PIERCY, Marge

(1936-)

   US writer who has become recognized as a significant voice of US FEMINISM, initially with POETRY in volumes like Breaking Camp (coll 1968) but more importantly in novels like Going Down Fast (1969) and Vida (1980). Her first sf novel, Dance the Eagle to Sleep (1970), deals with anattempt by a group of student revolutionaries to set up a loving, communistic alternative society in the shadow of a near-totalitarian NEAR FUTURE US state. In WOMAN ON THE EDGE OF TIME (1976) a Chicano woman,falsely accused of abusing her daughter and confined to a mental institution, makes contact with (or hallucinates the existence of) an emissary from a future society which has arisen in the aftermath of a "full feminist revolution". This vision of a USA in which women and menare truly equal and truly whole has inspired many; although, while the contemporary sequences are insightful and deeply moving, the descriptions of the future UTOPIA tend to lack credibility. It might be accurate to say that the culture so described is primarily a utopia of personal relationships rather than one of social and technological structures, and is perhaps best approached as a dream rather than as a realizable society. He, She and It (1991; vt Body of Glass 1992 UK) more sustainedly placesits examination of human relationships in a CYBERPUNK-influenced vision of a USA dominated by Japanese corporations, but the analogy which structures the plot - an ANDROID powered by an AI is likened to the medieval GOLEM - seems sentimental, especially in the closing pages, where the android sacrifices itself so a Jewish commune may live. It nevertheless won the ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD for 1993.

   NT/JC

   See also: POETRY; SOCIOLOGY; WOMEN SF WRITERS.