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Summary: WARNING! SPOILERS IN REVIEW "LOGICALLY BAD SCIENCE FICTION"
Review: Didn't read this book yet, so can't rate it. I was just looking for some basic insights on the story - The writer of the above named review reveals plot points that are supposed to be hidden until the reader figures it out.(AKA Spoilers) Don't mean to come down on the guy, but it spoiled the book for me. Spoilers are not a nice thing to do...
Rating: 
Summary: He, She and It from a Technological Perspective
Review: "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.
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Summary: Thoroughly engrossing and believable view of the future.
Review: This is one of my all-time favorite books. I enjoy it so much that I feel compelled to share it with others. In fact, I never have a copy of it, because every time I buy one I give it away to yet another friend! The story is set in a not-too-distant future dystopia, where megacorporations rule the world and small, entrepreneurial communities have to fight to protect their unique cultures, products and people. Today's familiar technologies have evolved to the extent that the "net" is a virtual world as well as a communications medium, and artificial intelligence is everywhere. Add to this an intriguing and varied cast of characters -- including an all-too-human cyborg -- a dollop of Jewish mysticism and some flashbacks to the Middle Ages, and you have a book that you will not want to put down.
So, take the phone off the hook, send the kids to your mother's, and put your feet up. It's gonna be a great weekend
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: By creating a robot very similar to a human being the author
explores our true nature in a fun to read futuristic & partisan story.
A very enjoyable book!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: highly recommended
Review: 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.
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Summary: Fascinating, Fun and Full of Surprises
Review: I asked a friend to suggest a book of the kind you can not put down. He suggested this one and trusting him I bought it - unwillingly, for it did not look like my kind of book at first glance. Science Fiction! Jewish Science Fiction? Yet once I started reading I loved it - and pulled an all-nighter! Other reviews here already explain the content, so all I want to add is that it is capturing, unpredictable and simply a fun and intelligent book to spend one's time with.
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Summary: Ursula K. Le Guin, she ain't
Review: I disliked this book so much that I had to put it down after just 80 pages. As a Jew working in artificial intelligence, I found nothing even remotely compelling about Piercy's description of Jews working in artificial intelligence, and I found her ethnic stereotypes especially galling. The Jewish stereotypes were awful enough, and making the Jewish grandma into a ravenous slut didn't improve things, either. But the way that Piercy stigmatizes latinos by calling the street punks "ninos" and having them use Spanish words in their dialogue, made me really sick. Theodore Sturgeon, defending the science fiction genre against the accusation that it is 90 percent crap, replied that _everything_ is 90 percent crap. He was right about that, except that, as the dismal _He, She, and It_, suggests, with science fiction, it's more like 99 percent.
Rating: 
Summary: Ambivalent you won't be...
Review: I originally read this book as a required college text in modern literature. I've since lost the book but plan on buying a replacement copy. I've read all 14 of the previous reviews and I have to agree with them all. Yes, feminism and an arguement against corporate - political states and male - dominated societies are present in this book. True as well that there are unfavorable stereotypes in the novel. The novel still has great merit. At its best, "He, She and It" is a thought provoking parable about the consequences of the paths we may find ourselves on. At its worst, it's a new addition to the cyberpunk genre which is far better than anything Gibson has produced to date. Whether you agree with the views expressed in the novel or not (I personally don't), the story is still an entertaining and well-written diversion.
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Summary: Shall we create life to serve ourselves?-a woman's debate
Review: 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.
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Summary: Great love story
Review: I read this many years ago. It was originally published in 1991, so as far as sci-fi innovations and ideas, it's a bit behind, and perhaps was at the time. I really loved it when I read it initially, because I think it works primarily as a romance for those of us that aren't interested in "romantic fiction". I was just becoming interested in sci-fi, so I enjoyed that element at the time, and I enjoyed the Jewish historical tale of the golem that parallels the actual plot. There are leaps in logic, as one of the reviewers below pointed out, but as a love story, I think it's great. The characters are well-developed and grow. Yod is definitely "man redefined in the eyes of women", so I don't know if this would be appealing to male readers. (This has been called "feminist sci-fi" so let that be a warning to those who don't prefer.) But Yod's intelligent, macho, and groovy...so why not? Sort of the sensitive new age man, but with more kahonas, faster reflexes, and prowess in certain arts. ahem. Shira's relatable as a frustrated young woman, leaving an inappropriate marriage, and trying to avoid past mistakes.
To new reviewers: Please don't review books unless you've read them--your review affects the overall rating. (so the 1 star rating below, from reviewer rating other reviewer affects the book's standing, not the reviewer's standing. There's a helpful/unhelpful review button below each review if you want to respond to the reviewer). Just hate to see a book lambasted for different intent...
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