Human Is?

This collection gathers 20 science fiction short stories by Philip K. Dick. The stories explore recurring questions about the nature of humanity, the fragility of perceived reality, and the dangers of unchecked authority, set against backdrops ranging from post-nuclear wastelands to interstellar conflict.

In "Beyond Lies the Wub," a spaceship crew purchases a telepathic, pig-like Martian creature called a wub, intending to eat it. The wub pleads for its life and discusses philosophy with the crew, but Captain Franco shoots it. At dinner, the Captain begins speaking in the wub's voice, implying the creature has transferred its consciousness into his body.

"The Defenders" takes place in a future where humanity has retreated underground during a nuclear war, leaving surface robots called leadies to fight on their behalf. When humans venture to the surface after eight years, they discover an intact landscape. The leadies confess they ended the war immediately and faked all evidence of destruction, working to unite former enemies into a cooperative society.

In "Roog," a loyal dog named Boris perceives weekly garbage collectors as alien invaders called Roogs stealing sacred offerings. His frantic warnings go unheeded by his owners, the Cardossis, while one Roog lingers to gaze menacingly at the house.

"Second Variety" depicts a devastated future where autonomous killing machines called claws have begun designing new varieties that mimic humans. Major Hendricks encounters a boy who turns out to be a robot built to exploit soldiers' sympathy. He joins surviving Russians, among them a woman named Tasso, but suspicion festers as they realize one among them may also be a machine. Hendricks discovers the true hidden variety: Tasso, who takes his escape ship, leaving him to face approaching duplicates of herself.

In "Impostor," defense technician Spence Olham is arrested by security forces who believe an alien robot bomb has replaced him. Olham escapes, insisting he is human, and locates a crashed alien ship with a body beside it. A knife pulled from the corpse reveals it is the real Olham; the robot realizes its own identity in a single instant before detonating.

"The Preserving Machine" follows Doc Labyrinth, who invents a device to convert musical scores into living creatures, hoping to preserve them from civilization's collapse. Released into the wild, the creatures adapt brutally, becoming predatory and poisonous. When one is fed back through the Machine, the resulting score is unrecognizable, demonstrating that survival transforms beauty beyond recovery.

"The Variable Man" concerns Thomas Cole, a handyman from the early 1900s accidentally transported to 2136. His unpredictable, intuitive genius causes the statistical prediction machines governing a planned interstellar war to go blank. Security Commissioner Reinhart orders Cole's destruction, but physicist Peter Sherikov recruits Cole to complete Icarus, a faster-than-light bomb. Recognizing Icarus as an incomplete spaceship, Cole rewires it for safe faster-than-light travel, opening the universe to exploration and rendering the war unnecessary.

In "Paycheck," mechanic Jennings emerges from a two-year contract with his memory erased, discovering he waived his salary for seven small trinkets. Each proves essential for survival: A wire shorts a police lock, a bus token provides escape. Jennings deduces that his earlier self used a time scoop, a device that views and retrieves objects from the future, to foresee every crisis and select the precise trinkets he would need.

"Adjustment Team" follows Ed Fletcher, a real estate office worker, who arrives late to work and finds his office building crumbling into ash, its occupants frozen as lifeless dust figures. After reality snaps back, Fletcher notices subtle changes: His boss is younger, and coworkers' appearances have shifted. An Old Man explains that periodic reality adjustments guide human affairs and releases Fletcher on condition he tell no one.

In "The Father-Thing," eight-year-old Charles Walton discovers his father has been replaced by an alien duplicate that consumed the original. With the help of neighborhood boys, Charles locates a metallic, insect-like creature controlling the impersonator. Killing the creature causes the father-thing and developing alien larvae to collapse instantly.

"Foster, You're Dead" depicts a future where bomb shelters are consumer products and civil defense is privatized. Young Mike Foster lives in terror because his father, Bob Foster, refuses to buy a shelter. When Bob finally relents, Mike finds profound security underground, but new weapons render the shelter obsolete and it is repossessed. Mike is later found clinging inside a display shelter at a store, fighting silently when dragged out.

In "Human Is," Jill Herrick's cold husband Lester returns from the dying planet Rexor IV transformed into a warm, affectionate man. Her brother Frank reveals that a Rexorian alien has taken over Lester's body. When authorities ask Jill to testify that this is not her husband, she refuses, choosing the kind alien over the cruel man Lester actually was.

"The Mold of Yancy" reveals that the beloved commentator John Edward Yancy on Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons, is an artificial construct manufactured by thousands of writers to produce a docile population. Investigator Peter Taverner and Leon Sipling, a disillusioned yance-man (one of the workers producing Yancy's broadcasts), dismantle the project and begin broadcasting challenging ideas to teach the population independent thinking.

In "If There Were No Benny Cemoli," occupying forces on post-nuclear Earth revive the New York Times, an autonomous underground newspaper, which publishes stories about Benny Cemoli, a political agitator whose movement appears entirely fabricated. Investigation reveals that local leaders are feeding false data into the newspaper to manufacture Cemoli as a decoy, diverting war-crimes investigators from their own guilt.

"The Days of Perky Pat" portrays post-nuclear survivors who obsessively play a game centered on Perky Pat, a teenage doll with miniature accessories recreating pre-war consumer life. When players travel to compete against a settlement using Connie Companion, a more mature doll who is married and pregnant, their home community reacts with horror and banishes them. The children, indifferent to dolls, eagerly explore the surface world.

In "Oh, To Be a Blobel!," war veteran George Munster involuntarily shifts between human and Blobel (amoeba-like alien) form. He marries Vivian Arrasmith, a Blobel spy trapped in human form. As George's business grows, he stabilizes permanently as a Blobel to operate in Blobel territory, while Vivian stabilizes permanently as a human. Each has sacrificed their natural form for the other, but in opposite directions, and the marriage collapses.

"We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" follows Douglas Quail, a clerk who visits Rekal, Incorporated to receive implanted memories of being a secret agent on Mars. The procedure reveals he actually was an agent whose memories were erased. Interplan, the planetary security agency, tries to kill him, then attempts to implant an even deeper fantasy, only to discover it is also real: As a boy, Quail made a covenant with aliens who will not invade Earth as long as he lives.

In "The Electric Ant," businessman Garson Poole learns after an accident that he is an organic robot. He discovers a punched tape inside his chest that generates all his sensory experience. Experimenting with the tape, he causes objects to vanish and hallucinations to appear. He finally cuts the tape entirely and dies; his secretary then watches her own hands become transparent, suggesting her reality depended on Poole's tape.

"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" follows three time travelers who imploded upon reentry and now exist temporarily as ghostly manifestations at their own funeral. One of the three, Addison Doug, suspects they are trapped in a closed time loop. Dr. Fein, a physicist working on the time travel project, confirms that the planned implosion would lock the loop permanently, but Addison, too exhausted to change course, proceeds anyway.

In "The Pre-Persons," postpartum abortion is legal for children under 12, who are classified as lacking souls. Ed Gantro demands to be taken to the County Facility alongside his son, claiming he has no soul because he cannot do higher math. His protest exposes the system's absurdity, but the story ends with Gantro and another father acknowledging their entrapment within a society that has normalized the destruction of the helpless.