Rating: 
Summary: You don't have to be a science fiction fan
Review: This book is a very hard book to follow. There are two stories going on at the same time, and it is hard to keep the information separate.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard Reading
Review: This book is a very hard book to follow. There are two stories going on at the same time, and it is hard to keep the information separate.
Rating:
Summary: Complex, rich, thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Review: This is #1 on my all-time SF list. Piercy examines in minute detail the question of what a "perfect" artificial man might really be like, working mostly from the viewpoint of his lover. A deeply insightful book with excellent characterization and an all-too-believable, if somewhat depressing, picture of future society. While I am primarily an SF fan, I was so impressed with this that I have delved into a number of Piercy's other books, many of which are not SF. "Gone for Soldiers" is also highly satisfying and readable (and of course, her other SF novel, "Woman on the Edge of Time"). It's wonderful to have a writer of Piercy's talent using SF as a medium.
Rating: 
Summary: A Golem Android In Dystopia
Review: This is an odd but intriguing book. It's odd because it's clearly SF but just as clearly not written by an SF writer. Piercy is a mainstream feminist with a strong grasp of characterization and (unlike, say, recent Tepper) the ability to communicate her politics without polemics and man-hating.
Anyhow, the novel is set mainly in a somewhat dystopic semi-near future, with a portion of the book alternating between the main story in the future and a retelling of the classical golem legend. In fact, the main story is quite clearly an adaption of the golem tale, not only in the notion of creating intelligent life, but in that creation being the defender of a shtetl-like town weathering a pogrom. The ending could be stronger, but the book holds up.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: This is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever had. I enjoyed it so much that I feel to share with others. This novel has many interesting characters. This novel is about a mothers love for her beloved son and Yod who is a cyborg and also Golems tale. This novel at the end flashes light on Shira, about her love lost and found.
Rating:
Summary: Great, but not her best
Review: This is one of the most entertaining works of feminist speculative fiction I've read. Both story lines caught my interest and it was fascinating as the themes connected and added to the richness of the entire novel. He, She and It didn't quite reach the complexity and depth of Piercy's other feminist utopia Woman on the Edge of Time, but that takes nothing away from the enjoyment of the novel.
Rating:
Summary: Body Of Glass under a new title
Review: This is yet another book proving Marge Piercy as a great novelist living in our times. Though all the characters or the subjects in this book may not be likeable, and may be too honestly portrayed for some, Ms. Piercy's skill with English and description cannot but impress the reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Shira is, "convinced of apocalypse but defiant and cheery."
Review: This novel is chock full of 1990's cultural clichés: "libertarian socialism," "anarcho-feminism" and "reconstructionist Judaism," not to mention the cyber punk genre stereotypes. According to The Denver Post review "Piercy adds family and religious values to the cyberpunk core of multinational corporations and information pirates." In point of fact, Piercy takes a swag at just about everything that moves in our present culture and extrapolates these into a vision for the future. Multinational corporations, traditional values, and the Christian Church are interchanged as the villains of the past and present. From the onset we are to understand that the "multis" are animated by "born again ... Christian practices" (p. 2), which includes marriage motivated by "male dominance" (p. 4). Mindless school children are led through the streets singing "corporate hymns", and all creativity is suppressed which includes the imposition of modest dress codes. Consistent with the radical feminism espoused by Piercy, Malkah chastises Shira for having submitted to male domination; "Those poison belchers. I told you not to marry him. You're the first in our family to marry in four generations. It's a bad idea" (p. 7). The framework of this novel is one of New Age eschatology. This is a pretty standard form of apocalypse which is commonly espoused by the likes of Elizabeth Clare Prophet. In this case the negative aspects of the future world are offset by the proposal of a New Age vision for future hope. Piercy is herself, like the young Shira, "convinced of apocalypse but defiant and cheery" (p. 238). Though it is clear that Piercy would have us believe that the heroic Malkah's credibility as a scientist was beyond dispute, she is actually a New Ager to the core. Malkah clearly states that, "I can not always distinguish between myth and reality" (p. 25). Avram challenges her to make a decision about reality by saying, "You're a scientist not a mystic", but she simply responds by saying, "I find different kinds of truth valuable" (p. 258). Shira's assessment of Malkah is humorous, "You're a lovable crone, you chimera witch" (p. 417). But the New Age goal is ultimately achieved when Malkah, as did the Maharal, creates a living being by infusing it with her own words (program) and thus she is deified. Here, radical feminism has been taken to its logical end, with the elimination of marriage and the dominance of women in all successful societies. Further, feminists have finally arrived with the creation of a "programmable man" that will do their bidding. Piercy apparently does not recognize her inconsistency when she characterizes all the men in her novel as useless and only worthy of female domination. Further, the idea that "family values" involves the elimination of fathers, mothers, marriage, and sexual monogamy is repugnant to say the least. One can only imagine how real children might respond in a family led by a grandmother who boasted that she had over fifty male and female lovers.....
Rating:
Summary: Matrix Revisited
Review: This novel is fully science-fiction in genre (for Marge Piercy is not afraid to dabble in whatever style interests her, from historical fiction, to memoir, to sci-fi, to poetry.) And "He, She and It" has many elements found in "The Matrix" (but "He, She and It" came out way before "Matrix) You wonder if the makers of that hit film series owe Ms. Piercy an enormous monetary debt of gratitude. The story centers around Shira, a bright young woman who makes a bad mistake; she marries the wrong man. Pigeonholed by the large "multi" (corporation) who bid for her services when she graduated, she's living on borrowed time in the safe but stifling domed city built by her multi to house the workers and managers against the perils of the polluted open lands and even more perillous decayed and overpopulated metropolis ("Glop" for short.) Shira doesn't realize how short her time really is, and how soon she will be moving on, leaving behind her job, and much much, more of value to her. She moves home to one of the free cities on the seashore, deemed unsafe by virtue of severe weather (a gift of global warming.) She moves in with her grandmother and takes a job with Avram, a cybernetics expert. Avram has created a golem, a robot, a protector of the Jewish free city. Shira is hired to teach the robot, and develops a strange relationship with the creature, who, like Frankenstein's monster, is filled with both love and hate. Meanwhile, she must deal with her own past and past loves, and learn why she made bad decisions. Shira threads a path filled with dangers, but comes out stronger and wiser. Not without a high price, however. Piercy mixes the legend of the Golem from the Ghetto of Prague (a clay creature created by a rabbi to protect the people from a pogrom) and a fast-paced parallel story full of adventure. This story-by-story structure will be familiar to readers of other novels by Piercy such as "Woman on the Edge of Time" where a woman in an insane asylum shifts between her present reality and the future of the year 2037. This is an extraordinary novel. If you liked "The Matrix" and "The Handmaid's Tale" you will love "He, She and It." I don't think it's quite as good as Piercy's superb "Woman on the Edge of Time" but this is a worthy novel that had me reading it cover to cover without stopping. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: both historical fiction and sci-fi
Review: This novel presents parallel stories of the Golum of Prague and the cyborg of the future, both "men" created to protect the societies in which they were "born." Both evolve beyond "creature" or "robot" to become self-aware and fall in love with a human woman, and thus become so threatening that they are destroyed by the humans they seek to embrace. As a non-Jewish reader, I was inspired to look up the history of the golum in Jewish Kabbalah legends and surprised to find out that there is a statue of the legendary golum in Prague. The story stalls in the middle third as the same-old-love-story unfolds ... tediously. I would have liked more depth and detail on the various societies Piercy hints at in the future, expecially the great masses that survive in apparent anarchy in this post-apocalyptic world. The ending is too pat; why didn't Yod disappear into the Glop? Great concept, though.
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