Aniara

Aniara is a book-length epic science fiction poem written by Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson from 1953 to 1956. It narrates the tragedy of a large passenger spacecraft carrying a cargo of colonists escaping destruction on Earth veering off course, leaving the Solar System and entering into an existential struggle. The style is symbolic, sweeping and innovative for its time, with creative use of neologisms to suggest the science fictional setting. It was published in its final form on 13October 1956. Aniara has been translated to around twenty languages. It was adapted into an opera in 1959 and a Swedish feature film in 2018. Aniara, published in October 1956, was met with public interest and enthusiasm from literary critics and readers. The work was praised for its lyrical storytelling, profound thought, and its portrayal of human greatness turning into humiliation and powerlessness. Aniara has influenced other works of science fiction, such as Tau Zero (1970) by Poul Anderson and A Fire Upon the Deep (1992) by Vernor Vinge. The poem has become a landmark literary work and is often used as the basis for planetarium shows in Sweden. In 2019, the extrasolar planet HD 102956 b was named after Isagel, a character from the story, and its star was named Aniara. Title In a 1997 Swedish edition of Aniara, literary scholar Johan Wrede writes that the neologism “Aniara” is Harry Martinson's own invention. Martinson came up with the word years before writing the work while reading astronomer Arthur Eddington, then giving it the meaning as the "name for the space in which the atoms moves". A preface to a 2005 Italian edition claims that the title comes from ancient Greek ἀνιαρός, "sad, despairing", plus special resonances that the sound "a" had for Martinson. Another theory makes up the word "Aniara" from the chemical symbols Ni (Nickel) and Ar (Argon) and the negative prefix "a-", and interprets this as the ship being untethered to both earth (Nickel being abundant in the Earth's core) and sky (Argon being abundant in the Earth's atmosphere). Martinson himself is said (by Tord Hall, longtime friend) to have been fond of this interpretation.