Erica L Satifka's "Automatic" (short story, science fiction): Earth & humans are aliens' property!

This is a barely readable story about a future dystopic society. Almost every significant plot element is borrowed.

Main theme is: humans are property. You find it Eric Frank Russell's "Sinister Barrier", & in a variant form in Pierre Boulle's "The Planet of Apes". Energy beings from Ganymede are the owners.

Humans - what few of them remain - are in a kind of zoo. Walls of their pens are not physical. In fact, they behave remarkably like those used to contain whales in the ocean in Arthur Clarke's "The Deep Range". But unlike Clarke, these are not sonic barriers. They are odor-based barriers - much like stink-bombs seen in some stories by Eric Frank Russell (I can immediately recall "Next of Kin", but there is at least one more).

There is no deliverance at end. Just a pathetic submission to fate, though the hero tries an escape.

Full text of the story is available online.

Fact sheet.

"Automatic", short story, review
First published: Clarkesworld, January 2007.
Rating: C