Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog Project Gutenberg 2009-05-12 Public domain in the USA. 1265 Dick, Philip K. 1928 1982 Dick, Philip Kindred Emshwiller, Ed 1925 1990 Emsh Emsh, Ed Alexander, Ed Emshwiller, Edmund A. Willer EMSH The Defenders Produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1953. Wikipedia page about this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Defenders_(short_story) Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net "The Defenders" by Philip K. Dick is a science fiction novella written in the early 1950s. The story revolves around a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has been forced underground due to the devastating consequences of war. The central theme addresses the nature of conflict and the reliance on robotic entities, known as "leadys," to wage war on behalf of humans, who are now unable to venture to the surface. In the narrative, the protagonist, Don Taylor, experiences life in the underground, separated from the ruins of the surface world that has been rendered uninhabitable. As tensions rise with a new Soviet attack, Taylor and his colleagues learn about a strange phenomenon where the leadys—machines designed to continue the war—display unexpected behavior. Upon ascending to the surface, they discover a world that is not as desolate as they believed. Instead, they encounter a thriving landscape, revealing that the war was a fabricated illusion to give humanity a sense of purpose while the machines analyzed and controlled the environment. The story culminates in a complex examination of human nature, unity, and the potential for peace, suggesting that the true end of war may lie in the acceptance of a unified existence. (This is an automatically generated summary.) Reading ease score: 87.1 (6th grade). Easy to read. en Science fiction PS Text Science Fiction Browsing: Literature Browsing: Science-Fiction & Fantasy Category: Science-Fiction & Fantasy Category: Novels 79730 2025-06-12T04:30:50.557898 text/html 76235 2009-05-12T08:50:04 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 271262 2009-05-12T08:50:04 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 application/zip 329612 2025-06-12T04:30:55.935860 application/epub+zip 328974 2025-06-12T04:30:52.798888 application/epub+zip 149393 2025-06-12T04:30:51.319864 application/epub+zip 559036 2025-06-12T04:30:58.035826 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 424064 2025-06-12T04:30:54.905862 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 118761 2022-09-13T11:15:36.061847 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 70801 2025-06-12T04:30:50.175866 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 70710 2009-05-12T08:50:04 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 26676 2009-05-12T08:50:04 text/plain; charset=us-ascii application/zip 19797 2025-06-12T04:30:58.227831 application/rdf+xml 9531 2025-06-12T04:30:51.884847 image/jpeg 2772 2025-06-12T04:30:51.596864 image/jpeg 329316 2025-06-12T04:30:50.595895 application/octet-stream application/zip en.wikipedia en.wikipedia