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Gibson’s ending, with its strange lack of closure, is more in keeping with
postmodernity than Piercy’s standard ending.
Once again, Piercy is faultless for her artistic decisions in He, She and
It. It is a magnificent book, and a paper as short as this one is inadequate for
taking in the full scope of the novel, for Piercy’s achievement lies in yoking
together the finest aspects of cyberpunk with traditional literary motifs to
achieve an engaging synthesis. At the end of the introduction to her article,
“Piercy Hacks Gibson,” Deery states: “I am also interested in answering this
question: Why do I find Gibson’s writing in some ways brilliant but hollow, and
Piercy’s account more satisfying and real?” (90). The answer to this is simple.
Gibson’s work is avant garde and as such is difficult to grasp and somewhat
weakened by the way in which it pushes the limits of science fiction; on the
other hand, Piercy’s work is a stable synthesis of the best of many genres. For
these reasons, the two cannot be measured by the same standard. Finally, the
problem here lies with the critics not with the authors. Once the feminist critical
framework that has sought to destroy Gibson and all of cyberpunk is lifted and
the wholesale valorization of all female science fiction authors is halted, a
clearer exegesis of these, and perhaps many more, novels can occur.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Brook Brayman
Works Cited
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Cadora, Karen. “Feminist Cyberpunk.” Science Fiction Studies 22 (1995): 357-372.
Deery, June. “The Biopolitics o f Cyberspace: Piercy Hacks Gibson.” Future Females,
The Next Generation. Ed. Marleen S. Barr. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield,
2000. 87-104.
Gibson, Williarn. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984.
Hicks, Heather. “Striking Cyborgs: Reworking the ‘Human’ in Marge Piercy’s He, She
and It.'" Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyherculture. Ed. Mary Flanagan and
Austin Booth. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002. 85-106.
Hollinger, Veronica. “Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism.”
Cyhersexualities. Ed. Jenny Wolmark. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1999. 174-190.
Piercy, Marge. He, She and It. New York: Fawcett Books, 1991.
Stockton, Sharon. “‘The S elf Regained’ Cyberpunk’s Retreat to the Imperium.”
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