Near future. Corporate America versus independent communities. Contains a re-telling of the Golem myth, drawing parallels with artificial intelligence and artificial life. First published in the United States as He, She and It . Winner of the 1993 Arthur C.Clarke Award.
"The time is the middle of the twenty-first century. The place is North America. The vast tracts of wasteland are dotted with corporate domes and broken occasionally by the few free towns where the technology of the age has not yet been turned against the individual.
"At the centre of the novel is Shira Shipman. She lived in a free town and, in order to protect it, took part in the creation of an illegal cyborg, more human than any robot created before. Her knowledge about this places her, her young son and her elderly grandmother in real danger as they become the key players in a deadly battle, a battle for information, the most important commodity of the time. As her story unfolds, the parallels with the story of the Jewish ghetto in Prague in 1600 become clearer". [jacket blurb, UK hbk, 1992]
"A metaphorical and emotionally rich drama with a thought-provoking view of artificial life". --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1995).
Recommended.
