Aniara

Harry Martinson

ANIARA is a book-length, epic, science fiction poem. 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 is at once, a warning of despair in the age of nuclear weapons and ecological threats, and perhaps the most complete expression of Martinson’s lifelong project to show us man’s attempts to see himself and his role in Creation. It was published in its final form on 13 October 1956.