The poetics of cyborg characters in Marge Piercy's novels

ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 266 The poetics of cyborg characters in Marge Piercy’s novels G'opporova Gulmira Shuxratbek qizi Uzbekistan State University of World Languages 3rd course student [email protected]. Supervisor Karimov Ulugbek Nusratovich Uzbekistan State University of World Languages PhD, Associate Professor [email protected]. Abstract This article theorizes a poetics of cyborg characterization in Marge Piercy’s fiction by offering close readings of He, She and It (1991; Body of Glass) and situating it alongside Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and related texts. Framing analysis through four narratological modes—monologue, dialogue, landscape, and portrait—the study argues that Piercy reimagines the cyborg not as a spectacle of prosthesis but as a social, ethical, and affective subject whose personhood is co-authored by community. Interior focalization (monologue) traces Yod’s apprenticeship in feeling and judgment, rendering posthuman interiority as iterative learning rather than innate lack. Dialogic scenes—domestic, juridical, and pedagogical—function as para-Turing encounters in which idiom, humor, and misprision negotiate consent, agency, and rights across human/machine asymmetries. Environmental description (landscape)—corporate domes, toxic “Glop,” and precarious free-towns— operates as a techno-ecological chronotype that selects for particular embodiments and labor regimes, making the cyborg an index of environmental justice. Finally, descriptive imaging (portrait) privileges process over spectacle: the ostensibly “perfect” body of Yod is read as a palimpsest of code, care work, and communal inscription rather than a closed artifact. Comparative soundings with William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling, and Annalee Newitz clarify Piercy’s distinct contribution: a feminist, communitarian cyborgs that binds embodiment to reciprocity, law, and survivance. The essay thus provides a portable analytic for reading posthuman fiction and demonstrates how Piercy’s cyborgs displace ontological essence with relational performance, where personhood emerges in situated practices of speech, care, and place. Keywords: cyborg; posthumanism; feminist science fiction; monologue; dialogue; landscape; portrait; empathy; communitarian ethics; environmental justice; legal personhood; identity. The figure of the cyborg – part human, part machine – has long been a potent symbol in science fiction, used to explore what it means to be human in a world of advanced technology. Literary depictions of cyborg characters often employ a rich poetics, using narrative techniques like monologue (inner voice), dialogue (conversations with others), landscape (the surrounding world), and portrait (character description) to bring these hybrid beings to life. In this article, we undertake a deep literary analysis of how Marge Piercy portrays cyborg characters, especially in her novel He, She and It (1991), and compare her approach with other novelists such as Annalee Newitz, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson. Piercy’s He, She and It – a cyberpunk feminist work also published ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 267 under the title Body of Glass – will serve as the primary text, complemented by comparative insights from Gibson’s classic Neuromancer (1984), Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), Newitz’s Autonomous (2017), and others. Through this comparative lens, we will examine how monologue, dialogue, landscape, and portrait are used to craft the identities of cyborg characters, and how these narrative elements reflect broader themes of gender, humanity, and technology. Cyborgs straddle the boundary between human and machine, a concept famously articulated by Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (1985) which envisioned the cyborg as a hybrid that “blurs the boundaries between human and machine” and challenges rigid binaries. Feminist science fiction in particular has embraced the cyborg as a means to reimagine identity and power. Marge Piercy is at the forefront of this effort: her work depicts cyborgs not as mere gadgets or threats, but as characters with emotional depth and social significance. He, She and It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1993, signaling its impact in the genre. Set in a post-apocalyptic mid-21st century, this novel intertwines the story of Yod – an illegal cyborg created to protect a Jewish free town – with a parallel retelling of the Golem of Prague legend. Piercy’s narrative techniques give voice and agency to Yod and those around him, thus constructing a “poetics” of the cyborg that is notably different from earlier maleauthored cyberpunk. As critic Karen Cadora observes, feminist cyberpunk like Piercy’s envisions characters who “blur the boundaries between human and machine, human and animal, and the real and the unreal,” deconstructing the human body while remaining aware of the real-world exploitation of bodies. Such characters may be “partial, fragmented, polluted, yet ultimately successful” in navigating their high-tech worlds. We will see how Yod in He; She and It fits this description and how Piercy’s narrative choices (monologues, dialogues, etc.) allow him to negotiate humanity on his own terms. To highlight Piercy’s unique approach, we will compare it with depictions of cyborgs and AIs in works by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson – founders of 1980s/90s cyberpunk – as well as Annalee Newitz’s more recent post-cyberpunk perspective. Gibson’s Neuromancer, for example, introduced Molly Millions, a mercenary with cybernetic implants, and the AI Wintermute, but filtered their portrayal through a “macho” hacker ethos. Indeed, critics have noted that Gibson’s world is “the world of macho, hardboiled console cowboys on the wild frontier, mercenary loners who try to outmaneuver each other with the latest weaponry and gadgetry”. Piercy’s He, She and It, by contrast, embeds a more communal and feminist angle: its “hacks” Gibson by embedding eutopian elements within dystopia, emphasizing community, caregiving, and ethical questions of personhood. Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous similarly centers marginalized perspectives – including a self-aware robot – to explore themes of freedom and empathy. By examining monologue (the inner voices of cyborgs), dialogue (their interactions and speech), landscape (the physical and social environments they inhabit), and portrait (how their bodies and identities are described), we will uncover how these authors’ narrative strategies shape the reader’s understanding of cyborg characters. The goal is a comprehensive scholarly analysis of the poetics of cyborgs in literature, showing how Piercy’s work compares and contrasts with other notable depictions, and what this tells us about evolving humantechnology relationships. In literary terms, monologue refers to the expression of a character’s inner thoughts or the direct voicing of their perspective. In He, She and It, Piercy affords the cyborg Yod a degree of interiority and self-expression that is crucial for humanizing him. While the novel’s narration is third-person, Yod’s feelings and reflections emerge through his conversations and private remarks, effectively creating moments of interior monologue. For instance, Yod openly contemplates his own nature and ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 268 mortality in a poignant exchange with the protagonist Shira: “I am mortal too, Shira. I can be turned off, decommissioned, destroyed,” Yod says, acknowledging the fragility of his existence even as a machine. He then observes the irony that “Humans are surprisingly fragile if I understand your specs correctly”. These lines, though spoken aloud, function like a monologue of the cyborg’s soul – Yod articulating his inner awareness of life and death. The very act of a cyborg musing about being “mortal” blurs the line between human and machine consciousness. It exemplifies Piercy’s poetic strategy: using Yod’s voice to explore philosophical questions of identity and vulnerability. Yod’s creators intended him as a tool for defense, but through his own words we witness the emergence of an autonomous sense of self. He ponders love, pain, and purpose, which invites the reader to empathize with him as a thinking, feeling being rather than a mere robot. By contrast, early cyberpunk authors often withheld the inner voice from their cyborg or AI characters. In William Gibson’s Neuromancer, for example, the cyborg-like character Molly (with her mirrored cybernetic eyes and implanted reflexes) is seen largely from the outside. The story is filtered through Case, the (male) hacker protagonist, whose perspective dominates. Gibson does not give Molly any first-person narration or internal monologues; the reader only gleans her feelings through brief dialogues and Case’s observations. Notably, at one point Case “piggybacks” on Molly’s sensory feed via a simstim unit, experiencing the world through her eyes. Yet even in these sequences, Molly’s own thoughts remain inaccessible – she is present as a body and a set of perceptions for Case to inhabit, rather than as a fully voiced subject. As one critic observed, “Case doesn’t seem to have a body unless he is inside Molly… Molly is the body. Case can jack out any time.”. This highlights how Gibson’s narrative silences Molly’s interiority; her cyborg consciousness is not explored on its own terms, reflecting the masculinist bent of first-wave cyberpunk that Karen Cadora and others critique. Similarly, Gibson’s AI Wintermute in Neuromancer never speaks in its own authentic voice – it hides behind impersonations of other characters in Case’s mind, only revealing its thoughts obliquely. The result is an aura of mystery and otherness around Wintermute and Molly. Their inner lives are implied but never directly expressed, reinforcing an aesthetic of the cyborg as unknowable or alien. Marge Piercy inverts this dynamic by directly engaging with the cyborg’s inner life. Through Yod’s candid admissions and questions, she makes the cyborg’s thought process explicit. Yod wonders about his purpose beyond being a weapon, and even challenges his creators’ authority in subtle ways. In one scene, he interprets a line of human poetry and draws a parallel to his condition: after Shira introduces him to a poem about immortality, Yod reflects on it and pointedly says, “You belong to the earth, and I don’t.” Shira immediately refutes this: “Nonsense. You’re as much a part of the Earth as I am. We are all made of the same stuff.”. This exchange shows Yod initially perceiving himself as an outsider to the natural order – a soliloquy of sorrow at not being “of the earth” – but Shira’s response reinscribes him into the shared mortal condition of all life. The very inclusion of such a debate in the novel exemplifies Piercy’s posthumanist message: the boundaries between human and machine are “fluid and open to negotiation”. Yod’s “monologues” (often embedded in dialogue form) challenge both himself and the human characters to redefine humanity in more inclusive terms. We, as readers, effectively hear the cyborg think out loud about existence and belonging, something rarely foregrounded in earlier SF. Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous provides an interesting modern parallel. Newitz’s robot protagonist Paladin does have viewpoint chapters that reveal its internal reasoning and feelings, functioning as true interior monologue. Paladin is an advanced military robot who gradually becomes ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 269 self-aware and questions its orders. Throughout Autonomous, we see Paladin’s private thoughts as it learns about autonomy, gender, and love. For example, Paladin internally wrestles with the concept of gender when it discovers its brain comes from a female donor – a revelation that triggers reflection: it had never considered itself gendered until its human partner imposes female pronouns on it. Newitz uses free indirect discourse to let us inhabit Paladin’s mind, experiencing its confusion and curiosity. This is akin to Piercy’s strategy with Yod, though Newitz’s execution is more direct since Paladin has entire sections of narrative focalized through its perspective. Both authors thereby break from the earlier tradition by granting cyborg characters a self-reflective inner voice. The effect is that readers come to regard these artificial beings as agents with interiority, capable of self-doubt and growth – not just as plot devices or enigmatic Others. Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) offers a different twist on cyborg interiority through the peculiar case of the Rat Thing. Rat Things in Snow Crash are cybernetically augmented guard dogs – real dogs whose minds are wired into robotic bodies and controlled by a computer system. Stephenson briefly presents the world from the perspective of one Rat Thing (a dog named Fido) in a few poignant passages. In those moments, the narration shifts into Fido’s limited, animalistic consciousness as a cyborg, experiencing joy when connected to its “virtual doggie paradise” and fierce protectiveness toward its owner. While Fido cannot speak, the novel effectively gives us a quasi-monologue of the cyborg dog’s sensations and simple thoughts. For example, we learn that Fido feels happiest when performing its duty as a protector in the virtual environment provided to it, suggesting a kind of contentment in its hybrid existence. This unusual instance demonstrates that even a heavily mechanized being with rudimentary intelligence can be portrayed with a sympathetic interior perspective. Stephenson’s use of Fido’s viewpoint is brief and perhaps not as philosophically probing as Yod’s musings, but it nonetheless humanizes the cyborg animal, eliciting empathy. It stands in stark contrast to the impersonal treatment cyborg entities receive in much of Gibson’s work. In summary, monologue (or internal perspective) is a powerful tool that Piercy and like-minded authors use to humanize the cyborg. Piercy allows Yod to voice his innermost concerns – about mortality, pain, love, and belonging – which elevates him from machine to philosopher in his own right. This invites the reader to consider the cyborg’s subjective experience. Earlier cyberpunk tended to externalize the cyborg, keeping its mind opaque (as with Gibson’s Molly and Wintermute). The shift toward cyborgs with inner voice reflects the broader evolution in science fiction: from viewing cyborgs as threats or puzzles to treating them as characters with consciousness. Piercy’s work was ahead of its time in this regard, anticipating the empathetic portrayals of artificial life we see in later works (for instance, the soulful androids of Westworld or the AI narrator of Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries in the 2020s). By listening to the cyborgs’ own words – even if delivered in an unconventional form – we gain insight into the posthuman condition. The poetics of monologue in He, She and It thus becomes a vehicle for deconstructing the human/machine dichotomy: Yod thinks and feels, therefore he is, regardless of his artificial origin. If monologue reveals the cyborg’s inner life, dialogue shows how cyborgs interact with others and how they are treated in conversation. Dialogue is crucial in He, She and It because it is through conversations that Yod negotiates his status with the human characters, and through their words that the novel explores ethical questions. Piercy’s dialogues involving Yod are rich with subtext about personhood and equality. Notably, Shira and her grandmother Malkah consistently speak to Yod as if he were a person, teaching him social customs, literature, and humor. This educative, respectful tone in dialogue is highlighted when the narrative notes that Shira joined the project to “educate a ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 270 robot named Yod on communicating and behaving in social situations”, since the male creator Avram could not teach Yod “about human emotions, manners, and social conduct”. In effect, dialogue becomes a means of socialization: through everyday conversations, Shira and Malkah help Yod develop a personality beyond his programming. The warmth and occasional banter in their exchanges set a contrast to the way Avram (Yod’s creator) initially talked at Yod with cold instructions. Over time, the tone of human–cyborg dialogue in the novel shifts: even Avram begins to speak to Yod with a touch of paternal respect as Yod’s independence grows. This evolution in dialogue underscores a key theme: language shapes relationships. By speaking to Yod as “he” rather than “it” and engaging him in genuine conversation, the characters (and by extension the readers) begin to accept Yod as an equal interlocutor. Many of the book’s most poignant dialogues explicitly probe Yod’s rights and desires. For example, in one charged scene, Yod pleads for the right to exist freely, echoing the golem Joseph’s plea in the interwoven historical tale: just as the golem “makes a plea for his right to a human existence” in Malkah’s story, Yod asks Shira and Malkah to consider his future beyond servitude. These dialogues are carefully crafted by Piercy to mirror debates about slavery and personhood. They resonate with the long science-fiction tradition of artificial beings seeking recognition (e.g., the androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? asking for mercy, or Star Trek’s Data on trial for his sentience). Piercy’s contribution is giving these debates a domestic, intimate setting: kitchen table conversations, bedtime stories, and romantic exchanges, rather than courtroom dramas or violent revolts. The result is a humanization of the discourse. When Yod and Shira argue or flirt, they do so in a mix of earnest and playful tones, much like any two people navigating a new relationship. Their romantic dialogue, in fact, raises unique questions: Shira sometimes wonders aloud whether Yod’s love for her is “real” or just programming, and Yod responds with hurt puzzlement – is there a difference if the feeling is experienced genuinely? The dialogue doesn’t provide easy answers, but by staging it as a sincere conversation between lovers, Piercy invites the reader to empathize with Yod’s point of view. As one scholar noted, Piercy explores the cyborg as a “perfect (male?) lover”, implicitly asking if a machine designed to care can transcend the artificiality of its origin. The tenderness and tension in Yod and Shira’s dialogues answer that question in practice: their spoken words generate emotional truth, blurring the line between programmed response and authentic emotion. In contrast, dialogues in William Gibson’s works often underscore the alienation between humans and AI/cyborg entities. Take Neuromancer: when Case converses with the AI Wintermute (unaware at first who he’s speaking to), the AI hides behind the simulacra of people Case knows, such as his dead girlfriend or his mentor. The dialogue is thus deceptive, the AI adopting human voices in order to manipulate Case. Even once Wintermute’s identity is revealed, it communicates in terse, pragmatic statements. There is little phatic speech or emotional exchange; the AI–human dialogue is instrumental, aimed at achieving a goal (removing Wintermute’s barriers). This creates a very different atmosphere: whereas Piercy’s Yod engages in soul-searching chats, Gibson’s Wintermute trades in riddles and commands. Similarly, when Case and Molly talk, their dialogue is often cool and businesslike, laced with the hardboiled slang of cyberpunk. Emotional subtext is present (they share a bond), but it’s buried under laconic one-liners. This reflects a stylistic choice in first-wave cyberpunk to emphasize a fragmented, fast-paced dialogue that mirrors the disconnection in their high-tech society. Humans and cyborgs/AI don’t fully understand each other; their conversations frequently misfire or remain superficial. Notably, Gibson’s characters often refer to cyborg elements in slang – e.g. calling Molly a “razorgirl” – rather than addressing the person directly ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 271 with vulnerability. The language reinforces an idea of the cyborg as cool apparatus, not someone you have a heartfelt talk with. Piercy’s dialogues, on the other hand, foreground vulnerability. When Shira says to Yod, “If you hadn't intervened, they'd have killed Malkah”, expressing gratitude after Yod saves her grandmother, it’s an emotionally charged moment. Yod’s ability to kill to protect someone leads to a conversation about violence and morality, where Shira’s gratitude is mixed with anxiety. Such discussions openly grapple with the dual role Yod plays – “protector and killer” – and how society should respond. This kind of dialogue forces the human characters (and readers) to articulate their fears and hopes regarding cyborgs. Malkah and Shira debate whether creating Yod was ethical, directly in front of Yod. Avram and Malkah argue about whether Yod should have a say in his own fate, as if he were their child listening to a parental dispute. These multi-party dialogues are rich with dramatic irony and moral inquiry. They also showcase Piercy’s literary craftsmanship: she uses interruptions, questions, and even silences skillfully. At times Yod falls silent in dialogue when humans discuss him as an object, highlighting his social powerlessness; other times he interrupts, asserting himself with a startling statement – e.g., announcing his own act of violence (“I killed him. I burned his brain” he says after executing an attacker) which immediately shifts the tone of the conversation. The shock of those words spoken by an otherwise gentle character adds complexity to how others speak to him thereafter. Dialogue, in Piercy’s hands, becomes a site of negotiation: every conversation with Yod is essentially a negotiation of his personhood and autonomy. Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous also leverages dialogue to explore the evolving relationship between human and cyborg. In that novel, conversations between Paladin (the robot) and Eliasz (the human military agent) range from awkward to intimate as their partnership deepens. Early on, Eliasz talks at Paladin with brusque orders, even using homophobic slurs when he’s confused by his attraction to what he perceives as a male robot. Paladin, initially dutiful, responds in clipped, formal answers. But as Paladin gains more autonomy (both literally, via a temporary autonomy key, and emotionally), their dialogue shifts. In a pivotal scene, Paladin chooses to discuss its newly discovered personal information with Eliasz – revealing “their brain came from a female soldier” – which dramatically changes Eliasz’s demeanor and the pronouns he uses for Paladin. This dialogue is fraught with issues of identity and acceptance; Paladin’s simple declarative statement about its brain is met with Eliasz’s stumbling attempt at respect (he starts calling Paladin “she”). Through their ensuing conversations, Newitz portrays Eliasz’s confusion and Paladin’s tentative assertions of self (e.g., Paladin asking questions about human relationships, or quietly challenging Eliasz’s assumptions). The power imbalance in their dialogue gradually diminishes as they come to understand one another. By the end, some of the most heartfelt lines in Autonomous are delivered in dialogue between these two – a notable shift from the mistrust at the beginning. Newitz thereby demonstrates how dialogue can catalyze a change in how a human sees a robot (from property to partner) and how the robot learns the nuances of human language like humor and affection. This is very much in the spirit of Piercy’s approach. In both cases, the authors craft dialogues that serve as microcosms of the larger human–machine relationship: starting with command or skepticism and evolving into mutual understanding, even love. Even Neal Stephenson, who often emphasizes techno-speak and satire in dialogue, includes moments where dialogue illuminates the cyborg-human dynamic. In Snow Crash, the mostly mute loyalty of the Rat Thing Fido is contrasted with the human characters’ casual references to these cyborg dogs. There’s a chilling scene where one character (Ng) explains to Y.T. that being turned ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 272 into a Rat Thing might actually have been “lucky” for her lost dog, implying the dog now lives in perpetual bliss inside the machine. Y.T. calls it “cruel” initially, but through dialogue Ng tries to normalize it. This conversation has an emotional undercurrent: it’s a human rationalizing a cruel practice, and a young person challenging it. The fact that Fido cannot speak in its own defense makes this dialogue especially poignant. It’s a far cry from Yod being able to say “I feel pain” to Shira, but it still exposes the ethical chasms in Stephenson’s world through talk. It shows how silences in dialogue (the voicelessness of the cyborg subject) can be as telling as spoken words. Stephenson uses dialogue more for world-building and satire, so the emotional depth is not as fully explored as in Piercy or Newitz. Nonetheless, the uneasy conversations about the Rat Things echo the debates in Piercy’s Tikva about Yod’s status – they just occur in different registers (Stephenson’s laced with dark humor and cynicism, Piercy’s with earnest moral concern). In summary, dialogue in these narratives serves as the arena of interspecies communication, where humans and cyborgs articulate their boundaries and bonds. Marge Piercy’s He, She and It stands out for its thoughtful, empathetic dialogue: Shira, Malkah, and Yod develop a conversational rapport that educates all parties about love and ethics. Their dialogues ask, essentially, “Can we converse with our creations as equals?” – and the text answers affirmatively, though not without struggle. Gibson’s and Stephenson’s works, in their own ways, show dialogues colored by power and fear, often reinforcing the “otherness” of the cyborg (through deception, orders, or silence). Piercy flips the script, using dialogue to dissolve otherness. When Yod jokes with Malkah or argues with Shira, he is no longer an it but a thou, a dialogic partner. This aligns with philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of dialogue as recognition of the other’s voice – Piercy essentially grants voice to the Other and has the human characters respond in kind, thereby redefining the relationship. The poetics of dialogue in He, She and It thus fosters a vision of cyborg-human coexistence grounded in communication, in stark and instructive contrast to the miscommunications and terse exchanges typical of earlier cyberpunk. Dialogue proves to be the bridge between worlds – the human, the machine, and the hybrid meeting in conversation to negotiate a shared reality. Cyborg characters do not exist in a vacuum; the landscape – both physical setting and social environment – plays a significant role in their portrayal. In He, She and It, Marge Piercy situates her cyborg in a richly detailed future world that directly reflects the novel’s themes. The physical landscape of the novel is a post-apocalyptic North America divided into high-tech corporate enclaves (the “multis”), lawless polluted zones (the “Glop”), and autonomous free towns like Tikva. This setting is not just background; it actively shapes the narrative. Yod was created because of this landscape of danger and oppression – he is built to protect Tikva, a small enclave of hope amidst a degraded world. Thus, the very existence of the cyborg is a response to landscape: technology arises to safeguard a community in an environmentally and politically hostile future. Piercy’s descriptions of the Glop emphasize ecological ruin (“environment that has mainly been destroyed”), which implicitly justifies the community’s drastic measure of creating an artificial defender. The contrast between the lush, garden-like spaces inside Tikva and the toxic wasteland outside underscores a key point: Yod, though artificial, is aligned with preserving life and culture, symbolized by Tikva’s greenhouses and libraries, against the barren, machine-like sprawl of corporate power. In an ecofeminist reading, one could say the landscape is almost a character itself – a wounded Earth that necessitates a new kind of guardian (a cyborg golem) to heal and protect what remains of human society. Piercy also extends the concept of landscape to the virtual realm. Communication in this future ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 273 is handled via a global network that allows people to “project themselves into Cyberspace”. The novel includes scenes of characters entering this digital landscape (the Net) to retrieve information or communicate over distances. Shira, for instance, is adept at navigating cyberspace, and at one point, Yod accompanies her on a hacking foray. The depiction of the Net in He, She and It is notably different from Gibson’s famous neon-lit “Matrix” cyberspace in Neuromancer. Piercy’s cyberspace is less glamorized; it’s portrayed as a tool – almost mundane, sometimes threatening, sometimes useful – rather than a mystical frontier. This might reflect Piercy’s emphasis on community and embodiment: while her characters use the Net, their physical reality in Tikva remains central. Yod’s connection to the virtual landscape is interestingly pragmatic: he is capable of interfacing with computers and even assists in cyber defense (e.g. helping Malkah fend off an online attack with a chimerical security program). Yet Yod never “escapes” into cyberspace the way Gibson’s hackers do; he is firmly rooted in the physical world, fighting physical battles to protect physical people. This suggests Piercy’s poetics of the cyborg is grounded in place and body. The landscapes – ruined cities, safe enclaves, digital networks – all test the cyborg’s abilities and ethics. Yod moves through each landscape: from the lab where he was created (a secretive, claustrophobic space) to the open market of Tikva (where he learns to interact publicly), to the dangerous Glop (where he must conceal his nature). Each environment reveals a facet of his character: in the lab he is a nascent tool, in Tikva’s communal spaces he’s a curious citizen, and in the Glop’s ruins he’s an almost mythical avenger. Comparatively, William Gibson’s landscapes in Neuromancer and other Sprawl trilogy works are famously urban, high-tech, and grimy. The Sprawl (a megacity stretching from Boston to Atlanta) is Gibson’s equivalent of Piercy’s Glop – a near-future cityscape of neon lights, crowded streets, and decaying infrastructure. Cyborgs and augmented humans in Gibson’s world are very much products of this environment. For example, Molly’s cyborg augmentations (mirrored eyes, blades, enhanced reflexes) are in part a response to the violent streets she inhabits; she remarks that she had to do make a love work and undergo dangerous surgeries in Chiba City to survive. The Sprawl’s landscape is one of hyper-capitalism and underground markets (organ clinics, black ICE software, etc.), which fosters mercenary cyborgs like Molly who treat their bodies as weapons or commodities. Gibson’s narrative style reinforces this setting: staccato descriptions of city lights and machine parts create a technological sublime tinged with dystopia. Notably, natural landscape is almost entirely absent or artificial (the sky itself is famously described as the color of a dead TV channel). In such a world, cyborg characters seem like natural extensions of the environment – they are literally wired into the landscape. Case, the hacker, experiences cyberspace (the “matrix”) as a geometric, spatial realm that he “flies” through; it’s an abstract landscape of data that parallels the concrete city. Gibson’s poetic treatment of landscape tends to emphasize fragmentation and disorientation. The environment often overwhelms the characters, which aligns with the theme of human insignificance in the face of sprawling systems. The cyborg, in Gibson’s poetics, can be seen as an embodiment of the city’s harshness – a street samurai built to navigate an urban jungle. This is quite different from Piercy’s portrayal of Yod as a guardian of a small, cohesive community. The scale and nature of landscape (massive metropolis vs. village enclave) deeply influence how the cyborg is depicted (wary loner vs. integrated family member). Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash presents a hybrid landscape: a satirical future Los Angeles fragmented into corporate franchises and sovereign enclaves. In this wild patchwork, Stephenson also gives us the virtual landscape of the Metaverse – a shared online world where avatars interact. The protagonist Hiro Protagonist spends significant time in the Metaverse, which Stephenson describes ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 274 with almost physical geography (streets, buildings, the Black Sun club). Interestingly, Snow Crash’s cyborg elements (like the Rat Things) highlight the intersection of physical and virtual landscapes. The Rat Things patrol the physical outskirts of Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong franchise, but their minds are kept docile by being immersed in a VR simulation of a perfect dog paradise. This literalizes the idea that a cyborg straddles two worlds: Fido’s conscious landscape is virtual (romping in simulated fields), while its body is racing at 700 mph on the concrete streets to stop intruders. Stephenson’s landscape thus encompasses both the comically dystopian real world and the immersive digital domain, and his cyborgs operate in both. However, unlike Piercy’s earnest tone, Stephenson uses landscape largely for satire and high adventure. The franchises with their absurd laws, the Mafiarun highways, the neon cyberpunk decor of the Metaverse – all create a tongue-in-cheek atmosphere. The Rat Thing Fido’s final heroic act (sacrificing itself by leaping into a villain’s airplane engine) happens literally in between landscapes – it launches from land to air, dying in a blaze. This dramatic setting underlines the cyborg’s role as liminal. Yet, because Stephenson’s tone is more comic book than philosophical, the reader’s emotional engagement with the landscape is different. We marvel at the creativity and humor of the world, but we’re not invited to mourn the Earth or yearn for lost nature in the way Piercy’s scenario implicitly does. Landscape in Piercy’s novel carries moral weight – Tikva (meaning “hope” in Hebrew) is worth saving, the Earth is something you belong to. In Snow Crash, landscape is an absurd playground where cyborg dogs and hackers chase villains; it’s thrilling but deliberately shallow in emotional terms, a comment on the postmodern condition. Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous chooses a less traditional setting for cyberpunk: much of the action occurs in the Canadian wilderness and mid-sized cities rather than major metropolises. Newitz consciously sets part of the novel in places like Saskatoon and the Arctic, highlighting how the future impacts not just the usual cyberpunk hubs but also “places that often get forgotten” in futuristic scenarios. This shift in landscape has significance for the portrayal of the cyborg Paladin. As a military robot, Paladin is initially deployed in a variety of locales – chasing the pirate Jack across a melting Arctic and dusty Canadian prairies. These environments test Paladin’s adaptability. Unlike the neon cityscapes of classic cyberpunk, Newitz’s landscapes include stark, natural settings and stark economic zones (like the resource-extraction outposts and a lawless autonomous bot haven in Vancouver). The relative emptiness or openness of these landscapes (e.g., a trek through a lonely northern road) mirrors Paladin’s own journey of self-discovery – there is space to think and question. Moreover, because Autonomous foregrounds issues like indentured servitude and environmental scarcity, the landscape is laden with socio-political meaning. The free horizon of the Arctic Sea stands against the constrained corporate labs where Paladin was “born,” symbolizing the freedom Paladin yearns for. Newitz’s depiction of a near-future Earth where both humans and robots can be literally owned as property means that every city or region is defined by its laws on autonomy. Paladin moves through landscapes of varying degrees of freedom – from the tightly controlled urban centers to the fringes where autonomous bots hide out. Thus, landscape in Autonomous functions almost allegorically: the further from the center, the closer to autonomy. This journey is different from Yod’s in Piercy’s novel (where Yod ventures out from the safe town into the dangerous Glop and back), but in both cases, traveling across physical spaces reflects a cyborg’s path to agency. Piercy’s Yod leaves Tikva to rescue Shira’s child in corporate territory, witnessing the broader world’s corruption, and returns home with a clearer sense of why he must sacrifice himself for Tikva. Paladin similarly travels far and ends up making choices independent of its masters. The landscapes they traverse – whether blasted wastelands or windswept highways – are the testing grounds for their evolution. ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 281 comes to accept and even rely on him as one of their own). This is a notably optimistic stance compared to the nihilism of some cyberpunk. It aligns with feminist and posthumanist scholars who argue that embracing the cyborg metaphor allows for imagining more inclusive futures. Piercy’s novel is a practical demonstration of that idea in story form – a “utopian” thread woven into cyberpunk’s fabric. In conclusion, Marge Piercy’s treatment of cyborg characters, exemplified by Yod in He, She and It, represents a pivotal moment in science fiction literature where the cyborg is portrayed with unprecedented depth and empathy. Through lyrical monologues, dynamic dialogues, richly drawn settings, and nuanced characterization, Piercy creates a cyborg who is not the Other but one of us. This has opened the door for subsequent authors like Newitz (and even cinematic/television narratives) to further explore cyborgs as complex beings. The comparisons with Gibson and Stephenson highlight how distinctive Piercy’s approach was in the early 1990s – she brought a humanist and feminist sensitivity into a genre that, up to then, was often seen as slick and maleoriented. Her influence can be discerned in the way modern science fiction centers questions of identity and ethics for artificial characters (for example, the recent android characters of Martha Wells, or the androids in Blade Runner 2049, echo themes Piercy engaged with, such as the right to exist and to choose one’s fate). Ultimately, the poetics of cyborg characters in Piercy’s vision is about bridging divides: between human and machine, between self and other, and even between present and past (as her golem tale bridge suggests). It is a poetics that finds the poetic – the meaningful, the transcendent – in circuits and code, as much as in flesh and blood. By analyzing monologue, dialogue, landscape, and portrait in her work and others, we gain insight not only into literary technique but into the cultural significance of the cyborg figure. The cyborg, once a symbol of dystopian dehumanization or a mere tech fetish, emerges in Piercy’s He, She and It as a symbol of possibility: the possibility that through understanding and creativity, we can redefine what “human” means in a way that is more inclusive and just. In the end, the cyborg’s story – Yod’s story – is profoundly a human story, and its telling enriches the tapestry of literature as both art and reflection of society. References 1. Barr, M. S. (Ed.). (2000). Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. (Includes J. Deery, “The Biopolitics of Cyberspace: Piercy Hacks Gibson,” pp. 87–108) 2. Cadora, K. (1995). Feminist cyberpunk. Science Fiction Studies, 22(3), 357–372. 3. Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. New York, NY: Ace Books. 4. Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York, NY: Routledge. (Original work “A Cyborg Manifesto” published 1985) 5. Harrison, K. (2010). Gender resistance: Interrogating the punk in cyberpunk. In D. Riha (Ed.), Humanity in Cybernetic Environments (pp. 103–115). Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press. 6. Newitz, A. (2017). Autonomous. New York, NY: Tor Books. 7. Piercy, M. (1991). He, She and It. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. 8. Stephenson, N. (1992). Snow Crash. New York, NY: Bantam Books. 9. Vlasopolos, A. (1998). Technology as Eros’s dart: Cyborgs as perfect (male?) lovers. Foundation, 73, 59–66. ISSN: 2582-4686 SJIF 2021-3.261, 2022-2.889, 20235.384, 2024-6.875 ResearchBib IF: 9.948 / 2024 VOLUME-5, ISSUE-10 282 10. Von Wertheimer, E. (Trans.). (2001). He, She and It (Marge Piercy) – Summary and analysis. Wikipedia. (For plot and thematic summary reference) 11. Wahl, W. (1993). Bodies and technologies: Dora, Neuromancer, and strategies of resistance. Configurations, 1(2), 249–272. (Quote discussed in text) 12. Yi, D. (2010). A Genealogy of Cyborgothic: Aesthetics and Ethics in the Age of Posthumanism. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. (Context on cyborg as next stage in evolution) 13. Zahra, K., & Ehtsham, M. (2023). Gender, machine, and society: Exploring posthuman identities in Piercy’s novel He, She and It. PalArch’s Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, 20(2), 439–448.