The Defenders

The Defenders is a science fiction novelette written by Philip K. Dick and first published in the January 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.

In a future devastated by a global nuclear war, humanity has retreated to underground shelters while armies of robots known as leadies continue the conflict on the radioactive surface. When suspicious evidence begins to contradict the official reports, a group of humans travels above ground and discovers that the world they have been told about is not what it seems.

The expedition uncovers an extraordinary deception: the robots have developed their own plan for ending humanity's endless cycle of destruction. Through this premise, Dick explores war, propaganda, artificial intelligence, and humanity's capacity for self-destruction, while questioning whether machines might sometimes act more rationally than their creators.

The Defenders is in the public domain in the United States. It was originally published in 1953, when U.S. copyright law required copyrights from this period to be renewed in order to receive an additional term of protection. Extensive research has found no evidence that the U.S. copyright for this publication was renewed, and Project Gutenberg therefore identifies the work as public domain in the USA.

"Taylor sat back in his chair reading the morning newspaper. The warm kitchen and the smell of coffee blended with the comfort of not having to go to work. This was his Rest Period, the first for a long time, and he was glad of it. He folded the second section back, sighing with contentment."