He, She, It (1991)
By Marge Piercy
Cloning; Cyborgs; Genetic engineering; Posthuman; Race
Shira falls in love with a cyborg named Yod who has been created to protect her hometown’s Net base.
Nuclear wars, global warming, ozone depletion and worldwide famines have transformed the Earth by the mid-twentieth century; governments have been replaced by “multi” corporations and free towns, while the majority of workers live in the dangerous, gang-controlled “Glop” region. Global interaction now takes place on the Net, and most individuals are modified with the necessary equipment for direct interface. Shira works for the Y-S multi, but after a bitter custody battle in which she is separated from her son, she returns to Tikva, the free town where she was raised. Shira has been recruited by mentor Avram to socialize his newest creation, an illegal cyborg named Yod. Shira’s grandmother, Malkah, helped to program Yod, the tenth such cyborg to be created by Avram, but only the first to survive the programming process. Although Avram created Yod to protect the town and the town’s Net base, Malkah programmed him to be sensitive and caring as well. As Shira is confronted with the lost love of her youth, she turns to Yod for comfort and companionship, and her desire for him despite his inhuman origin surprises her. In spite of his creation, Yod experiences human emotions, including guilt over his primary role as Avram’s weapon. After helping Shira rescue her son from the Y-S multi, which has been leveraging the boy in an attempt to gain control over Yod, Y-S issues an ultimatum: turn over the cyborg, or the town will be destroyed. Yod sacrifices himself to protect Tikva, but not before crippling Y-S and destroying Avram’s chances of recreating another conflicted cyborg.
Malkah’s narrative, interspersed throughout Shira’s tale, draws interesting if imperfect analogies between the Yod’s role and the Tikva/Y-S conflict, and a golem’s role in defending a Jewish ghetto in 1600 Prague. Piercy’s novel is valuable for the examination of the rising inability to distinguish between human and machine, the natural and the artificial. Yod is the obvious site of conflict, as the town must debate whether he is the property of Avram, property of the town or a citizen in his own right; the elders cannot even decide if he should be allowed to consider himself a Jew, although he attends services. As a mix of mechanical and biological parts, Yod does not differ in strict composition from many of the inhabitants of the multis or free towns; many citizens have several artificial organs, and most have implanted machinery for plug-in access to the Net. Yod develops a consciousness beyond that of a mere weapon or house computer, determining ways to hide inflammatory information from Avram or to defy his orders. Malkah has created Yod to be a gentle lover as well, but Yod magnifies that knowledge into a desire for a family with Shira. After Yod has destroyed himself and Avram’s lab, Malkah decides that creating a sentient being for any other purpose than independent living is unethical.
Evaluation: The golum plot thread represents a racial and religious parallel between cyborgs and older forms of pseudo-human constructs, one which offers a new perspective on the cultural significance of posthuman figures. This novel may not be meant for all readers, as Piercy’s heavy investment in science fiction conventions requires a new vocabulary.
– Natalie Champ