Storyteller with a message

Storyteller with a message

Body of Glass

By Marge Piercy

Penguin Books, 1992. 583 pp. $12.95

Reviewed by Steve Painter

Marge Piercy's latest is set in a ruined world made largely uninhabitable by the effects of atomic war and the greenhouse effect.

A few giant corporations have replaced states as the dominant economic-political forces. These operate from sterile but safe ant-nest-like domes which keep out the deadly sun's rays and other stray toxins and radioactivity. Meanwhile, most of humanity is left to take its chances in the glop (megalopolis), which in North America now covers most of the former east coast states of the former USA.

Residents of the glop exist mainly on "vat food" (algae). Real food is too expensive for all but the top executives of the corporations, and perhaps on special occasions for the middle levels (gruds).

In this situation there are some rays of hope. A few free towns exist outside the corporations' control in areas partly inundated by the melting ice caps. And in the glop, political consciousness is emerging among some of the gangs, which now double as government/police force. The lost skills of trade unionism and other forms of social solidarity are being rediscovered.

Through all this runs a sub-plot based in the Jewish ghetto in 17th century Prague. There too, life was harsh and the defence of freedom and even the right to live often hung by the very slender threads of a community's ability to outmanoeuvre and outwit forces far more powerful.

It doesn't matter too much that some of the characters and odd bits of plot appear to be recycled from some of Piercy's earlier works. For example, Vida the 20th century Weatherperson, is clearly recognisable in Riva, the tough female anti-corporation data pirate and resistance leader, and the free town of Tikva resembles the futuristic socialist community in Woman on the Edge of Time.

This is nearly 600 pages of skilful storytelling with a message of warning about the way the world is heading and a rider that no matter how bad things get, resistance remains possible and necessary.

From GLW issue 85