He, She And It [Hardcover]

Marge Piercy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1991

The author of Summer People and Gone to Soldiers offers a haunting vision of the future America. The story of an illegal cyborg that is brought to life to protect one of the few remaing "free towns" is interweaved with the ancient story of a Jewish ghetto in Prague, where a golem is brought "to life" to protect the people.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this diverting tale of the 21st century, poet and novelist ( Summer People ) Piercy explores a world where information has become a commodity more precious than gold. When Shira Shipman, a "psychoengineer' (artificial intelligence expert) for a powerful corporation, loses her young son in a custody battle, she decides to leave the rigidly controlled confines of her Multi (one of 23 corporate city-states that divide the world) and head for Tikva, where she grew up. Seeking the comforts of home and hearth and maybe even some of Grandma's chicken soup, Shira finds instead that Tikva--one of the few remaining "free" towns unallied with a powerful corporation--is under attack from "information pirates" who are killing computer programmers for the knowledge in Tikva's mainframe. Soon enough, grandma Malkah, a brilliant, feisty programmer, enlists Shira's aid in protecting their hometown. Enter Yod, a cyborg created specifically for that purpose; before he can go out on patrols or mingle with the populace, however, he must be socialized and it is Shira's job to do so. There is no chicken soup in Tikva, but in Yod's arms Shira finds comfort aplenty. Intercut with Malkah's vignettes of a golem that protected the Jewish ghetto in 17th-century Prague, the human/cyborg love story in Piercy's vivid future world remains transcendent. 40,000 first printing.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This is Piercy's first full-fledged foray into science fiction, although Woman on the Edge of Time ( LJ 6/1/76) flirted with the genre. In the 21st century the world has been ravaged by environmental disaster and war, with much of the populace living in corporate domes. Depressed over child custody problems with Josh, her ex-husband, Shira Shipman returns to her childhood home, one of the few free Jewish towns. There she falls in love with Yod, an illegal cyborg created to defend the town against attack. Filled with fantastic technological description, the plot zooms to a page-turning climax. A story of a golem in 17th-century Prague told by Shira's warmhearted grandmother mirrors the action. While not as visionary as Doris Lessing's "Canopus in Argos" novels, this projection of a world with a computer for a soul has the ring of reality. As usual, Piercy's women are strong and sympathetic. With the exception of Yod, her men are either frivolous or cold. Recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/91.
- Harriet Gottfried, NYPL
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 446 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (October 15, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679404082
• ISBN-13: 978-0679404088
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,107,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shall we create life to serve ourselves?-a woman's debate, May 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: He, She and It (Mass Market Paperback)

I read Chapter 3 and was hooked("Malkah Tells Yod a Bedtime Story" - pure poetry)! I felt right at home. Rarely have I read a science fiction novel which explores inner life so well. Nor one which so successfully analyzes its moral issues from the intelligent woman's point of view. One is reminded of Golda Meir, holding informal cabinet meetings in her kitchen while making chicken soup. The book examines the high-tech net as a tool for a simple low-tech ethnic collective which can exist on its own apart from impersonal futurist worlds nearby seeking to invade. The characters debate the destiny of their advanced, powerful protective robot. One of the robot's creators is a (high-tech) grandmother who tells the robot the Yiddish fable of a Golem who was created to protect the Jews of Prague from pogroms in 1600. We keep returning to the fable - it creates just the intuitive symbolism we need to explore the novel's ethical concepts without losing track of the action. The book unfolds as a mystery, a love story, a question - I found myself reading to answer the unexplained, enjoying the beautifully crafted journey, and staying up all night to do so.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars highly recommended, March 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: He, She and It (Mass Market Paperback)

Had this book not been a gift, I would never have thought to pick it up. Science fiction, Jewish mysticism; these are not subjects which immediately draw most people in. I'm eternally grateful I did give this book a chance, however, for it is definately one of the best books I have ever read. Weaving together two parallel stories, (the legend of a "Golem" created to protect the Jews in Prague's Jewish Ghetto in the 1600s, and the contemporary story of the cyborg Yod), Piercy has created a view of the future a la Margaret Atwood. Yet Piercy's view of the future, while almost as threatening as Atwood's in The Handmaid's Tale, contains the ever present spectre of redemption. While the characters in He, She, and It may live in a forebidding time when corporations rule the world, they maintain a level of autonomy over their own lives, and the knowledge and power to someday create a world more suited to freedom than that in which they currently reside. Piercy's book is fascinating on a number of levels. It is simultaneously the story of a mother's love for her child and the lengths she will go to when that relationship is threatened, a strong community and the familial, religious, and communal ties that bind a group of people together, a cautionary tale of corporate domination, a fascinating hypothesis of both the possibilities and dangers of modern technology, and above all, a romance. The elements of Jewish history and mysticism add to the excitement and passion of the book, enabling the parallel Piercy draws between the past and the future to flow naturally, and add to rather than detract from the book's clarity. Nor are the characters sacrificed for a well-developed plot. Piercy spends just as much time creating the characters who enable her story as she does on the story itself. I would recommend this book to a wide audience. It is as enjoyable as any beach read, but without sacrificing readability, will leave the reader with a lot to think about. You will have no trouble understanding the book after one read, but it is the kind of book you can read many times and learn something new each time.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars He, She and It from a Technological Perspective, March 19, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: He, She and It (Mass Market Paperback)

"He, She and It" is an intoxicating book about the future. From a technological perspective, the lives portrayed in the ultramodern societies of Tikva and the Y-S Enclave is right on target. How far away are we really from the Earth that Marge Piercy describes? With the impending war with Iraq on our heels, maybe the 2 Week War of 2017 where a terrorist launched a nuclear device that destroyed the world as we know it, is not so futuristic after all.
"He, She and It" is a love story between Shira, a woman of the modern world and Yod, a cyborg. Piercy cleverly parallels the story of Shira and Yod with that of Chava and Joseph. Joseph, the golem of Prague's Jewish ghetto in the 15th century. Although the stories of Yod & Joseph are the heart of Piercy's novel, let me also share with you the technological perspectives.
In "He, She and It", Piercy describes some of the most amazing technological advances. The first and most astonishing of those is Yod, the cyborg. Yod looks just like a human, yet he has the power of a large bomb within him. What is even more surprising about Yod is that he has feelings and the ability to learn from social interactions. In other words, Yod can teach himself from experiencing the environment.
Piercy also mentions many other new technologies that come about after enclaves of monolithic corporations replace governments (is this really so far-fetched?). There is a new field, psychoengineering, an interface between people and large artificial intelligences. Shira is able to tell time simply by thinking that she needed to know what time it was and then reading the internal clock on the corner of her cornea in an eye that has retinal implants, used to correct hereditary myopia! She is also able to project into the worldwide Net (similar to what we know as virtual reality) through a "little silver socket at her temple."
Still, Piercy mentions more. Horsicles (horse robots), moving sidewalks, float cars and zips are the transportation modalities of the future. A main chore of this modern world is to protect their data from information pirates. While people may bodily protect themselves with resin knives with hypercharged particles that are able to cut through a diamond yet not show up on any sensor. The list goes on and on.
In conclusion, "He, She and It" is a wonderfully entertaining book about love, about loss, about the future of our planet. It has the ability to make those in the field of technology stop and take a look at what we are creating versus what we really want to create. Take a read yourself and discovery the vivid imagination of Piercy.