by Lilian Garratt-Smithson
Lilian-Garratt Smithson is a writer and astrophysicist who makes her Analog debut with “One Peek,” in our [November/December issue, on sale now!] Here she discusses how the experience of homesickness in her own life and in science fiction helped inspire this latest story
My short story “One Peek” (published in the Nov/Dec 2025 edition of Analog) was inspired by my own experience of homesickness and living apart from family, with no clear end to the separation in sight. In this post COVID era, I am sure most people can relate. In my case, I had moved to Western Australia, leaving my family behind in the UK. I knew that in all likelihood I would be settling permanently in Australia, and I found myself feeling trapped in this new life that I’d made for myself, and longing to be back with family.
The time difference made things worse. I had the acute awareness that while I was sleeping, my family were living their lives. I was missing things; they were changing without me. In “One Peek,” I took this experience and amplified it to its extreme: my main protagonist is in stasis for over 6000 years, during which time her family have lived their whole lives without her.
Technology is a blessing and a curse. In my case, daily video calls made me feel as close as I could to my family. However, I suspect in many ways these calls held me back from really committing to my new life in Australia. In “One Peek,” my main protagonist signs up with “ForeverFlix,” a company that will collect recordings of her family and release them to her in real time once she awakes from stasis. In this way she can watch her family getting on with their lives as she lives hers. Like me, she finds these reminders of home are a mixed blessing.
Writing “One Peek” got me thinking about homesickness and its prevalence in our increasingly global society. I wondered about the implications should humanity make that great leap to colonising distant worlds. The World Health Organisation states there are approximately 1 billion migrants in the world today: that’s 1/8th of the world’s population[1]. It is therefore not a surprise that homesickness is a widespread phenomenon. Most of us will have experienced it to some degree. At its worst homesickness can cause significant distress, with links to both anxiety and depression[2].
Despite its tangible impacts on the long-term mental health of the sufferer, research into the psychology of homesickness has been relatively sparse[3] and often focussed on student populations (if you are interested, look into the work of Margaret Stroebe and collaborators[4]). Perhaps some of the problem lies in separating it from other psychological phenomena associated with migration, such as nostalgia, culture shock and separation anxiety.
So, what exactly is homesickness?
Homesickness is defined as the psychological distress caused when an individual is separated from their home[5]. Reading through the research into homesickness, I am struck by what a complex phenomenon it is. It can affect people of all ages and in a range of situations, from children going to boarding school, to international students, to migrants, to refugees. It can also have profound impacts on an individual, including loneliness, social withdrawal and even physical symptoms such as weight loss[6]. Margaret Stroebe and collaborators go so far as to liken homesickness to a bereavement[7], describing the yearning for one’s loved ones and home as a ‘mini-grief’.
Looking to literature for a more visceral demonstration of the pain associated with the separation from home, no one puts it better than Mervyn Peake in “Titus Alone”: “There is no calm for those who are uprooted. They are wanderers, homesick and defiant. Love itself is helpless to heal them though the dust rises with every footfall—drifts down the corridors—settles on branch or cornice —each breath an inhalation from the past so that the lungs, like a miner’s, are dark with bygone times.“
Can it be cured?
Homesickness is clearly a problem, and possibly long-term one. My next question is: can it be treated? According to the 1996 paper written by Van Tilburg and collaborators[8], prospects are bleak since ‘the possibilities of interventions appear to be limited’. In their 2015 review, Margaret Stroebe and co-authors note the lack of empirical studies on the effectiveness of homesickness treatments – at that time there were just four[9].
However, all is not lost. In a more recent paper looking at coping strategies used by developing world expatriates[10], the authors outline both positive and negative strategies. Positive strategies include training prior to departure and immersion in local culture through self-directed study.
Is everyone susceptible?
Whenever I think of homesickness, particularly with regards to science fiction, I am inevitably drawn to Michel Duval, a character in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, living on Mars and experiencing homesickness to the degree that he wants to “quit the pretense and admit that he had lost it, institutionalize himself. Go home.” He describes himself as “insane of homesickness” and states that he feels like part of himself has been torn away, “the ghost nerves still throbbing with pain.” A psychiatrist himself, Michel posits his is a personality susceptible to homesickness; he classifies himself as a “melancholic: withdrawn, out of control of his feelings, inclined to depression.” Ultimately, he is convinced that “he shouldn’t have been chosen to go [to Mars].” This got me wondering: is his assertion backed up by research? Are there some personality types that are more susceptible to homesickness, and are therefore ill-disposed to a long-term space mission? If so, I reasoned I must be one of them.
Looking through the academic literature, it would seem there are some personality traits associated with susceptibility to homesickness; introversion, neuroticism, high anxiety, low self-esteem[11]. This sounds all too similar to the ‘melancholic’ personality referred to by Michel. I can’t say as I am particularly flattered by this list of traits, however the scientist in me requires me to answer the question.
Can technology help?
Technology means we are more connected than ever before. We can be halfway across the world from one another and still speak daily. Yet, as I can attest, homesickness persists. So, does technology really help?
A recent study into the impact of technology on homesick students[12] found technology was useful in alleviating homesickness in more ways than just social contact with distant loved ones. It allowed students to experience remote places (via photos on social media and livestreams), connect with food and culture (via the streaming of music and the ability to find local sellers of home cuisines) and to regulate emotions (using online games, music and films).
However, the study also mentions the “double-edged sword” of digital technology that I experienced personally. In this case, the paper describes how technology can sometimes trigger homesickness and increase the sense of being “uninvolved” with family back home. This was certainly the case for me and my central protagonist in “One Peek.”
So, what does all this mean for future space farers?
Jan Willem Duyvendak asserts that increased mobilisation means we are living in a “homesick world”[13], driven by both nostalgia and homesickness. One can only imagine this will worsen as the mobility of the human race increases. Does this mean that when humanity travels to the stars we will inhabit a ‘homesick galaxy’?
Perhaps technology will be our saviour. Instead of the videos offered in “One Peek,” future technology might enable connection with home in a far more holistic way. This could be through the ability to recreate certain recipes, or access vast catalogues of music and movies. It could even be through virtual reality (VR) tours of meaningful places back on Earth. One could imagine ark ships equipped with whole VR worlds in their libraries, where travellers could spend days or weeks ‘living’ back on Earth.
Looking into the scientific research regarding the psychology of astronauts specifically, it has been recorded that one of the favourite pastimes of astronauts on long-duration missions is to observe Earth[14]. This fact is telling in and of itself and has even led some to hypothesise an ‘Earth-out-of-view’ phenomenon[15], whereupon the loss of a visual contact with Earth on a long space voyage may increase homesickness and cause significant psychological distress. I suppose my last question is this: can such a thing be prepared for? Or are we destined to be homesick wanderers in a very lonely galaxy?
The answer might lie in re-framing our idea of home. For an interesting discourse into the idea of home and how it ties to our identity, see Yi-fu Tuan’s 1997 paper[16] “Sense of place: what does it mean to be human.” In it, Tuan poses the question “is it possible to feel a certain fondness for the solar system itself?” Tuan claims “homelessness is the natural condition of the philosopher,” quoting Aristotle. Further, he references the ‘Meditations’ of Marcus Aurelius, who states “this piece of land is like any other; and that all things here are the same with things on the top of a mountain, or on the seashore, or wherever you choose to be” (bk 10, sec. 23). Perhaps then, there is a version of humanity in the future who have expanded their view of home to include the entire solar system, or even the whole galaxy. These future space farers would never feel homesick, because in some sense they’d always be home.
[1] World Health Organization, Refugee and Migrant Health (2025): https://www.who.int/health-topics/refugee-and-migrant-health#tab=tab_1 [Accessed 10 Oct 2025].
[2] John Archer et al. ‘Derivation of a homesickness scale’, British Journal of Psychology, 89 (1998), 205-221.
[3] Shirley Fisher, Homesickness, cognition and health (Routledge, 2016), xi.
[4] Margaret Stroebe et al. ‘Homesickness: A Systematic Review of the Scientific Literature’, Review of General Psychology 19, 2 (2015), 157–171.
[5] Christopher A. Thurber and Edward A. Walton, ‘Homesickness and adjustment in university students’, Journal of American College Health, 60, 5 (2012), 415–419.
[6] Stroebe, ‘Homesickness’, 2.
[7] Margaret Stroebe et al. ‘Is homesickness a mini-grief? Development of a dual process model’, Clinical Psychological Science 4, 2 (2016), 344–358.
[8] Van Tilburg, ‘Homesickness’, 5.
[9] Stroebe, ‘Homesickness’, 2.
[10] Dieu Hack-Polay, ‘Global South expatriates, homesickness and adjustment approaches’, Public Health Reviews 41, 1 (2020), 11.
[11] See Stroebe, ‘Homesickness’, 2, and references therein.
[12] Ryan M. Kelly et al. ‘“It’s about missing much more than the people”: how students use digital technologies to alleviate homesickness’, CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Yokohama Japan, May 8—13 2021, 1-17.
[13] Jan Duyvendak, The politics of home: Belonging and nostalgia in Europe and the United States (Springer, 2011).
[14] Phyllis J. Johnson, ‘The roles of NASA, U.S. astronauts and their families in long-duration missions’, Acta Astronautica 67, 5—6 (2010), 561–571.
[15] Nick Kanas, Humans in space: The psychological hurdles (Springer, 2015).
[16] Yi-fu Tuan, ‘Sense of place: what does it mean to be human?’, American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 18, 1 (1997), 47–58.
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