holes you can poke in it, but I think the era of where it came out points towards that.
Speaker: That's just not how you consumed stories back then.
Speaker: Yeah, you didn't think about it that hard.
Speaker: It's kind of a Twilight Zone sort of thing.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's the, my glasses, but I had time now.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It's like, come on, you could still, you could make that work.
Speaker: Come on, dude.
Speaker: Are you nearsighted, farsighted?
Speaker: Which is it?
Speaker: You just set it up and it's the proper distance.
Speaker: It's come on.
Speaker: You'll be all right.
Speaker: You could make this work, but the whole point is to make you go, oh, you know, like that's what they're doing.
Speaker: That's a bummer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Dark story, Harlan.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Dark story.
Speaker: Yeah, that's actually the thing.
Speaker: Like, why did nobody try to kill themselves in the year in hell for 100 years?
Speaker: It takes very little.
Speaker: Clearly.
Speaker: It takes very little.
Speaker: They've been starving to death all this time.
Speaker: I think there's a level of naivete to how long it would take a person to
Speaker: to get fed up with this sort of thing and try to throw themselves off a cliff, you know, like.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, let's look at, let's, let's see, we could use Groundhog Day as a litmus, right?
Speaker: That wasn't even this, that wasn't even hell.
Speaker: And it's, it's, what is it?
Speaker: It's,
Speaker: Groundhog Day goes on.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It depends on the math you're using, but it's he's definitely it's definitely not like a century in by the time he starts trying to kill himself.
Speaker: It might be like 15 years of loops before he tries to off himself.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's it's it's a little I mean, I have no mouth and I must Punxsutawney doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but I can.
Speaker: I see what I have to.
Speaker: I have no mouth and I must see my shadow.
Speaker: Sorry, Am says four more weeks of torment.
Speaker: Although if you lived in Western Pennsylvania, like I have four more weeks of winter is a torment.
Speaker: Good Lord.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: By the way, am is it's it's a play on like I am.
Speaker: I think therefore I am.
Speaker: Therefore I am.
Speaker: That's yeah.
Speaker: Cause it's, it's like,
Speaker: I actually, I really liked the evolution because it starts out as allied master computer.
Speaker: Yeah, I forget all the different things he changes it to.
Speaker: Adaptive manipulator.
Speaker: And then when he gains sentience and starts fucking people up, they call it aggressive menace.
Speaker: Which at that point, I don't know if we need to stick to the AM thing, whatever.
Speaker: And then it starts referring to itself as am, referring to the phrase, I think, therefore I am.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's the short story.
Speaker: So later, much later, in fact, much later, almost 30 years, 30 years later, it gets adapted into a Vidya game.
Speaker: Vidya game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I know you guys heard this story and thought to yourself, where's the video game adaptation?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Here it is, folks.
Speaker: Boy, howdy.
Speaker: It was 1995.
Speaker: It was developed by Cyber Dreams and the Dreamers Guild, but it was co-designed by the man himself, Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: And he got in there and he's like, oh man, yeah, let's open this bad boy up.
Speaker: So they basically took a 15-page short story and turned it into a
Speaker: pretty epic experience for a point and click game.
Speaker: Especially for that era.
Speaker: That era, yeah.
Speaker: So the five characters remain the same.
Speaker: Gorister, Benny, Ellen, Nimdock, and Ted.
Speaker: And except each of them gets their own story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And their backgrounds are much more fleshed out in the video game.
Speaker: So part of the goal of the video game is to go through all of their stories and have each character face their, basically face their past and their fears and all that stuff.
Speaker: It's,
Speaker: Very fascinating.
Speaker: So Ellen goes from like a pretty paper thin like, oh, she was prissy and now she's horny type of character to she is a scientist who was sexually assaulted at one time.
Speaker: And she's trying to deal with the trauma of her assault.
Speaker: She's trying to parse that.
Speaker: It's like, goddamn, Harlan, you've learned a lot in 30 years.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: And it's not, and I will give them credit, you know, this was 1995.
Speaker: This isn't exactly a time when they're worrying about sensitivity, you know, especially when you hear her talk.
Speaker: There are more than a few little, I expected her to call someone a jive turkey at a certain point.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a little, the scripting on her is still a little...
Speaker: Yeah, but I will say the sexual assault aspect of it is handled well.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's not fun, you know.
Speaker: No, it's not fun, but she's a brilliant engineer, but she has this fear of the color yellow, and she's trying to parse, she doesn't even understand why she fears yellow.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the fear of yellow is tied to the fact that that's what the assaulter was wearing, I believe.
Speaker: Yeah, because he was posing as a technician and wearing a yellow jumpsuit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, trigger warning to anyone who wants to play this game, that is something that is dealt with, and it's dealt with aggressively.
Speaker: But I didn't find it exploitative.
Speaker: I thought it was well-constructed.
Speaker: So each of the characters evolve and grow and change in the game.
Speaker: Like something that's not present in the short story.
Speaker: None of the characters really go through any evolution in the short story.
Speaker: We're told about their character arc, which happened before we started reading.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, I used to be this and now I'm this.
Speaker: But it's more of like a switch between like what they were before Am and what Am made them.
Speaker: And in this, it's like they have their issues from life from before Am and what Am made them, but also they're able to overcome those issues and overcome that fear.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Nimdok was a Nazi scientist.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: You know, it's, there's a lot of, it goes through a lot of, like each one gets their own story.
Speaker: They're all relatively long and each of them deals with their past trauma or,
Speaker: comes to terms with the bad shit that they might have done in the past.
Speaker: It's not all things that were inflicted to them.
Speaker: It was things that they might have inflicted on others.
Speaker: Yeah, and this kind of thing that's basically something that they're carrying with them.
Speaker: Some sort of trauma or guilt or something like that that happened in the past.
Speaker: And that's basically Am's favorite toy to use against them because it's so raw to them still.
Speaker: And it's fascinating.
Speaker: It's really, it's horrifying.
Speaker: hard to deal with and they all have something like that.
Speaker: And it's really it's kind of insane because the motivation that he gives them to relive these things to play along basically is in many cases I'll let you die.
Speaker: He says, you know, hey, you know, if we just one more game, we're going to do this one more time.
Speaker: And if you do good, maybe I'll let you die.
Speaker: And these people are like, OK, if it means I can die.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Which is pretty fucking dark for a video game in 1995.
Speaker: It's really bleak.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, there is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ultimately, there are seven endings to the game.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because as you go through the game, you can find out a little bit more about AM.
Speaker: You can find out more.
Speaker: So one of the big changes between this and the short story is in the short story, all the AM supercomputers
Speaker: joined together to make one giant one.
Speaker: Is that Kitty?
Speaker: Jonesy has opinions on Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: Jonesy has opinions on Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: He was always an Asimov guy, though.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Hi, Kitty.
Speaker: I, I, cat.
Speaker: I was named after a sci-fi cat, so I should have opinions on these things, Bob.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So in the, in the game, the, the, the AMs are split into three again.
Speaker: So the main antagonist of this one is, is pretty much still the one from the story, except now there is a Chinese and a Russian AM out there, so to speak.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The other thing is they changed the stakes a little bit to say, all right, well, up on the moon, like everybody on Earth is dead.
Speaker: These are the five people left on Earth.
Speaker: Up on the moon, there's still 750 people alive up on the lunar colony up there.
Speaker: Yeah, they escaped.
Speaker: That they escaped.
Speaker: So there's actually some stakes as to whether like, oh, you know, can you can you get see through all the machinations of Am and and save the people on the lunar colony?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Or do you not save the people in the lunar colony?
Speaker: Am himself has like servants and he has parts to his personality that are represented by the ego and the superego and things like that.
Speaker: It gets really in there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Whereas like the original short story is a brief exploration of what hell is probably like.
Speaker: This gets deep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's kind of fascinating because this is basically the opposite of what we've normally done for so many reasons.
Speaker: First off, is this the first time we've covered?
Speaker: This is the first reverse-y, real reverse card that we've covered.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And we've talked about doing this for a while.
Speaker: I didn't even think about until just now that this is the first time we're doing this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's a reverse there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's just such a, it's fascinating because you have to come up with actual conquerable stakes for the player.
Speaker: Because you can have it be miserable and basically hopeless in a short story, if at least it's interesting and compelling to follow.
Speaker: But if you're going to play the game, for Christ's sake, you've got to have some shot.
Speaker: And he...
Speaker: I think did a really good job adapting it in this way.
Speaker: It's kind of fascinating, especially 30 years later.
Speaker: I think it, yeah, I think it's a really interesting way to adapt.
Speaker: And something that we've always kind of looked at in adaptations for going from a game to a book is when the author gets to kind of play in the universe rather than having to just...
Speaker: recreate the original work.
Speaker: those scenes end up usually being the most interesting at the very least.
Speaker: I don't want to say the best, but they end up being the most interesting.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: It happened in this too, where the stuff that is original to the game is fascinating and, and much more interesting.
Speaker: I want to say then the original short story is and, yeah,
Speaker: I don't feel like I'm challenging Harlan Ellison's legacy because he was the one who did it.
Speaker: He's the one who went back to the story and worked with this development company and said, what can I do?
Speaker: I want to go back and I want to see what I could do to beef this up a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been thinking about how he would change it for a long time.
Speaker: It feels like the kind of thing that...
Speaker: if you were going to turn a short story into a novel, for example, because he wasn't a gamer.
Speaker: He wasn't into video games on any level.
Speaker: So either he was just able, they were able to go, we'll pay you.
Speaker: And he went, ding!
Speaker: And they said, how would you do it?
Speaker: And he's just, I mean, he was an incredible writer that he just sat down and, okay, how do I make this longer?
Speaker: But the fact that he was able to adapt it so well
Speaker: so specifically to the medium of video games is no small feat.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It's really, really impressive.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So, I mean, and if you're interested, I would just, it's still available.
Speaker: You can go and pick it up on good old Steam, on good old games, whatever you want.
Speaker: You can go pick up
Speaker: So I recommend you all go out and check it out if you wanna see what it's like.
Speaker: Yeah, I think the story, most people could probably skip.
Speaker: Unless you're like- You could skip the story.
Speaker: Yeah, if you're a sci-fi-er.
Speaker: You could skip the story in favor.
Speaker: If you're a gamer, you could skip the story in favor of the game.
Speaker: And it's not that you're missing out on a thing.
Speaker: You'll actually probably get more.
Speaker: But again, trigger warning, it gets a little bit dicey in terms of assault and rape and things like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Genocide.
Speaker: I mean, Nazis.
Speaker: Nazis.
Speaker: It does not hold back.
Speaker: And again, I don't think that anything in the subject matter is done in a way that is, again, exploitative or
Speaker: Cruel, you know, or in bad faith.
Speaker: It's done with a specific goal in mind.
Speaker: But if that's something that fucks with you, then you've been warned.
Speaker: But it is, I honestly think this might be one of the best point and click games of all time.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it has a bajillion accolades.
Speaker: I mean, it's been on a ton of lists.
Speaker: It was a failure.
Speaker: It flopped hard.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I wonder why.
Speaker: I wonder why.
Speaker: But yeah, you know, various publications have had it on those top 100, top 150 lists of all time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: It's a really interesting experiment.
Speaker: So I think that basically covers your mouth.
Speaker: Nothing covers this mouth, Kevin.
Speaker: So if you need to scream, you probably can't.
Speaker: But yeah, I think that covers I have no mouth and I am a scream story end game.
Speaker: So Phil, I do have a question to ask you.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Ooh, what am I playing?
Speaker: I, well, first and foremost, I finally beat Cult of the Lamb.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Uh, loved it.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: I basically just kind of you can cheese your way through the end.
Speaker: Basically, if you if you do, you know, if you've if you know what you're doing with your town, basically just like you spend spend the time taking care of your town for several days and you get extra hearts and stuff like that.
Speaker: And the final bosses are not that tough.
Speaker: And that's coming from me, who is is not great at video games, as it turns out.
Speaker: But I really liked that one.
Speaker: I think it was a good length.
Speaker: I think it's on my game of the year list.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: I don't think it's my number one.
Speaker: But I can say that I've never, not since Resident Evil Village, have I been so...
Speaker: looking forward to seeing what kind of DLC they come out for it.
Speaker: They've set a really solid foundation for just adding all kinds of cool shit to this.
Speaker: You can make this a forever game.
Speaker: This is the kind of thing that you could make last a very, very long time.
Speaker: So I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker: After that, I got back on my bullshit and I'm going back through my horror game backlog.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, and I started playing The Evil Within.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that was Bethesda, which I don't, it doesn't, Bethesda is not a developer that pops into my head when I think of horror games necessarily.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's, The Evil Within is the director on the game is,
Speaker: Is it Shinji Mikami?
Speaker: I want to say who is original the original Resident Evil.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there's something to that.
Speaker: Like this is.
Speaker: And for those of you who don't know, it came out in 2014.
Speaker: It's a survival horror game.
Speaker: It's theme wise.
Speaker: It's basically it's somewhere between Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what I.
Speaker: Yeah, it does a lot of the mental kind of like these are manifestations of X, Y, and Z. You don't really know your protagonist and you're learning about him as you go.
Speaker: It has a lot of cliches in it.
Speaker: But it also, but it plays very similar to a Resident Evil game.
Speaker: There are puzzles and, you know, weapons and all kinds of loot to get.
Speaker: It doesn't really succeed on either end.
Speaker: Yeah, from what I understand, Evil Within 2 is a huge, huge upgrade from the first one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I haven't really played, I've played,
Speaker: It played a good chunk of one, and I never really got into two, even though I want to.
Speaker: But yeah, from what I understand, Evil Within 2 was better.
Speaker: That's good, because the thing is, I have all these complaints about it, but I'm really enjoying it at the same time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of funny, because I –
Speaker: right off the bat, anyone who's interested in playing it and plays chapter one of it, chapter one sucks.
Speaker: But the funny thing is, it's terrible, but it's not indicative of...
Speaker: The rest of the game, it's a really weird intro.
Speaker: Basically, it's you doing a lot of stealth stuff, hiding from a guy with a chainsaw who can instant kill you.
Speaker: Their stealth mechanics are not great.
Speaker: And sometimes you feel railroaded.
Speaker: It feels like if you don't do it the way the developer wants you to do it, then you're not going to do well.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And like literally at one point, because he's got a chainsaw, he's looking for me and you hear the vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom of the chainsaw and he can sneak up on me with a chainsaw.
Speaker: Like I'll hear the sound of the chainsaw and think he's like all the way in the other room.
Speaker: No, he's behind me and he tears my head off.
Speaker: And it's like, what the fuck?
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: But when I got.
Speaker: Past that, it became it becomes a more kind of it's like Resident Evil four.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: With a with a with a dash of Silent Hill in there.
Speaker: It's definitely.
Speaker: Yeah, that opening that opening chapter is not indicative of how you play at any point in the rest of the game.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Because you're able to fight in the rest.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You don't have to.
Speaker: But you'll still find closets to hide in.
Speaker: Alien Isolation, Outlast kind of shit.
Speaker: But I have not even bothered a single time since-
Speaker: That first chapter.
Speaker: Every other time, I've got enough ammunition.
Speaker: You just fight through the combat encounter.
Speaker: Yeah, or run for a little bit and you'll find something somewhere later.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: It's a really weird choice.
Speaker: It makes me wonder if it wasn't tacked on at the last second or something.
Speaker: Yeah, it's definitely weird.
Speaker: And I think the interesting thing about 2 is...
Speaker: Not really spoilers, but two basically starts in a way that it's like, it like resets the stakes of everything.
Speaker: Like, okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's like the first one happened, but there's no real lasting like issues from the first one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Globally, you know, it's like, it's just, we're just, we're resetting the stakes here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: So it's like between, I've got a lot of complaints, but the atmosphere is good.
Speaker: Like here comes Jones.
Speaker: Jonesy for Christ's sake.
Speaker: A little kitty head pop up.
Speaker: Yeah, just here goes his tail.
Speaker: It's one of the, the atmosphere is good.
Speaker: Like there's, there's a moment you're outside and it's like, you see like the rumble of like heat lightning and stuff in the distance.
Speaker: I was like, shit, that's pretty good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've got, but yeah, I got a lot of complaints, but I'm having a lot of fun.
Speaker: I know I'm going to finish it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's weird like that.
Speaker: It's kind of the opposite of Resident Evil 5, where it was like, I'm not having any fun, but because it's Resident Evil, I feel the need to push the
Speaker: Yeah, you're still having, yeah, it's like you're still enjoying it, even though there's a lot of just dumb, dumb shit.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: So I'll probably have it done by the time we meet up again.
Speaker: But yeah, so that's me.
Speaker: Kevin, what are you playing, my friend?
Speaker: I am I have been playing through.
Speaker: So I beat Wolfenstein.
Speaker: So there's a there's a Wolfenstein game which you cannot buy anymore.
Speaker: It's it's just called Wolfenstein.
Speaker: It's from 2009.
Speaker: It was made by Raven Software, and I was playing that for the other podcast that I'm going to be co-hosting with Hot Cider.
Speaker: Just kind of like getting some vibes on what it's like.
Speaker: They rolled credits on it.
Speaker: Interesting game.
Speaker: It has some fun stuff in it.
Speaker: It really falls squarely in that, you know, that era of like the late aughts, you know, post Bioshock where everything had to have like all your shooters and
Speaker: that weren't straight up military shooters.
Speaker: Your dude had to have some sort of power or ability or something like that.
Speaker: So Singularity comes out the following year and has is very similar in it.
Speaker: That's also made by Raven.
Speaker: But this version of Wolfenstein, BJ Blazkowicz finds a this like medallion and the medallion has like four powers.
Speaker: One is called Veil, which allows you to see secrets.
Speaker: One is slows down time.
Speaker: One gives you a shield and the other one powers up your ammo.
Speaker: So blast through things easier.
Speaker: It's a it's a fun game.
Speaker: It feels very of its time.
Speaker: It feels extremely 2009.
Speaker: And the one thing I'll say about it is that BJ as a character, he is an extremely fleshed out character starting with the New Order in 2014.
Speaker: Like the New Order and beyond, the machine games took real care to play.
Speaker: I guess flesh out both BJ and the surrounding world a little bit more and not shy away from who the Nazis were and who the marginalized people were in the world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Whereas, uh, Wolfenstein 2009 is just a little bit more straightforward military shooter with some, with some superpowers basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It doesn't, it doesn't get into the deep shit.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't get into the super deep shit.
Speaker: It is a, I want to say it's a loose sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which is from 2001.
Speaker: That one I played in college.
Speaker: That one leaned heavy into the occult shit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, and it's fascinating.
Speaker: And because Wolfenstein, for as many times it's been rebooted and all that stuff.
Speaker: There's a loose continuity going through all the games, starting with the return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2001.
Speaker: Now, because if you go back to the 2014 Machine Games game, which is the New Order, which starts in 1946, basically the war should have ended, but it didn't.
Speaker: Death's head Wilhelm Strasse, who is the villain in Wolfenstein 2009, has been using his advanced technology to arm the Nazis and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There is connections between the 2014 game and the 2009 game, which I think is fascinating.
Speaker: And then what I really like is that they they recontextualize the original games.
Speaker: the original Wolfenstein game, Wolfenstein 3D, as nightmares that BJ Blazkowicz has whenever you, whenever you lay down in certain beds, he has a nightmare and it takes you into a level from Wolfenstein 3D.
Speaker: So it's like, like recontextualize it as it's like, oh yeah, it's all, it's all connected.
Speaker: That's so funny.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: That's a pretty terrific idea.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, there's a lot of characters that carry over and things like that.
Speaker: And so, you know, I've been I've been playing through the Wolfenstein game.
Speaker: So I played through Wolfenstein 09.
Speaker: Then I was like, all right, I'm going to go play through the New Order.
Speaker: Did that.
Speaker: I'm going through the Old Blood, which was the prequel right now.
Speaker: And then I'm probably going to go into the New Colossus after that.
Speaker: So that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: And it's been fun.
Speaker: If you want to find out more, go follow at Hot Cider as it's mostly his podcast.
Speaker: And I may have chatted with him a little bit about maybe being a part of this as well.
Speaker: Oh, look at you.
Speaker: I'm taking the initiative.
Speaker: You're taking initiative.
Speaker: He showed me the list and I was because I was like, I'm not an FPS guy necessarily, but I was intrigued and he showed me the list and I was like, oh, shit, there's a lot of stuff in here I could talk about if you want help.
Speaker: And he's like, he's like, yeah, dude, just tell me.
Speaker: Yeah, pick a game and we'll get we'll get you on there.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: We'll get you in there.
Speaker: But that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: We're actually recording this, by the way, we're recording this in an afternoon.
Speaker: Yeah, this is a new one for us.
Speaker: I think it's the first time we've ever recorded while it's like daylight out.
Speaker: I don't think we've ever, yeah, I don't think we've ever done a non-night record, so it's throwing me a little bit.
Speaker: We might have to try this again sometime.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's throwing me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um so follow us on twitter and instagram at pixelitpod if you want to read the automated transcripts that premiere creates you can do that on pixelitpod.com and from there you can also get links to our discord and steam curator page which where we that's where we post the reviews for our what are you playing segment
Speaker: So that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: I hope you guys have a good afternoon.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Afternoon.
Speaker: Afternoon.
Speaker: Afternoon.
Speaker: Almost evening.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
