20 Alternate Titles for I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

January 16, 1967

Harlan,

Love the new story but your title is too dark and confusing to put on our cover. I ran your outline by the boys in marketing and they came up with several alternatives that should appeal to an audience beyond the childless forty-somethings that make up the majority of our subscriber base. Blood clots claimed nearly 20% of our readership last year, so we have no choice but to adapt to a changing market with a shift towards easy-to-understand content and a new Beatles Trivia section Ray Bradbury is launching this summer. Please circle no more than fifteen (15) of your preferred title changes.

• Dial M for Mouthlessness
• Mouth, Mouth, Who's Got the Mouth?
• The Screamless Five Versus Superhate
• Harlan Ellison Presents: Compunauts from Space-star Galaxy Zero
• Teddy No-Mouth and the Big Scream Adventure
• A Scream is a Wish the Mouth Makes
• Stalactite Ted's Two-Fisted Tale of Ice Justice
• It's a Living!
• Screamy Are the Damned
• The Apocalypse Sex Nymph and Her Four Suitors
• Curse of the Inside Voices
• I AM What I AM: The Wit and Wisdom of Malevolent Programming
• It Came from the Logical Conclusion to Prolonged Cold War Escalation
• Showdown at Canned Goods Mountain
• No Exit, But With an Evil Computer This Time
• Shockingly True Nightmares of Otolaryngology
• Baby's First Speculative Dystopian Fiction
• Ones and Zeros, Scoundrels and Heroes
• We Hope this Doesn't Remind You of Vietnam
• The Terminator

In closing, I ask that you please submit your response via the U.S. Postal Service, rather than concealing it inside human excrement and hurling it at my office door.

- Your Editor

– Bob "BobServo" Mackey