Susan Partridge's "The Rape Of Io" (flash fiction, science fiction, free)

Story of colonization & annexation of others' territory retold - symbolically.

Jupiter's moon Io is inhabited with natives used to hot & volcanic local environment. Until earthmen decide they want to sell to natives & exploit their mines. Eventually, Io is annexed as a new state of US "to protect newly developed areas from indiscriminate exploitation".

A while later, tinkering with environment is so severe - everyone needed evacuation to earth. Now "Ionians" also live on earth - their own world uninhabitable.

Fact sheet.

First published: AntipodeanSF, #109 (June/July 2007).
Rating: B
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