In 1944, Mark I started working at Harvard University, a 16 meters long electronic monster that in one minute could calculate sine functions with a 24 decimal accuracy. They were called “mathematical machines” or “electron brains”. Martinson had been reached by the rumor about the huge calculators built in the United States, machines that in a few seconds handled incredible amounts of data. In Aniara, Harry Martinson delivers a sharp critique of humanity.Īniara was not just written in the shadow of the Cold War and the nuclear threat. One thing that is clear is that Martinson wants to ask the question why we have a tendency to use our knowledge and intelligence to do things that harm our environment and ourselves. In 2018 it was finally adapted for the screen and in 2019 Aniara won the “Asteroid” Prize for Best International Film at the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival.Īniara can be said to be colored by the author’s strong interest in science, but is primarily to be understood as a metaphorical, existential consideration of the fate of the individual and humanity. In 1991 it was voted as one of the 50 greatest collection of poems of all time and is part of the World Library covering the 100 greatest books of all time. It later inspired new art pieces such as the opera Aniara and was the main reason that Harry Martinson received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974. It became the biggest news in national media (which is arguably the first and only time that this has happened). When the Epic was published in 1956 it got an enthusiastic reception from both critics and public. The Aniarapeople are then forced to see the Earth explode, which causes the Goldonder’s supercomputer to terminate itself, and this becomes humanity's last connection to Earth. The passengers are forced to leave the home planet, damaged by environmental decay and nuclear war, and become refugees in cosmos when a collision with space junk throws the spacecraft off course, straight into the unknown space. In Aniara, we get to follow the 8000 people traveling towards Mars onboard the Aniara spacecraft (a type called G oldonders). I am not much of a poem reader myself, but I must admit that Aniara is simply a masterpiece. The collection itself is worth a whole article, but the section about Aniara caught med off-guard and made me go look for the original work.Īniara is something as odd as a space dystopia framed in the form of an Epic with 103 poems (or songs), written by the Swedish poet Harry Martinson. Aniara - The Space Dystopia That Generated a Nobel Prize I first read about Aniara some fifteen years ago, in a brilliant essay collection about the Universe.
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