I read this in approximately 1974, in a hard cover compilation of science fiction short stories I got from my Dad. I don’t think he was reading science fiction at that point so it might have been at least 10 years old at that point, or maybe 20.
The basic outline of the story was this: The protagonist is a man who becomes aware that every day he lives is exactly the same and that he has no power to change it. Every day he gets up, has the same small talk with his wife, spills his coffee in the same fashion, then goes off to work where he tells the same corny joke to his secretary, gets dressed down by his boss in the same fashion etc., etc., etc. He cannot change any of this. He can think other thoughts, but nothing can be changed outwardly.
Gradually, he becomes aware of not only the repetition of his day, but of a presence just outside the boundaries of his perception. He eventually comes to the realization that he is an exhibit in an alien zoo or museum - “A Day In The Life Of a Human”.
As the horror of this realization sinks in to both the protagonist and the reader, the story ends.
The story may in fact have been titled “A Day In The Life”, but I am not sure.
So, anybody know the correct title and author?
Possibly helpful - as I remember it, another one of the stories in the compilation was “First Contact” by Murray Leinster. I have done a search of the publication history for First Contact, but none of the titles in the anthologies I checked out seem to be this story, so I could be mistaken about this part.
“The Tunnel Under the World” was my first thought, too, but it doesn’t really fit: There, every day is a little different, and most folks’ memories are wiped each day, and you can escape the wipe if you don’t sleep at home in bed, and it’s not an alien zoo; it’s a focus group for testing marketing campaigns
I read this, or a similar story, in the past couple of years. I don’t tend to read short stories except in anthologies (and not many of them nowadays) so that narrows down the likely books to a handful.
The only book that fits your timescale is Epoch, edited by Roger Elwood & Robert Silverberg, (h/c 1975) Link to contents and cover pic. Interface by A. A. Attanasio sounds like a possible candidate. I can maybe check this evening.
The story I read was set in the future, the exhibit was about to open and the female curator was keen to get all the details of the several centuries old scenario correct. She would enter the exhibit (which was like a bubble in time) and walk through it sometimes. The man at the centre of it repeated his morning routine of breakfast everyday before departing for work. At the end of the story he had discovered a way to access the future and slipped away into it, avoiding the looming apocalypse his time was about to experience…
No, it’s not in there. As I noted, the book was not new when I read it ca. 1974. It was probably at least 10 years old. And the only active character was the protagonist who was the center of the exhibit.
Yeah, I spent some time going through that list before I posted the question. That’s why I hedged about the story’s appearance with First Contact. I’ll go through the list again, though. One difficulty I found was that it can be very difficult to find any description of the story if all you have is the title.
Sounds a little bit like Philip K Dick’s “Exhibit Piece”, at least with the boss scolding him and some other elements, but in PKD’s story the protagonist is a curator of a 1950s museum and not being kept as an exhibit himself, so maybe it’s not it after all: Exhibit Piece | Philip K. Dick Review