This week, Futures is pleased to welcome Bo Balder with her story Skin hunger. Based in Utrecht in the Netherlands, Bo has written numerous short stories, and her novel The Wan came out last year. You can find out more about her work at her website. Here, Bo reveals what inspired her latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Skin hunger

This story came from a writing prompt about Noh theatre (about which I know absolutely nothing). I went from silk sleeves and dragon masks to thinking about the old Harry Harlow experiments with rhesus macaques on maternal bonding and despair. I know, it looks like the second thing doesn’t follow from the first, but that’s how a writer brain works.

So, what would happen to an adult primate if placed in total isolation from other primates?

I mean, of course, my astronaut who crashed on an alien planet. She is kept alive by her non-primate alien hosts. She has social interactions of a sort, but can those replace social interaction with someone of her own kind? The aliens are not mammals, not warm-blooded, do not have skin like hers. Would they be able to fake it and keep her healthy? The way having a fake-fur-covered monkey mother in their cage produces rhesus babies that are slightly less disturbed than the ones who had only wire mothers.

The astronaut is an intelligent adult, and might work actively with her hosts to replace the role of the missing human group in her emotions. My question was, would she be able to fool herself and stay alive and healthy? She might end up depressed or worse, or get a peculiar case of alien Stockholm syndrome.