I loved [b:Woman on the Edge of Time|772888|Woman on the Edge of Time|Marge Piercy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1480498743l/772888._SY75_.jpg|838570] so had high expectations of 'He, She, and It' (Oxford comma added for my own sake). I did not find it quite as memorably powerful, because [b:Woman on the Edge of Time|772888|Woman on the Edge of Time|Marge Piercy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1480498743l/772888._SY75_.jpg|838570] contrasts contemporary, utopian, and dystopian visions so brilliantly. Nonetheless, 'He, She, and It' is fascinating and thoughtful sci-fi. It is largely set mid-21st century, when megacorporations have taken over and ruined the planet. Wealthier and luckier people live either under protective domes for corporate workers or more precarious wraps sheltering rare independent settlements; most of the population survives in chaotic slums, unpleasantly named the Glop. In a more conventional cyberpunk novel, the plot would be split between corporate domes and the slums. As Piercy is a distinctively thoughtful writer, she centres her story on a small independent Jewish community named Tikva. Shira, the protagonist, loses custody of her son and leaves her corporate job, returning to live with her grandmother in Tikva. There she meets long-lost family, her first love, and a unique cyborg called Yod. The focus of the book is on Shira's relationships, in particular with Yod. Despite the novel's title, though, gender isn't given much consideration.

In parallel to Shira's narrative, her grandmother tells the story of the golem of Prague. Yod is a 21st century golem, built to protect Tikva, a 21st century Jewish ghetto. The independence of the settlement is continually threatened by corporations, who frequently resort to murder for espionage purposes. As this is a cyberpunk-ish world, people can get their brains fried while jacked into the mainframe. But that is incidental to the exploration of personhood, both of Joseph the golem and Yod the cyborg. A complex web of familial, romantic, and community relationships is carefully developed around them both. I particularly appreciated the thoughtful consideration of duty and morality as applied to Joseph and Yod. Both were created to protect a community from deadly violence, with the implicit sanction to use deadly violence themselves. As they learn and develop, golem and cyborg become more inclined to independent thought. They become frustrated by those who treat them purely as tools and drawn to those who treat them as people. Despite the incremental pace, which allows the characters and their relationships to flower, 'He, She, and It' is very neatly structured. The denouement of Yod and Shira's story isn't unexpected, yet has no less impact for that. I found it very involving and enjoyed the absence any clear ethical conclusions. It felt like an ongoing discussion between the interesting cast of characters, as there are never going to be definitive answers to the questions it raises. ( )

Read this on a lark because I am halfway through writing my own human/robot love story and wanted to see how this classic work tackled it. Normally reading fiction similar to what you're writing is a terrible idea, but my story is well enough established that I decided to indulge my curiosity.

I enjoyed the B-plot of this novel, in which one of the characters retells the story of the Golem of Prague. The main narrative lost my interest about halfway through.

Before I picked up the title, I came across controversy about whether literary writers like Piercy, Atwood, etc. write "real" SF/F. I wrestled with this question for a while before setting it aside as irrelevant. There's plenty of successful genre fiction written for a general or literary audience. Piercy's cyberpumk-inspired world isn't very original, but I don't think original worldbuilding makes or breaks a story. She infodumps on every other page, but some genre writers do that all the time (especially in cyberpunk!)

So the reason I didn't care for this book isn't because it's bad science fiction (it might be, but whatever). It's because the characters stopped surprising me and the central ideas of the book didn't take me anywhere I hadn't been before. ( )

As usual, Marge Piercy is full of interesting ideas. In this book she explores our relationship to technology, as individuals, as.communities and as a society. Her primary question concerns the notion of humanity. What does it mean to be human? What are the essential attributes? What does it mean when acknowledged human beings don't have those qualities, vut cyborgs do? What are the benefits and risks of merging the biological with the technological? Great questions for our current moment. Unfortunately Piercy ' s writing falls far short of the expectations set by her framing of her subject. It's sentimental, trite, even juvenile at many times, making it hard to get through and distracting the reader from the interesting problems Piercy ' s presented us. ( )

Piercy is a masterful writer. ( )

Beautiful. I won't say much here, as I'm teaching this book in the fall. But this is a beautiful, challenging, and memorable read.

So many aspects of this book fascinate me, it would have been hard for me not to like it. There was religion, science fiction, apocalyptic fiction and themes of starting over, golems; just an endless array. There is no small irony (or pun?) in saying that what struck me as most moving was the humanity at the center of this book.

I really don't want to go on about this one, in part because I want to savor my feelings about this book for a while, but mainly because I've been taking expansive notes on this text as I read, and to start would be to not stop any time soon. So, I'll pick up the next book and head to bed, but I won't soon forget this one. Highly, highly recommended. ( )