He, She and It

He, She and It (published under the title Body of Glass outside the USA) is a cyberpunk novel by Marge Piercy published in 1991. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction novel in 1993. The novel examines gender roles, human identity and AI, political economy, environmentalism, love, and storytelling through a suspenseful plot, set in a post-apocalyptic America, of the romance between a human woman and the cyborg created to protect her community from corporate raiders.

The main story of He, She and It is situated in North America in the near future of the year 2059. At that time, the economic and political power is held by few multis—huge multi-national enterprises with their own social hierarchy that have produced an affluent society. The main part of the population, however, lives in the glop outside of the multis' enclaves within an environment that has mainly been destroyed. Here, the life is dominated by poverty, gangs and the law of the stronger man. An exception from this are the so-called free towns that are able to sell their technologies to the multis but remain autonomous. Communication is handled via a network which allows the participants to project themselves into Cyberspace.

When the protagonist Shira loses custody of her son Ari to her ex-husband Josh, she returns from her multi Yakamura-Stichen (Y-S) to her hometown Tikva (Hope in Hebrew) - a Jewish freetown. There, she starts working on the socialization of the cyborg Yod (the tenth letter in Hebrew and a symbol for God in Kabbalah), who has been created illegally by Avram to protect the city. Yod is the tenth cyborg (a robot with human appearance and programmed human characteristics) in a row of previously failed experiments whose programming has partially been completed by Malkah, Shira's grandmother. While Shira and Yod build up a (sexual) relationship, Shira's childhood sweetheart Gadi, Avram's son, also comes back to Tikva. Gadi returns due to his banishment for sleeping with a young girl. When Malkah is working on a chimaera (security software) to protect the city from online attack, she is attacked by Y-S. Yod, however, is able to prevent the attack. Eventually, Y-S invites Shira to a new hearing concerning the custody of her son. Shira is accompanied by Yod, her mother Riva, and Nili, a biotechnologically enhanced woman from a nuclear-devastated Palestine, when the situation escalates. The Y-S delegation and Riva die in the fight. Thereupon Shira, Malkah and Yod decide to infiltrate the Y-S network base. They manage to get hold of personnel files revealing a conspiracy against Shira and Tikva.

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