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He, She and It

3.99 of 5 stars 3.99 · rating details · 1,970 ratings · 147 reviews

"A triumph of the imagination. Rich, complex, impossible to put down."
Alice Hoffman
In the middle of the twenty-first century, life as we know it has changed for all time. Shira Shipman's marriage has broken up, and her young son has been taken from her by the corporation that runs her zone, so she has returned to Tikva, the Jewish free town where she grew up. There, she is...more

Paperback, 448 pages

Published January 23rd 1993 by Fawcett (first published 1991)

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Dec 30, 2007 Mikhaela rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone, especially if you liked the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Shelves: speculative-fiction, fiction-great

Jewish girl in dystopian future meets cyborg, and falls in love. Jewish girl in 1600s Prague meets golem, and falls in love.

As much as I enjoyed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, when it comes to books involving golems in Prague, this book takes the blue ribbon. Kavalier took me a while to get in to, but He, She and It gripped me from the beginning and I could NOT put it down. He, She and It is many things--Jewish feminist fiction, a robot love story, dystopian science fiction, cyper...more

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Dec 13, 2008 Randal rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, utopian-dystopian

I felt this book had two strikes against it, its title and its first chapter. I decided to overlook the former. The latter almost made me put the book down, with its unoriginal vision of a world controlled by a few corporations. It’s not that I disagree with this possibility. I was simply in the mood for something fresher.

However, once past that chapter, the nature of the tale changed and I was hooked. Shira loses custody of her child and leaves her “multi” (multicorporation) to return to the fr...more

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May 27, 2012 Tara rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was enjoyable and I'll recommend it. I just wish that it hadn't been so hyped up for me before I read it. Instead of being pleasantly surprised by the quality, I was mildly disappointed. It's a good book, just not as good as several reviewers intimated. A couple reviewers said that it was better than Gibson with less flat characters and better plot. I disagree. While not all of Gibson's novels have been masterpieces, I would hardly consider the majority of his characters to be underdeveloped....more

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Jan 31, 2012 Lindsay rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: almost anybody

Shelves: 90s, cyberpunk, dystopia, historical-fiction, read-for-fun, read-postcollege, romance, robots, science-fiction, utopia, technology, myths-and-legends, postapocalyptic, genetic-engineering

As you can probably surmise from the huge collection of tags I've attached to this book, there is A LOT of stuff going on here!

Even the structure of this book is complex and multifaceted: two stories, told by two narrators, in alternating chapters. The first narrator is Shira Shipman, a young, upper-middle-class Jewish woman who has recently become a wife and mother. Her life is also almost completely controlled by her employer, a huge biotechnology corporation, not only because they have a very...more As you can probably surmise from the huge collection of tags I've attached to this book, there is A LOT of stuff going on here!

Even the structure of this book is complex and multifaceted: two stories, told by two narrators, in alternating chapters. The first narrator is Shira Shipman, a young, upper-middle-class Jewish woman who has recently become a wife and mother. Her life is also almost completely controlled by her employer, a huge biotechnology corporation, not only because they have a very strict, conformist corporate culture (there are even rules, unwritten of course, dictating how women of varying degrees of seniority within the company should dress), but also because Shira lives in what is essentially an upscale version of the company town: it's like a sealed-off, climate-controlled suburb/office park where everyone in the middle and upper ranks of salaried workers and management lives and works. Shira's narration, especially in the early chapters, is therefore suffused with nervousness, and a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop, since her husband has recently been promoted and their family moved into a bigger, nicer house. Shira is certain there must be a catch, since she knows she's not exactly a team player, and not exactly in her bosses' good graces.

When the other shoe does drop, Shira packs up and leaves, heading to a place that's the polar opposite of the stuffy corporate-controlled environment she's just fled: it's a free Jewish settlement out in the middle of nowhere, unaffiliated with any of the major corporations that dominate this denuded, radiation-spoiled future Earth. Her grandmother (who brought her up) lives there, and she soon learns that her mother, who left her when she was born, is also coming to stay there. She also soon finds that her grandmother and the father of one of her childhood friends are working on something mysterious and fantastical: a robot that looks, talks thinks and feels exactly like a person, but has superhuman physical and mental abilities.

This robot, who is named Yod (a letter in the Hebrew alphabet; Aleph through Tet were his predecessors, all but one scrapped because of horrible, sometimes deadly, flaws), might be the most interesting character in this novel. That's saying a lot, because this novel is stuffed to the gills with interesting characters. Unfortunately, Shira Shipman isn't one of them --- that's the biggest thing that disappointed me about this book, that practically all of the real-time narration is done by the most boring character. (The other narrator, Shira's grandmother Malkah, spends almost all of her chapters telling the story of the seventeenth-century Rabbi Judah Loews --- also called "the Maharal" --- who created the Golem to protect his people, living as they did in the ghetto of Prague, where Christian mobs could attack them at will. This story is also hugely interesting, but because it's all very external to Malkah herself, the reader doesn't spend as much time in her mind as they do in Shira's. And that's a pity, because Malkah's mind seems like a fun place.) Yod owes his moral and emotional complexity entirely to Malkah's programming; her involvement may well have been the thing that saved Yod from the fate of all the failed attempts before him.

(And now, a random note on terminology: Yod is not a cyborg. There are some cyborgs in this book, but Yod is an android. Cyborgs are people who have been technologically augmented; androids are humanlike technological constructs. Carry on, then.)

Chaos ensues once people outside the tight circle of people who've been working on "the project" learn about Yod and his abilities. There's a lot of corporate-espionage type stuff, amped up by both the apparent absence of laws in this future world (assassination raids, abduction and hostage-taking are apparently standard practice), and the immersive nature of the "cyberspace" the denizens of the free settlement must navigate to earn their livelihood, since they specialize in cybersecurity. (Cybersecurity being very important in this world, what with all the aforementioned corporate espionage.)

This conception of cyberspace --- a three-dimensional "space" that you, virtually embodied as an avatar, move around in to talk to other people, download data, build firewalls or "patrol" existing firewalls looking for signs of intrusion --- is pretty much ripped from the pages of William Gibson's novels, as is the anarchic, impoverished megacity in which Everyone Else (i.e., the poor and the non-corporate) lives. "The Glop" (from "megalopolis," which is one of my favorite science-fiction neologisms ever, and one of the minority that seems like real people might use it) looks a lot like a lower-tech version of the Sprawl from Gibson's novels; Marge Piercy even acknowledges this debt in an afterword.

Derivative as all this is, I still found the worldbuilding in this book to be pretty solid. It helps that Piercy spends most of her time developing settings that aren't the Glop or corporate bubbles: her most original, most interesting "world" is the small, tight-knit community of Tikva, which marries freedom and openness with airtight security and a technological specialization that basically buys them their autonomy. (As in, every major corporation wants to buy their firewalls, so they all tolerate the upstart little city-state's existing outside any one of their control). It's a really interesting, well-realized picture of an intentional community, with a sharp focus on day-to-day survival in an uncertain world.

Another juxtaposition this settlement (and the book as a whole) tries to embody is that of future and past. Everyone in Tikva is a practicing Jew, and Jewish religious and cultural identity are just as integral to the place's cohesion and survival as its cutting-edge technology.

But the best thing, in a novel where everything is done amazingly well, has got to be the characters. I did not find Shira very interesting, but almost every other character who was in the book for longer than a scene or two was absolutely fascinating. And even Shira, though boring (to me), was well-developed, believable and even relatable. She evolves over the course of the book, and we see a lot of different aspects of her character: her feelings of confusion and betrayal when she has to confront her mother for the first time, and her slow metamorphosis from a closed-off, emotionally stunted, timid woman to someone bold, spontaneous and loving, which coincides with her finally moving past a schoolgirl crush on another character. And Yod! Yod is an absolutely masterful work of creation; he's not human, exactly, and he's also not male in the way that a man is male (psychologically, that is; physically he's quite male), but he is certainly a person, and despite the title he is not an "it." (His ambiguous status comes up when he wants to participate in some ritual, I forget which, that is restricted to Jewish men. He wants to be considered, not just human, not just a man, but specifically a Jewish man). His emotions were about half familiar to me (as an autistic person, I am well acquainted with the angst of wondering whether one is really human or not) and half alien (he was made for violence, and takes a predatory delight in it that bothers the moral and relational parts of his psyche), and all beautifully described and conveyed through his confused-but-eloquent speech and his halting, work-in-progress manner. He's definitely one of my favorite non-human characters I've ever encountered.(less)

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Jan 17, 2012 Susan Emmet rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Medieval Jewish ghetto in Prague meets Clockwork Orange...that's initially how Piercy's 1991 cyberpunk dysutopian sci-fi novel hit me a week or so ago. Its US title is "He, She and It." Two stories parallel throughout: the story of Shira, her mother, grandmother, son and cyborg lover Yod - and that of the Mahalal named Judah Loew who creates and destroys a golem to help his endangered people. The title is somewhat misleading, I think, but that's okay. Fits together in the end.
Reminds me of readi...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Nicholas Barone rated it 4 of 5 stars

Every decade or so, the prolific novelist/poet Marge Piercy produces a science fiction novel. The results are generally quite good. He, She, and It (alternate UK title - Body of Glass) is my favorite of the 3 I have read.

Set in a corporation dominated future, the story tells the tale of the inhabitants of a free town in northern New England who have built a self aware cyborg. The plot is good, though not groundbreaking, as it centers on the cyborg's attempts to assimilate itself into the human...more

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Aug 24, 2010 Carolyn F. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

I guess I'm going through a robot loving stage. Shira ends an unhappy marriage but her husband not only gets custody of their son, he's allowed to live off-planet. This is a post-apocalyptic world by the way. When she sees there's nothing for her to do, she quits her corporate job (corporations have all the power now) and goes home to her domed Jewish enclave where she grew up accepting a job from a family friend. Well the job is to acclimate a cyborg named Yod. Her grandmother has inputted feel...more

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Jul 05, 2009 Chana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: jewish, historical-fiction, arthur-c-clarke-award, sci-fi

I don't know where I got this book as sci-fi is not the genre I usually read and with a title of "He, She and It" I didn't expect much of it. I was vastly surprised when I found myself reading about the Maharal of Prague. I was humbled and honored to even gaze at the printed word Maharal. I had heard stories about the Golem but didn't know too much. I was very moved by his story and cried when it came to an end. One of my sons has been to Prague and to the Altneushul. He said there are stories a...more

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Jul 22, 2012 Morrigane R rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, science-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I read this book a number of times and usually skip over the parts of Joseph the Golem in Prague of the 1600's. I don't feel it diminishes the story in any way and truthfully I've always kind of resented that part of the story cutting into the main characters story. I always felt that the author could have spent more time on the characters in the present and putting them in more interesting situations. She created a fascinating world but then skipped out on it as well as never let it be fully de...more I read this book a number of times and usually skip over the parts of Joseph the Golem in Prague of the 1600's. I don't feel it diminishes the story in any way and truthfully I've always kind of resented that part of the story cutting into the main characters story. I always felt that the author could have spent more time on the characters in the present and putting them in more interesting situations. She created a fascinating world but then skipped out on it as well as never let it be fully developed.

I wished she spent more time in the Glop and more time telling us about all the enclaves and how the new government of Norika (what used to be the US and Canada)worked. She would introduce character who were really fascinating like Riva and Nili and then gave them nothing to do. I felt that Gadi got short shrift too.

Also I didn't think that Yod should have killed Shira's ex-husband. That seemed too convenient. In fact there were a number of plot-lines and points that just dissolved at the end and went nowhere. For instance: the entire aftermath following Yod's death when Shira hooks up with Gadi again is just glossed over.

Many points in the book left me with the proverbial, hunh?

I really liked most of the characters though Shira seemed to be one of less interesting characters (I guess she was more of a cipher)in that all she focused on was her bad relationships with men and her son. Though it seems to me that if she was so concerned about her son why did she leave his father in the first place?

In thinking about this book anew I find far more plot holes than I realized. Ultimately what I was attracted to was the world she created. The story itself was all over the map and many parts devolved into telling and not showing.

That said, Marge Piercy is a terrific writer, she is visual and lyrical at once but sometimes she gets bogged down. This is a much better book than "Woman on the Edge of Time" as far as her world building and character skills were concerned, though her main character of Shira was nowhere near as developed as Connie in WOTEOT.

My review is now all over the map somewhat like this book. I enjoyed reading it - this was the fourth time I've read it so obviously I like it. It's somewhat cyberpunk and there are not many cyberpunk books written by women so I revisit the ones that are.

It's interesting too as time marches on and the cyberpunk world gets closer (like in Blade Runner it's 2019 in that world and it is almost 2019 now and we are quite a long way from LA looking like that dystopia)to see how the "predictions" in such books pan out.

For fans of cyberpunk and cyborgs this book is definitely worth a read - just skip over the golem stuff - skim it - trust me.(less)

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Feb 10, 2013 Sooz rated it 3 of 5 stars

so i'd say i am about 1/2 way through the novel and have gradually become fully and completely invested in the story. the copy i have from my library looks like it was published in the sixties ... you know ... hardback with the plastic slip cover, poorly executed artwork on the cover that (no offense to the artist) but it looks kind of cheap. so in some ways the novel feels more dated than 1991, but in other ways the author has done an admirable job of predicting the future and the book still fe...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: distopian, science-fiction

This is one of my friend Erica's favorite books. She recommended it after I had read Woman on the Edge of Time (and loved it). What really struck me was the authentic love story amidst the typical conventions of a sci-fi/distopian novel. There have been other romances in such books but they never seems as deep or genuine; they always seem idealized and all too perfect. A function of her having participated in women's lib in the 70s, Piercy has lots to say about gender roles. It can com across as...more

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Jun 03, 2013 Mary Goodall rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Australian edition of this book is called 'Body of Glass'. Not an easy read, but I found it very interesting. The setting is a dysfunctional future, in which social elites have all of the power and the bulk of resources, while millions of people live a hand-to-mouth existence outside the enclaves of the privileged. The main characters in this book are Jewish (as is Piercy) and the story draws on a rich heritage of Jewish history and folklore. A compelling element of that heritage is the gole...more

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May 16, 2009 Res rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Res by: Mom

Shelves: psychology, much-loved-books, my-library, fiction, feminsim, speculative-fiction, to-read-to-hypothetical-future-kids

Undoubtedly one of my all-time favorites, something not too recently i thought would be impossible to have. (So many great books - how can one possibly pick only a few?)

It's hard to put such an ... experience into words. He, She and It is a masterful weaving together of the best of sci-fi - both in terms of reading pleasure and type of social explorations only the possible with this genre - with [social:] psychology, "innate feminism"* and a moving statement about sentience itself, & what i...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Julia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

The premise of this book is really interesting; Piercy's parallel of the medieval legend about the Golem of Prague works very well with the creation of a "cyber golem" in a dystopian future. The alternating chapters between Rabbi Loew's Prague golem and Avram's YOD are done very well--and the message is clear in both cases. Whether using mystical chanting or technology, humans do NOT have the right to create beings and use them as slaves.

YOD is my favorite character, although Malkah comes in at...more The premise of this book is really interesting; Piercy's parallel of the medieval legend about the Golem of Prague works very well with the creation of a "cyber golem" in a dystopian future. The alternating chapters between Rabbi Loew's Prague golem and Avram's YOD are done very well--and the message is clear in both cases. Whether using mystical chanting or technology, humans do NOT have the right to create beings and use them as slaves.

YOD is my favorite character, although Malkah comes in at the top as well. Their connection meant much more to me than the rather contrived relationship YOD comes to have with Shiva. For me, the whole substory of Gadi, Yod, and their sexual relationships with Shiva could have been omitted. Shiva's love for her son was unique enough--in a world where Shiva's mother simply gave her to the grandmother (Malkah), the deep love Shiva feels toward her boy, Ari, is an anachronism in a world that has been destroyed so badly. Yet it is that love for her son that made Shiva meaningful to me, not her sexuality. I wanted her to be more like Chava, who values the medieval golem Joseph as a friend, but maintains her own strong integrity.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to finish this book, hence the 3 stars. It dragged for me, especially anytime Gadi was in the story, with his simpering and worthless creation of simulated reality. If Gadi had simply been removed from the whole story, I'd have given the book a 4. Also, some of the technological jargon was a bit offputting. Only when YOD was in the picture did the book come alive for me--how ironic, since he is not CONSIDERED "alive".

The book had what I call "magical moments"--the first paragraph on page 19 about storytelling, the first paragraph on p. 137 about the lost earth, the first two paragraphs on p. 164 about "slow death. Piercy's use of Tycho Brahe and Kepler referenced two giants of science, as did Yakov's use of Socrates' last words when he watches Yefes die: "A cock to Asclepius" p. 359. In ancient Greece, that was an offering made if a death were peaceful.

Malkah speaks the theme as she prepares to make her pilgrimage to the destroyed lands of the middle east. p. 433: "Perhaps I journey on my dangerous aliyah to make amends. As it is wrong to give birth to a child believing that child will fulfill your own inner aspirations, will have a particular talent or career, so is it equally wrong to create a being subject to your will and control. . . .it was inexcusable to create a sentient being for any other reason than to live its own life."

I'm glad we've read this book, yet another example of one I'd never have read on my own. Thanks again for this group's ability to help me try new adventures. I just hope this book is not prophetic about our destruction of Earth--but sadly, I see signs already. Yet, this book keeps hope alive--a tribute to the refusal of humanity to surrender.

(less)

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Jan 31, 2009 Diana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites-to-read-again

This was a brilliantly written and brilliantly conceived book - I am a fan of Marge Piercy's poetry, but not as big a fan of her novels - never was able to get into her most famous novel Woman on the Edge of Time. This book, however, captured my imagination and emotions. It was given to me to read by a graduate school friend of mine, and I found myself drawn into the story immediately. I love the complex layers of themes that Piercy gives readers here. At the heart of this novel, for me, is the...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Tom rated it 2 of 5 stars

Marge Piercy tells a number of stories in He, She, and It, and none of them particularly well. All at once, you are reading a techno-futurist utopian science fiction novel, a love story between a woman and a cyborg which touches on existential questions about what it means to be human and machine, a story of the struggles faced by Jewish people throughout time, a meditation on growing older, criticism of masculinity and a celebration of femininity, the bonding of women between generations, and m...more Marge Piercy tells a number of stories in He, She, and It, and none of them particularly well. All at once, you are reading a techno-futurist utopian science fiction novel, a love story between a woman and a cyborg which touches on existential questions about what it means to be human and machine, a story of the struggles faced by Jewish people throughout time, a meditation on growing older, criticism of masculinity and a celebration of femininity, the bonding of women between generations, and more that I'm not mentioning. Not only are all these themes presented at the fore of the book, but Piercy tries to make a poignant statement about all of them.

The result is what you might expect - she has little meaningful insight into any of them. Spread thin, her thoughts on what separates cyborgs from humans can be summed up in a handful of cliched examples from Shira, the book's hyper-sensitive, self-pitying protagonist. Cyborgs are just machines? Well, humans in the future have lots of implants, Q.E.D. Her interpretation of gender is even blander and less interesting, with most of her characters acting out tiresome stock roles - the wise, matronly ur-mother Malkah as the summary of all things ~~good~~ female, the unfeeling father-figure Avram as the summary of the ~~distant, violent, cold~~ masculine, and a menagerie of women who are all equally amazing, wise, scrappy, and so forth.

Piercy's characters are perhaps the weakest part of the book. All of them are superheroes, to the point where they glide through a post-apocalypic wasteland with little trouble beyond their own emotional issues. Shira, Malkah, and Avram are all considered geniuses. Gadi, the feminine (and therefore suspect) ex-lover, is perfectly equipped to guide the characters through the slums that populate much of the world. Nili and Riva are both savvy fighters, the latter of whom has evaded death numerous times, including later in the book, after which we're treated to an explanation as confusing as it is improbable. And to top it all off, there's a cyborg that is a super fighter and can navigate this world's internet with mastery. In other words, there are very few real impediments to these characters beyond their own tedious hand-wringing, which is what we're treated to for most of the book.(less)

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May 30, 2013 Daughters Of Abraham added it

Shelves: roslindale-dorchester-roxbury-jp

The book moves back and forth between the Golem story in medieval Prague and a dystopian mid-21st century, when the planet is dominated by a handful of super-corporations existing in domed cities, protected from the toxic atmosphere. The technology is so advanced that engineering human life becomes a reality.
We had few Sci-Fi aficionados, and some members were very turned off.
We did have some good discussion about the sacredness of life, the power of the Word, the sense of transcendence in li...more

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Jun 08, 2013 kvon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club, librarybook

Written early 90s, at the beginning of the cyberpunk movement, a feminist jewish post-apocalyptic robot love story. After various nonspecific biological catastrophes (looks like climate change, rising seas, and various plagues) nation-states have all been replaced by corporations, menial workers try to survive in anarchic remains of megalopolises, and a few have independent towns protected by militias and competing corporate interests. Shira is a woman more defined by her personal relationships...more

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Feb 28, 2010 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

How to describe this book... hmmmm... (pondering with fingertip to lips!)

Okay, let's just 'out with it'. It's a romance novel between a woman and a robot. Ya, you heard me right. It wasn't as naughty as I had anticipated (which was a pleasant surprise), and the author kept the nasty language to a minimum, so I was happily able to finish reading the whole book. I enjoyed it completely! Okay, so I skipped a couple love scenes and missed entirely every paragraph relating to the 'Golem' story on the...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read about this book some time before actually reading it, and came to it with possibly unreasonably high expectations (post-apocalyptic feminist science fiction about cyborgs with an analysis of gender whaaaat?).

So I found it a little hard to get started with, since most of the characters annoyed me from the outset, and the setting was nothing out of the ordinary for a work of post-apocalyptic fiction. Luckily, character development happened, so some characters went from being annoying like a...more

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Jul 02, 2009 Nancy Rose rated it 5 of 5 stars

Astonishing futuristic version of the story of the Gollum, interspersed with one of the most complete retellings of the happenings in Prague that I've ever come across, with insight into the embattled virtual worlds of times to come, and of course, most of all, a story of unrequited love. Marge Piercy first showed the streams of future possibilities in Women on the Edge of Time; in this book, she revisits the utopian village, where people live close to nature, and yet skillful with extremely hig...more

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Feb 11, 2009 Claire S marked it as to-read

Shelves: fiction, fictionalized-history, form_complexia, global, historical, pov-content_jewish, language, novel, on-writing, pol-historical, sci-fi-f_, war-mltry-conflt-occ, women, workplace, a-2-interest-wo-urgency

I tried to read this long ago.. maybe 12-13 years ago. And couldn't get into it. Now though, reading the reviews I see how much I missed. And 1600's Prague happens to be much of interest to me, after reading 'People of the Book'.
Also the corporate part interests me now more than before because - well, 'The Corporation' and Enron and the bailout and the recession and .. you know, everything. Marge - why didn't we listen??
Will have to gather my energy and try again! I'm pretty sure I still have m...more

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Mar 10, 2011 Madeline rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Victor Frankenstein

Shelves: 2011, school, women, sff, utopias-and-dystopias, family, marriage-lets-you-down, historical-fiction, queer, pygmalion, novels, houses

1. Maybe it's just because I recently read Atwood's The Year of the Flood that I noticed the striking similarities between this novel and that one, but on second thought, no: they are kind of the same book any way you slice it. I think I prefer Year of the Flood because, well, I'm not sure - I think Year of the Flood is a more nuanced book, although it's still pretty In Your Face. But at the same time, maybe I'm not being fair to He, She and It, maybe it's only because Atwood got me thinking abo...more

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Aug 09, 2010 Carol rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi

This beautiful sci-fi novel is set in the mid-twenty-first century, several decades after a major ecological cataclysm and resulting societal upheaval. The reduced human population can no longer live in the open without protective gear and structures, the majority of food must be derived from algae and grown in vats; but computer technology is very advanced, with AIs, service robots, and sophisticated virtual reality. People live in closed corporate enclaves, the sprawling and chaotic urban Glop...more This beautiful sci-fi novel is set in the mid-twenty-first century, several decades after a major ecological cataclysm and resulting societal upheaval. The reduced human population can no longer live in the open without protective gear and structures, the majority of food must be derived from algae and grown in vats; but computer technology is very advanced, with AIs, service robots, and sophisticated virtual reality. People live in closed corporate enclaves, the sprawling and chaotic urban Glop, or in a few free towns. It's a world that is part cyberpunk, part post-apocalypse, but with a little more organic warmth to be found.
It is in this world that Piercy sets a re-telling of the golem story, alongside a very detailed and elegant rendition of the original tale.
The main character, Shira, has just lost her son in a custody settlement manipulated by her corporate employers. She returns to her grandmother Malkah's house in Tikva, the free town in which she grew up, where she begins working with the town robotics expert and inventor on the training and development of Yod, a highly advanced cyborg he built to protect Tikva from physical and computer-based attack. As Shira's relationship with Yod grows and blossoms, her former employers target Tikva in order to get their hands on the new technology, and the town also makes some alliances with newly emerging communities in the Glop and elsewhere. Piercy thus creates a fascinating and complex story that operates on both an intimate scale and in a wider scope. Interspersed with the main story is Piercy's version of the original golem story, as told to Yod by Malkah, who made major contributions to his programming. This interpolation is nearly seamless and, despite having many parallels with the main narrative, never feels like a repetition or contrived device.
He, She and It is a very moving book, with wonderful characters and a vivid setting. It touches on interesting questions of personhood, control, freedom, development, growth, and the bonds between parents and children, and between lovers.(less)

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Jan 27, 2012 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars

I tried to give this another go, I really did. I read an unusual number of books about the holocaust this past year--most of which were unexpectantly about the holocaust. I guess I just really couldn't handle another Jewish novel--especially one so immersive into their culture. Maybe if the pacing was faster or if the novel didn't flash back and forth from the distant past to the distant future. Or maybe if I hadn't paused my reading right when it was yet another chapter about the magical mud go...more

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Jun 19, 2008 Ariel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: radical-politics

I started He, She, and It on spring break and finally finished it today, but I'm glad I could savor this novel over three months because it is fabulous. Marge Piercy writes a cyberpunk novel that doesn't ignore women, religion, ethnicity, community. She's the kind of science fiction writer I love: someone who doesn't care about how people interface with a computer or what technology builds a cyborg, but rather what happens and what folks feel.

I may call He, She, and It cyberpunk, but it's not al...more

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Mar 03, 2008 Jenn Pellerin rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those who enjoy robots, lasers, the future, and lady issues

Shelves: sci-fi

I was sitting in the sauna at Guemes and realized I'd forgotten to bring in any reading material or a crossword puzzle. I asked Ben to bring me something from the cabin. ANYTHING. I told him to find something that looked "pulpy". He came back with this. I started reading and what do you know? This book is right up my alley.
So far the story is pretty engaging. It reminds me a little of a more epic Oryx and Crake (this one came out in 1991, by the way), in that the world is divided into corporate...more

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Dec 14, 2007 Ramorx rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the kind of novel that the more radical and pessimistic elements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would put on everyones "must read" list. One could substitute the words This Book for Climate Change in the following passage and you get an idea of Piercy's vision -

"Ominously, Climate change plays into the scenario, thoughtfully explored by Naomi Klein, that the community of multinational corporations will seize on the coming catastrophes to elbow aside governments...more

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Oct 28, 2007 Eileen rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

I read when I get into bed at night. Can't sleep without the daily ritual and I look forward to it. But when I have one of those books that you can't wait to get yourself into and when your not reading it, your still kind of in it's world, or it's spell? You know what I mean? Your thinking about it as you go about your day.
Those are the rare ones and this one is one of those kind of books for me. It would make a great movie and I'm surprised no one has not had the rights to it. It was published...more

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Mar 22, 2012 Claire Corbett rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of my favourite SF books of all time. Time to re-read. That sexism is alive and well and rife in literary culture is proved by the fact that Body of Glass isn't more famous than anything by William Gibson, for example, though I see it did at least win an Arthur C Clarke award. This is published in the US under the truly dreadful title He, She and It. Also worth checking out Woman on the Edge of Time. Classic 1970s feminist utopia, with, if I remember correctly, a rather good dystopia as well...more

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