Meaningless or Meaningful? The Multilevel Nature of the Probe/Spear
Towards the end of Year 5 – The Calculation, MR and others learn of a “rescue ship” heading in the general direction of the Aniara.
The discovery was made by The Astronomer, who was “using one of the Stardeck telescopes” to find it. The scientist adds that the anomaly “displays a clearly deviating spectral signature.”
COMMENT: My logical guess is that The Astronomer was primarily searching for either planetoids or cometary bodies that might have been both close and massive enough to swing the Aniara back around towards Mars, as Chefone had originally told the passengers about their initial rescue plan. Coming across another spaceship was an unexpected, but certainly welcome, surprise.
Isagel notes that the “linear” object is “not big enough to be a rescue ship,” for it is only about 100 meters (328 feet) long and two meters (6.56 feet) wide. In comparison, the Aniara is sixteen thousand feet (4.8 kilometers, or 3.03 miles) long and three thousand feet (914 meters) wide. For further comparison, the largest space structure built in our era, the International Space Station (ISS), is 356 feet (109 meters) across, counting its extended solar arrays.
Captain Chefone assumes it may be “a high-speed probe,” for the object is moving faster than the Aniara. The Astronomer latches on to the idea of a probe and wonders if it may contain fuel. Chefone asks Isagel if the vessel is big “enough to carry nuclear fuel rods” of a quantity sufficient “to turn the ship around?” The pilot answers yes to both of Chefone’s questions.
The crew are easily taken by this possibility, despite having no solid evidence as to the probe’s real contents. In addition, they will be unable to potentially confirm its true nature for another fourteen months, the length of time it will take for the Aniara to reach the object.
Chefone is so excited about the potentials of their discovery that he quickly addresses the entire ship about it. He tells the passengers that “help is finally on the way,” stating that “an emergency fuel probe is headed our way and will be here in about a year’s time. Then we can restart the engines and turn back home.”
As one might imagine, the ship erupts in joyful and relieved celebration, with everyone taking the commanding officer at his word about the nature of the approaching object.
As calculated, the probe arrives in the vicinity of the Aniara in Year 6 of their journey. A group of specially trained young people use grappling claws attached to long flexible cables to capture the elongated craft once the Aniara uses its artificial gravity field to slow down the probe.
The probe is wheeled into a special holding area, where another trained team begins to excitedly examine this long silver needle, which bears neither natural scars from its path through space, nor any identifying characters or symbols.
The team wastes no time attempting to learn what is inside the probe with their instruments. Initially, they can detect no radiation from the vessel’s interior, which would have been a strong indication that the probe could indeed be carrying those coveted nuclear fuel rods. Other members attempt – and fail – to drill into the mysterious ship’s metal hull.
Despite a lack of clear results, the probe examination team are soon called to report their findings to Chefone. The ship’s Chief Engineer informs the Captain that “neither the initial spectral analyses nor the goptic-STEM could determine the elemental composition” of their “guest”. Another team member chimes in that their examination instruments may not be advanced enough for the task. The Chief Engineer adds the possibility that the material composing the probe could “be turned radioactive… though we don’t know exactly how. But we’ll find a solution.”
The Intendent interjects that perhaps it was a bit premature to declare the probe is a rescue vehicle. Chefone dismisses this: He cares more about how the mere existence of the vessel has bolstered the passengers’ morale. Chefone even adds that they “should have said it was coming long before we even knew it was coming!”
The examination team continues their efforts to glean any kind of useful information from the probe. As their inability to penetrate its secrets only heightens, both figuratively and literally, tensions begin to break out among the team members, especially between the Chief Engineer and The Astronomer.
The lead engineer calls the probe “a miracle” in response to MR labeling it “a revolutionary discovery,” whereas the scientist dismisses such claims…
“That thing showing up has nothing to do with us. It’s chance. Devoid of any meaning.”
Later, Captain Chefone and The Intendent arrive to see the work on the probe for themselves. Chefone is very disappointed to find The Astronomer asleep against a support column, her disappointment and disdain for the whole operation quite evident.
Chefone tries to bolster the examination team’s morale by revealing to The Astronomer that she will receive an award for her discovery this evening, while ordering the rest of the team to “present a united front” when he informs the passengers only that “everything is going as planned” so that the residents of the Aniara do not lose their already fragile hope.
As expected, The Astronomer derides Chefone’s intentions, saying that the only thing any of them “know with certainty” is that they are all “in a sarcophagus… a coffin.” Furious at her lack of cooperation and respect towards him, Chefone grabs a taser and shoots the scientist with it, accidentally killing her in the process with the weapon’s strong electric shock.
After this unfortunate turn of events, the probe is never mentioned again. We are left to imagine the collective psychological effects upon the passengers when the true nature of the vessel – or lack thereof – is finally revealed to them.
We do see the probe one more time, not long after the Aniara’s encounter with that colorful but deadly cosmic particle storm: The probe has been abandoned in the now twilight illumination of the holding bay. Its once clean and shining metal hull has been left smeared and scarred by the multiple failed attempts to wrest free its secrets. The deck directly below the probe is littered with debris.
The “emergency fuel probe” that the people of the Aniara had once put so much hope in sits alone in the ship’s dimly lit holding bay, unopened and still mysterious. The probe bears the scars of the crew’s failed efforts to wrest its secrets.
On its surface, the probe is treated somewhat differently in Harry Martinson’s poem: For one, the author calls it The Spear, the label where the film takes its Year 6 title card from, even though the object is never once referred to as a spear in the 2018 media.
The spear/probe is also never captured and taken aboard the Aniara as occurred in the film: Following a parallel trajectory, the faster object eventually speeds away from the larger vessel, never to be seen again by the ship’s passengers or mentioned in the poem beyond its one canto.
Nevertheless, the dramatic and thematic purposes of the probe/spear are rather similar to each other. Both treatments of this mysterious craft played with the shared existential themes of these works by eliciting first curiosity and hope, then frustration, despair, and even death. In this one parallel film story chapter and poem canto, the probe/spear is a microcosm of the ideas and messages about humanity and the nature of reality in the core work Aniara.
Reproduced here for your further illumination is the complete Canto 53 The Spear:
In our eleventh year we saw a vision,
the narrowest and meagerest of visions:
a spear that traveled through the Universe.
We both had come out of the same direction
and it did not veer off, but held its course.
Its rate of speed exceeded the goldonder’s
so that the spear
moved promptly off beyond us.
But afterwards we sat in groups for hours,
speaking excitedly with one another
about the spear, about its path and origin.
But no one knew, and nobody could know.
Some tried to guess, but nobody believed.
In some sense, it was not to be believed,
lacked meaning as an object of belief.
It was simply flying through the Universe.
The Void-spear moved along its pointless course.But nonetheless this vision had
the power to alter many people’s brains:
Three went mad, one was a suicide.
And still another started up a sect,
a shrill, dry, tediously ascetic crew
from whom Aniara long had much ado.
So we were all struck by the spear, head on.
In the film, we never learn directly how the passengers react to the news of the probe being useless to them, though we can naturally guess what happens. In contrast, with the poem we are told exactly what their reactions were: Long discussions based purely on speculation, leading to insanity, suicide, and a new cult. In the end regarding both scenarios, the Aniara and its remaining compliment must move further on into the void towards their shared ultimate fates.
Although the Martinson poem calls the cosmic visitor a spear multiple times, we are never clearly told either its actual shape or composition. Martinson may have been referring to the actions of the object moving through space like a thrown spear, or an arrow shot from a bow. Of course, this mystery guest could have indeed been in a physical form resembling such a hunting tool/weapon, for the poet said the Aniara itself had a “nose-cone” at its bow (front) “pointed at the Lyre,” a design not adopted for the ship in the film version.
This strongly implies a spear-type shape common to rockets both then and now for aerodynamic reasons to more smoothly move through Earth’s atmosphere at high velocities to reach space. The poem’s repeated use of the word “spear” certainly influenced the design of the probe in the film.
Of course, there are also natural celestial bodies, such as certain planetoids, which at least roughly form the shape of spears or similar projectiles. Perhaps the most recent famous one in this category is the first known interstellar object, Oumuamua, with physical characteristics described as a shard or cigar shaped. Some astronomers have even claimed the visitor to our Sol system is more like a flat disk, which they imply could indicate it is a lightsail, should the hypothesis that Oumuamua is an artificial probe of extraterrestrial origin ever prove to be true.
Although Oumuamua was not discovered until sixty-one years after the release of the poem, there are some very interesting and even eerie parallels between the fictional spear and this real celestial object. I will go into further detail on this cosmic coincidence later in the section titled First Distant Messenger: The Void-Spear Called Oumuamua.
The deliberate ambiguity of the spear in the poem left the authors of the Generation Spaceship (GS) Project, an in-depth study of interstellar crewed generation vessels as conceived in science fiction designed for enlightening Australian school students, commenting thusly in list item 44 of their section titled Notes for Martinson’s ‘Aniara’, which is linked here:
[Next in green text is the new URL. Replace the broken link above.]
Although the author of these summaries of each canto has no more information on the subject than we do, they describe this separate “traveler in space” as “some sort of meteorite or debris.” This sounds like a pure guess probably based on two factors:
One is the Aniara’s early disastrous encounters with various natural celestial bodies which caused the space vessel to go off course in the first place. The second is the desire to stick with the premise of the poem that the Universe has no specific meaning or purpose other than it just exists, therefore the spear should be neither a product of an alien intelligence nor supernatural deities. The use of the word “debris” in this context is deliberately vague enough that it could mean the equivalent of artificial space junk just as much as a celestial rock formed from the void.
The GS Project author also notes in the same sentence that the spear came “from the same direction” as the Aniara “but sped ahead and disappeared.” This is not the type of behavior one normally sees in natural space-based objects such as meteoroids or comets, unless they are being affected by a nearby body more massive than them – and we know there are no such worlds near the Aniara, nor will there be for a very long time to come.
There is one notable exception to this general rule about the motions of natural space objects, and as you may have guessed by now, I am referring to Oumuamua. This body accelerated seemingly on its own after its closest encounter with the inner Sol system and there were no nearby system members to help it along. This is yet another reason why some scientists and others feel that Oumuamua may have been an artificial probe exploring our planetary neighborhood, or at least an ETI interstellar vessel passing through.
So What is the Darn Thing Already?
Although we, the audience, are thankfully not dependent upon the probe/spear as a means for salvation as the denizens of the Aniara are, that the object is left deliberately unknowable even when it was captured and studied by the crew in the film version, is still a source of frustration for us.
After all, by the time the spaceship encounters the probe, we have become invested in the fates of the humans onboard, especially because and in spite of the fact that we know they are ultimately doomed. Our human natures hope for their rescue despite what has been fictionally preordained. If nothing else, at the very least, we just want to know what the darn thing is!
In these next sections, you will find speculations about the background and purpose of the probe, with the focus on the craft from the 2018 film, since that Aniara crew were able to examine it up close and thus give us a degree of substance to work with that the spear from the 1956 poem lacks.
The ideas you read next are taken both from the Internet and my own creations. All of them contain varying amounts of plausibility, but none are what one might call fantastical or supernatural: They have at least some groundings in both our reality and the realm of the story. We shall assume that neither gods nor spirits were involved with the probe to further punish and torment the passengers in their existential anguish.
There is one thing that can be said for certain: The probe must have or at least had some kind of purpose; otherwise, why would it have been built? As I have illuminated multiple times in this essay, the vessel is quite large and durably constructed. It took time, resources, and undoubtedly funding to exist.
Unless some deranged wealthy individual or group decided to build a long metal cylinder and send it off into the void at high speeds for the sheer heck of it, this probe was put together for a reason, very likely a practical one at that.
Despite The Astronomer calling the presence of the probe mere chance, the fact that space is incredibly vast and this humanity does not seem to have a dominant presence beyond the inner Sol system, if one at all, the odds that the Aniara would encounter this vessel so far into deep space does leave one wondering to a degree just how much this was due to chance.
However, one must also keep in mind that, as offered in the poem and more abstractly in the film, the attributes between chance and miracle are so interwoven that neither concept may dominate over the other in this context.
An Emergency Fuel Probe
Let us start with the most prominent idea for this visitor to the Aniara, that the spacecraft was an emergency fuel probe, as Captain Chefone and other crewmembers assumed and hoped it would be: A deliberate rescue effort sent by the homeworld authorities once they had determined that the Aniara was off course.
It is safe to assume that, even if shipboard communications remained inactive as they were turned off for the Aniara’s planned three-week journey across interplanetary space from Earth to Mars, the proper authorities would have figured out something was quite wrong when the Aniara did not arrive at the space lift Valles Marineris as scheduled. Even if they somehow failed to notice this, the settlers on the Red Planet waiting for their loved ones and friends would have most certainly alerted them as soon as they realized the Aniara was overdue.
The fact that the probe was not following the Aniara on a direct interception path would be another indication of the potential validity of the vessel being a rescue craft: The authorities would be unable to contact or otherwise detect the transport spaceship; therefore, they would only be able to make an educated guess as to which way the Aniara had gone.
Their best strategy would be to aim the emergency fuel probe in the direction of where they thought and hoped the ship had taken through space. These same authorities would also propel the vessel at a high rate of speed to catch up with the already distant Aniara. Then it would be up to the Aniara crew to find the probe and take measures to capture it.
So let us assume the probe does indeed carry nuclear fuel rods for the very purpose of allowing the Aniara crew to install them in the ship’s propulsion system to get back home.
If this were the case:
- Wouldn’t the probe have markings and instructions on its exterior to indicate its contents and how to access them?
- Wouldn’t there have been a hatch or some other way to open the probe that was easily identifiable?
- Might not the senders have added a transponder or beacon to facilitate gaining the attention of the Aniara, as the crew would have had no actual idea otherwise that such a rescue craft was coming for them.
- Wouldn’t the probe be equipped with propulsion control units to match the velocity of the Aniara once the wayward transport vessel was detected by it?
In this scenario, while the senders would take precautions via physical barriers and warnings to ensure that the fuel rods did not irradiate its intended recipients, they also would have made the Aniara crew plainly aware of the vessel’s contents and how to access them. This would involve visible and easily understood messages and symbols on the probe’s hull.
However, the realities of their “guest” proved otherwise. Outside of a collection of thin seams denoting the sections of hull plating, the silvery exterior of the probe was featureless, with not a mark to be found, either intentional or otherwise. Neither was there any clear indication of a hatch nor other type of opening; if there were one, it is a certainty that the probe examination team would have gone for it right away.
As for any sort of attention-getting transmitter, either one never existed in the first place, or it had somehow ceased functioning in transit, for the probe was only detected due to the vigilance of The Astronomer at one of the Stardeck’s optical telescopes.
As the probe examination team initially reported to Chefone, they could detect no radiation coming from the object beyond what the vessel acquired by natural cosmic rays during its space voyage. Even more worrisome, the team could not identify the “elemental composition” of the probe. The leader of this team, the Chief Engineer, tries to uplift the situation by claiming that the probe hull material itself could “be turned radioactive.” However, he quickly admits that, for now, they have no idea how this could be done. To use a phrase, the Chief Engineer is grasping at straws.
In the end, even if the probe did contain the hoped-for nuclear fuel rods, the Aniara team was unable to access them, rendering the entire objective useless and pointless beyond a brief burst of optimism for the passengers. It also made little sense that the senders of such a rescue operation would have constructed the vessel to be so difficult to comprehend and access for the intended recipients.
I also pondered the following:
- Even if the probe did contain nuclear fuel rods and the examination team were able to get the vessel open to access them, would the remaining crew have the knowledge and skills to properly install the rods at this point in their unintended journey?
- Would they also be able to fix the damage to their propulsion system sustained by the initial encounter with that space debris?
I would like to assume their excitement over the probe being what they hoped it was indicates that they could indeed repair and refuel the Aniara to return home. Ultimately, however, we are never given the opportunity to find out one way or the other.
More Space Junk
In an indifferent universe where events happen due to chance, perhaps the most plausible explanation for the probe is not that it is any kind of rescue or exploratory craft at all, but rather an example of space junk of the kind that put the Aniara in its original predicament in the film version.
We know in this future realm that there is more human activity in space than in our present world, with huge space vessels plying the heavens between Earth and Mars (and Venus in the poem) as but a part of what must be a much vaster interplanetary infrastructure.
It is only inevitable that with so much activity and materials required to develop and upkeep an interplanetary human civilization, there are going to be accidents and even deliberate events where pieces of technology are going to be abandoned into the void. These artificial objects will take unintended and uncontrolled flight paths with unpredictable destinies.
It is for this and other reasons that the label of space junk for the probe is a high contender. This possibility would help to explain why a sealed vessel with no mention of a propulsion system nor any exterior markings or protrusions to delineate a purpose was found drifting at a high velocity through deep space.
COMMENT: In the film, we saw only one end of the probe with its conical structure, but we can logically assume the other end of this object is identical in design. Otherwise, it is a certainty that any kind of an engine system protruding from the unseen end would have been investigated by the probe team and removed if necessary to access the vessel’s interior contents.
We may also assume from its design that, unless it has some kind of advanced propulsion system hidden inside, that the probe was accelerated through space by some external method, be it on purpose, by accident, or a chance encounter.
If I had to make some guesses as to the reason for the existence of this “probe,” going on the space junk theory, I would say the object is one of these possibilities:
- A cargo container that somehow got loose from its main method of transportation, either by becoming accidentally detached and drifting away, or as the result of some catastrophic accident with the main ship that caused the container to be flung away into deep space. This explanation would explain why the object was so tightly sealed, to protect whatever was inside it to survive until the vessel reached its true destination.
A fuel tanker that was deliberately ejected from its main vessel once it had been depleted and its purpose served. As there has been a call in our present world to reduce and eventually eliminate space debris in Earth orbit, one would like to think that there would be a much bigger call and even laws about the safe disposal of items into the void by this future space society. However, we have seen that these descendants are very much like us, flawed creatures who have not taken care of their home planet.
- Therefore, we cannot expect them to have any better respect for interplanetary space. In addition, we already have many real examples of space missions where emptied fuel tanks and other equipment have been discarded by necessity both in space and upon alien worlds (see below).
- Actual space junk: The probe was part of some collection of materials that were no longer of use and simply dumped into deep space by a party or parties who assumed the Final Frontier is vast enough that no one will ever encounter and therefore learn of their cosmic littering. Or perhaps the future authorities of humanity have few or no rules regarding space junk, preoccupied as they are about salvaging the species in the face of an increasingly unlivable Earth. So, whoever sent off the cylindrical object did so with little or no regard – or a sense of guilt – for their actions.
If you recall my earlier discussions about the first five deep space probes to leave our Sol system dating back to the first launches in the 1970s, you should know that they did not exit alone: In all but one case, the final rocket stages of each probe followed them into the wider Milky Way galaxy beyond our planetary system (Pioneer 11’s final stage went into a wide heliocentric orbit). They took their own diverging celestial paths after ensuring that the primary cargoes were properly sent to their individual mission destinations.
These booster stages possess neither deeper meaning nor purpose, other than they were designed as an expendable method for the deep space probes to achieve their goals. Should they ever be found in interstellar space one day, either by descendants from Earth or ETI, the finders may be able to determine that they were part of some primitive propulsion system; however, they contain (so far as I know) little in either value or information beyond being historical artifacts and potential materials salvage.
If you are curious as to where these boosters and other human-made objects sent into the void beyond our Sol system are headed, check out this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System
COMMENT: I learned from the page above that the Ulysses solar probe, launched from Earth in 1990 into a high elliptical solar orbit to examine our yellow dwarf star’s often unseen polar regions, may one day encounter Jupiter and be ejected out of our planetary system. I could not find any mention of any prominent non-mission-related artifacts on the main vessel, not even the prerequisite collection of signatures often placed on these missions. Therefore, Ulysses itself will have to serve as evidence for the state of human space technology and science from the late Twentieth Century to future finders.
A Time Capsule
When the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 deep space probes were being planned for their missions to the gas giant planet Jupiter (and eventually Saturn for the latter explorer), it was realized that the masses of these largest of the Jovian worlds would fling both vessels out of the Sol system after their flybys, a major milestone in human history.
As a result, a small group of people, including astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan (1934-1996), petitioned NASA to place some kind of commemorative design on the two probes. They realized that the nearly identical Pioneers would become, in a very real sense, humanity’s first ambassadors into the rest of the vast and ancient stellar island we occupy. Therefore, it was only sensible that some kind of presentation about who made these vessels and why should be onboard in the event of their detection and recovery one day.
The eventual chosen design of what we would now call a physical METI, or Messages to Extraterrestrial Intelligence, was a relatively straightforward pictogram etched onto a thin rectangular sheet of aluminum anodized with gold.
The Pioneer Plaque, as it became known, was attached to antenna struts on each probe and faced inward, so that the very vessels themselves would provide a measure of protection for the plaques from the expected occasional collisions by small natural space debris.
To learn more about the Pioneer missions and the Pioneer Plaque, read this essay:
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2012/04/30/our-first-galactic-ambassador/
I also invite you to watch this wonderful documentary on the Pioneer Plaques:
Thankfully this was far from the end of placing information packages on deep space vehicles. The twin Voyager probes, launched just a few years after the Pioneers, took an even more elaborate present with them: A golden long-playing (LP) phonograph record containing not only images but also various sounds, multilanguage greetings, and global music samples to represent our species and our planet.
Since then, more space missions have chosen to take along similar and even more detailed collections of data about humanity. While the first information packages were primarily designed for recipients who would be considered of non-terrestrial origin, these same items would also be of great benefit to the descendants of their makers in what has become known as time capsules.
After all, space itself makes for an excellent place to preserve our history and cultures for time periods far longer than anything that could last on Earth. To give just one prominent example, the Voyager Interstellar Records are expected to survive for at least one billion years or longer in the near vacuum between the stars. This minimum measure of durability involves the side of the record facing outward towards space, which is protected by a circular cover made of aluminum and engraved with pictogram instructions on how to play the grooved disc. The side facing the Voyager probe should last much longer.
If a future humanity or another intelligence descended from Earth could find one of these historical treasure troves and reclaim from the void certain knowledge and heritages of their ancestors that could otherwise become lost over deep time, this makes their existence even more invaluable.
Earth’s singular large natural satellite is another choice location to preserve terrestrial flora and fauna, as this recent news item attests:
https://www.space.com/moon-lunar-biorepository-endangered-species
Thus, my thinking why the probe from the film version of Aniara could be a time capsule, preserving what is left of human knowledge and history for either any surviving future human generations or ETI with interstellar capabilities – or both.
Here are the reasons why the probe in Aniara would actually make a good time capsule based on its known traits and background:
Earth is in a sorry state due to humanity’s neglect and abuse. What is left of civilization seems to be just hanging on: Those who can escape their home world migrate to the nearby planets. However, these worlds lack environmentally what Earth once had, thus making survival a continually precarious situation.
It is not out of the question that our species could become extinct despite being a multiplanetary society. This would be reason enough for a group or groups with sufficient resources and skills to put together a collection of information and artifacts to safeguard in deep space, far from the vagaries of any inhabited world or even our entire Sol system.
They may do this for reasons that are rather similar to one of the reasons for the creation of the Voyager Golden Records and the Arch Mission Foundation depositing a digital library on the Moon (see here for more on that: https://www.archmission.org/): To preserve a record of us for our descendants and/or any intelligences elsewhere in the Milky Way in the event we suffer some form of major catastrophe.
As this future civilization has an advanced space infrastructure, with space lifts, huge transports, and permanent planetary settlements being just the most prominent examples, launching a time capsule into deep space should not be a major technical issue.
Granted, this probe does seem quite large for such a purpose, but as this is deemed to be part of a grander plan to preserve what is left of humanity and the rest of terrestrial life, or perhaps even somehow save us from doom, this would involve a much more voluminous container.
The probe appears to be quite durable, resisting efforts by the probe examination team to penetrate its hull: This cylindrical vessel may have been designed to withstand not only a variety of environmental rigors but even efforts by parties that the senders do not want them to have access to.
Perhaps the probe was indeed meant for an even more future humanity which the senders hoped would not only be more sophisticated but also ethically superior. This could explain why the probe could not be opened by the Aniara team and why the vessel was heading in a separate direction from their ship at a higher velocity.
There is another prominent aspect I noted about the cinematic probe design which influenced my thinking that it could be a time capsule: It bears a strong resemblance to the famous time capsules made for the New York World’s Fairs of 1939-1940 and 1964-1965!
These celebrated early efforts at preserving human culture were also known as the Westinghouse Time Capsules, for both objects were assembled by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The one put together for the earlier fair became the first such object to be given that moniker, after the phrase time bomb was rejected for its negative connotations.
Check out this image of Time Capsule 1 and tell me if it looks at all familiar…
The Westinghouse Time Capsules were part of the grand celebrations of human civilization held in New York City in 1939 and 1965. Here we see the first time capsule about to be ceremoniously placed fifty feet (15.24 meters) under Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, New York, on September 23, 1938. The capsule is scheduled to be opened five millennia hence, in the year 6939 CE. The nearly identical looking second time capsule was buried at the same depth just ten feet (3.04 meters) away from the first on October 10, 1965.
COMMENT: Unlike the probe in Aniara, the New York World’s Fair time capsule of 1939 did have a message die-stamped in yellow English text onto its outer shell for anyone who finds it, especially before its planned reveal date:
TIME CAPSULE OF CUPALOY, DEPOSITED ON THE SITE OF THE NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR ON SEPTEMBER 23, 1938, BY THE WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC & MANUFACTURING COMPANY. IF ANYONE SHOULD COME UPON THIS CAPSULE BEFORE THE YEAR A. D. 6939 LET HIM NOT WANTONLY DISTURB IT, FOR TO DO SO WOULD BE TO DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF THAT ERA OF THE LEGACY HERE LEFT THEM. CHERISH IT THEREFORE IN A SAFE PLACE.
The second Westinghouse time capsule of 1965 does not possess any exterior messages, instructions, or markings. We must therefore hope that its proximity and resemblance to Time Capsule 1 – and the seven ton (6,350 kilogram) solid granite “permanent sentinel” marker resting atop them both – will ensure its discovery and comprehension by the denizens of that future era.
I wondered if the physical form of these New York World’s Fair time capsules influenced the filmmakers of Aniara in their design of the probe. However, while this is not out of the realm of possibility, the pointed cylindrical shape is more likely due to the object being referred to as a spear in the 1956 poem.
Nevertheless, the two World’s Fair time capsules did help to push me in the direction of the probe being a deep space preservation package as one of the top contenders for the title of Purpose for the Probe’s Existence.
To learn more about Time Capsule I, this essay is a charming place to start:
https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/blog/detre-library-archives-westinghouse-time-capsule/
Here is a well-crafted essay on these time capsules and the important history of preserving ourselves for posterity in this manner:
http://www.nywf64.com/weshou15.html
I also include a link to my essay on the space-based time capsule project called The Last Pictures. Created by artist Trevor Paglen (born 1974), this project may best be described as one answer to the Voyager Golden Records, which the artist thought was too sanitized as an honest representation of the human species.
Paglen selected and placed a collection of one hundred photographs and artwork etched onto a thin wafer of silicon and encapsulated them in aluminum and gold to the EchoStar 16 (XVI) commercial communications satellite. Launched into a geostationary Earth orbit – also known as the Clarke Belt, after author Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) – by a Russian rocket in November of 2012, both the comsat and the artifact it carries should last for millions of years in space if left undisturbed.
The artist’s reasons for The Last Pictures reflect the thoughts of both the Aniara poet Martinson and the makers of the subsequent film. As Paglen said starkly to The Atlantic magazine in an interview for their November 30, 2012, edition:
This is not a project that’s supposed to explain to aliens what humans are all about and be the definitive record of human civilization. It is a collection of images that explained to somebody in the future what happened to all of the people who build the dead spaceships in orbit around the Earth. And how they killed themselves.
As I say in my essay on Paglen’s project, despite his doom-and-gloom approach which appears to declare that the human race will not survive into the future due to its wanton nature, the artist is in fact desiring just the opposite: Paglen wants his species to be around for a very long time, including long enough and advanced enough to find and open his time capsule art project.
The same can be said for the producers of the Aniara film: Despite the downbeat nature of their 2018 work, they have stated they really want their audiences to walk away from the film with a sense of hope, that it is not too late for us if we act now to change things for the better. These artists know one of the most effective ways to reach the minds and hearts of the public has always been to create controversy and give them a good, if often frightening, wake up call.
Now for my next question on this time capsule thread: If the probe were a time capsule and its makers had an actual destination for it in mind, did the Aniara interfere with that plan by capturing and keeping it?
It most certainly would be possible if this were the case, although it is hard to imagine where the senders might want their capsule to go if the goal is preserving human information for the ages.
If instead the senders shot their probe into the void in the same manner that people who put messages in bottles merely throw them into the ocean and hope someone somewhere will find them someday, then their creation being deep inside the much larger transportation ship could be a distinct advantage to its long-term preservation and eventual discovery.
Just having the Aniara around the probe as a protective shell would ensure the physical survival of the latter far longer than whatever its original length of existence was planned for. Although the probe seems quite durable on its own, it never hurts to get a ride from a vessel that is over three miles long and three thousand feet wide. As we witnessed at the end of the film, the Aniara is still intact after nearly six million years in the void and will likely remain so for perhaps several billion years, if the survival estimates on the Voyager robotic explorers are correct.
In addition, logic dictates that a larger spaceship is relatively easier to detect in interstellar space than a smaller one. We do recognize, naturally, that the Milky Way galaxy is a very, very big place and even a vessel that can carry eight thousand people is barely a blip in a realm of four hundred billion suns stretched across one hundred thousand light years.
Of course, the Aniara itself can serve as a time capsule of a certain era of humanity for whoever or whatever may be out there in that existence. Although we are never told outright that life exists beyond Earth in the universe of this film – if you do not consider the probe itself to be of alien origin, which we will discuss later – there is also nothing to insist that extraterrestrial beings of multiple stripes could not exist, either.
COMMENT: In Canto 6 of the poem, the author reveals that the Mima can detect many alien worlds with native life forms, including technological civilizations. The Artilect presents this evidence in fragmentary form to the Aniara passengers for their edification. However, the AI is unable to say exactly where these beings exist in space, nor can the humans communicate with them.
There is the visual evidence that the exoplanet the Aniara arrived at in the 5,981,407th year of its journey in the constellation of Lyra the Lyre is a living world: Green colored continents, clear blue oceans, and skies dotted with gentle clouds. No, we do not know for certain that this world has life, but as it is meant to be a contrast with the ravaged Earth when the Aniara left it all those ages ago, a living, healthy planet would make sense.
This unnamed planet would also symbolize the hope the filmmakers were aiming for. That somewhere in this galaxy there could places where humanity has either not yet despoiled them or that our descendants are present throughout the Milky Way galaxy and have learned from their ancestors’ mistakes.
Time capsules are also symbols of hope for a better future. Yes, the probe brought only temporary optimism to the passengers on the Aniara – and promptly crushed their spirits when nothing could be gleaned from it – but as been speculated earlier, the vessel may never have been meant for them to begin with. In fact, their only part in the mission of the probe, if one exists, was to become its involuntary host to keep it safe until the probe/time capsule could be found by others who were both capable and worthy of opening it.
Did the Aniara Create Thousands of Potential Biological Time Capsules?
Let us not forget that a good percentage of the eight thousand human passengers on the Aniara were also ejected into deep space upon the various forms of their deaths. We know for certain that The Astronomer was one of those interred in the void. As their bodies would become mummified in a matter of seconds to minutes when exposed to the extreme vacuum and cold of deep space, far from the warmth of Sol and certainly any other star, they could remain preserved for millions of years if not more.
A future denizen from Earth (or Mars) or an ETI plying the heavens might consider coming upon a whole human body to study to be a priceless scientific find. Certainly, few deliberately made time capsules have ever contained an entire member of our species. In that respect, the existence of the residents of the wayward Aniara would have a degree of meaning for their plight. Even the often-cynical Astronomer might have taken some comfort and pleasure in such a thought.
A Supply Ship for a Future Human Settlement
Another possibility for the purpose of the probe is that it was carrying supplies and relevant materials for a deep space settlement planned by those who for whatever reason could not or would not stay in the inner Sol system.
In the film we are given the impression that Mars is a cold and harsh place. Those who live there need to stay inside sealed habitation domes all the time, unless they must venture outside; then they are required to wear pressure suits to stay safe and alive.
COMMENT: In the 1956 poem, Martinson describes the settled worlds of Venus and Mars as they were largely conceived of in the pre-Space Age era: Harsh in their own fashions, but still livable for terrestrial organisms. The actual Venus’ lead-melting temperatures and crushing atmospheric surface pressures were only speculated at by a few astronomers of the time. The second planet’s persistent and dense global cloud cover kept Venus’ real self largely hidden from Earth until automated space probes began to arrive there.
The harshness that the poet most often referred in his epic work were the conditions created by those in charge on these planets, which were run more like gulags, similar to the forced labor camps that were once infamously controlled by the Soviet Union. The film mentions none of this, only that conditions on Mars are livable, if far from paradisical.
Assuming there are story parallels regardless of what is revealed to their audiences, it is more than likely that some groups might want to move far away from the bulk of such a humanity, even if it means living in the less inviting and more isolated regions of the outer Sol system.
Some may even consider leaving humanity’s home system altogether, taking a long and dangerous multigenerational voyage to another star and settle one or more of its circling worlds. Or perhaps they decide to live permanently on their starship, roaming through the galaxy and only stopping at other worlds for resources and distractions.
Thus, we may consider that the probe was a cargo vessel designed as part of a whole flotilla for preparing the settlements and settlers of one of these scenarios. This would explain the probe’s size, its high speed, and its strong hull designed not to be opened by just any reception committee.
COMMENT: I know Chefone had mentioned in his Jubilee speech how the Aniara had gone farther than any other vessel in human history. That may have been true, but as his ship was cut off from all communications with the rest of his species’ civilization, Chefone had no complete way of knowing this.
Chefone would have been wrong in any event if he was including robotic as well as crewed spaceships. If the Pioneers, Voyagers, and New Horizons existed in their history, then those probes were far ahead of them in deep space. In addition, had they not captured the cylindrical probe, that vessel with its faster velocity would have beaten them to the stars.
If the supply ship scenario is indeed the right one, then one must hope that the Aniara’s unintended interception of this cargo vessel did not come at the detriment of the deep space settlers. For unless by some chance the settlers in turn intercepted the Aniara and retrieved their vessel but left the larger ship alone, the transport ship still has their supplies on board… all the way to the realm of the Lyra constellation and beyond.
COMMENT: I know that another possibility for the probe in this category could be as a supply ship, not for some imaged distant human settlement, but for the Aniara itself. Someone might have thought if they could not rescue the transportation ship outright, the least that could be done is to send them fresh food and other predictable necessary resources.
However, this idea loops back to my questions regarding the idea of the probe as a vessel with nuclear fuel rods: Why didn’t the probe’s hull have any helpful markings and instructions for the Aniara crew? Where was the hatch or other access port on the probe? It makes little sense to send a resupply craft to the Aniara, only to be virtually impossible to decipher and lacking in any easy ingress to its contents.
The Probe is… a Probe
My next speculation on the probe is that it is an actual probe of the kind sent to explore a destination in space. Such a possibility would come in the following varieties:
- Perhaps it was a vessel designed to explore the outer Sol system and nearby interstellar space both for science and to find places for humanity to settle.
- An interstellar explorer. While the probe would take roughly 75,000 years to reach even the nearest star system of Alpha Centauri traveling at its velocity of 76 kilometers per second (47.2 miles per second or 169,920 miles per hour), it could explore the realm beyond the heliosphere as the twin Voyager probes have been doing for over one decade now. In this case, however, the probe would be specifically designed to study that region of interstellar space. This might even include some Kuiper Belt and stray Oort Cloud objects.
- The probe is not of human design. The vessel was sent by advanced ETI on a flyby mission through our Sol system ala Oumuamua and was heading back into the wider galaxy when the Aniara detected and intercepted it.
The pros of it being an alien artifact: The composition of the hull could not be identified by the probe examination team; no one ever mentions having seen a vessel like it before or commented that they had not seen such a craft in their experience. If it has a method of propulsion, it must be something rather sophisticated as it remains hidden and unknown to the examination team. The same may also be said for a visible lack of scientific instrumentation or other equipment.
Another important note in the pro category: The odds of a vessel being found in deep space at random are quite slim. So not only would it be likely that the probe was in the relative vicinity due to exploring our system, but it might also have maneuvered to carefully catch the attention of the Aniara. This would have been done just enough to see if the human ship could detect them and not so close as to potentially frighten them.
Being inside the Aniara would allow the probe to examine human beings and their environment up close. That the probe was not going fast enough to reach another star system in a relatively short time was also deliberate in this scenario, as the probe was designed to react in this manner if it encountered a native vessel from the target star system.
The cons of the probe being an alien artifact: Unless the probe was meant to remain at the speed it was found at because its makers have very long life spans (if these ETI are artificial, that would especially make sense), the vessel would require tens of thousands of years or more to travel between star systems. That seems like a very long time to collect and report data, regardless of how long one can live.
Another con: The probe lacked any evidence of both propulsion and instrumentation for scientific examination. I know I said just a few paragraphs ago that an advanced civilization might produce technology that would not resemble or function like ours, even compared to a few centuries into our future.
However, unless the probe closed itself up before being captured by the Aniara crew, I will assume that technology required to function in space would still need to be exposed to work properly. Again, I could be wrong, and the mysterious alloy of the probe’s hull allows these devices to work through the metal.
I also recognize the possibility that the probe could be as much a piece of space junk from an alien civilization as an automated explorer. The characteristics that could make the probe the product of an advanced society could just as easily make it one of the same kinds of space debris that I listed earlier, only it happened to drift through our star system by chance. Unless these ETI are somehow perfect and never make mistakes, they too should have their own issues from living and working in the Final Frontier. These issues would include losing parts or dumping refuse into the void.
On that latter issue, we should consider that while modern humans are at least aware of the problems and hazards with uncontrolled littering, other sentient species may not view the care of their environment in the same way (we certainly did not until just a matter of decades ago). Or they may just perceive interstellar space as so vast that tossing away a few objects from their system now and then is no issue at all, since the mathematical odds of an object the size of the probe encountering anything much bigger than cosmic dust particles to be staggeringly low and thus an acceptable risk.
Passing Along Our Genes
Perhaps if this future humanity is concerned about the fate of life on Earth, yet their options are limited by both location and technology, they might consider the option of seeding another world with terrestrial life.
This plan is known as panspermia, where life from one world is transported to and evolves on another celestial body after traveling through space. This can be done either naturally, such as a huge planetoid or comet impact flinging surface debris containing organisms (usually hardy microbes) into the void, eventually encountering another planet (scientists have positively identified meteorites on Earth which have come from the Moon, Mars, and the planetoid Vesta), or deliberately, such as described next.
The probe does have some positive design elements for such an effort: It is both large and durable, enough to carry a good sampling of genetic material and keep it safe until it can reach a viable planet in another star system. High velocities and destination times are not of the essence in this scenario, just so long as the “seeding ship” reaches its target intact and does so while its cargo is still viable.
This would also explain why the Aniara’s examination team could not open the probe: It was meant to remain sealed, protecting its precious organics and organisms until it reached its proper destination.
Some folks have speculated that the exoplanet seen at the end of the film was the target world for such seeding Earth life with. It could be: However, considering how many more exoworlds were likely known to astronomers by the era of the Aniara, there would be many options, some perhaps even better than the aforementioned world, since it appears to already have native organisms. It would be less than ethical to replace the life forms which already exist there.
One con about the above idea is that the probe was not headed in the exact same direction as the Aniara. This would mean that it was meant for another world to germinate. The two ships’ encounter would indeed have been a matter of chance then.
So, if the probe was a seed ship, the Aniara has inadvertently derailed its original mission, possibly indefinitely. However…
Speaking of panspermia, the Aniara itself might become its own seed ship one day: While the human passengers were long expired in those final scenes from the Year 5,981,407, the Lyra Constellation, existing only as piles of dust on the floor of what was once the Mima Hall, it appeared that mats and pieces of algae were still present; some were seen floating about the room, as the ship’s power and artificial gravity systems had either broken or shut down ages ago.
Were they still alive? Were they in a dormant state? When the Aniara’s mechanical systems finally met their demise, which would naturally include the lights and heat, the incredible cold of interstellar space penetrating the vessel while approaching the temperature of absolute zero (-459.67 degrees Fahrenheit, or -273.15 degrees Celsius, or 0 Kelvin), should preserve whatever is left on and of the spaceship.
Although the algae examples we saw in Year Ten were not looking well in those hanging plastic bags (green is good, brown is bad), enough of the Aniara’s only enduring main food source must have remained viable elsewhere on the ship; otherwise, there would have been no one left by the Year 24, the last time we saw any of the passengers still alive.
COMMENT: This might be the place to bring up again the possibility that the remaining passengers might have had to resort to the cannibalism of their former companions at certain points in their unintended journey to make up for dwindling algae supplies… but let’s not.
Not only might the algae still be alive, but almost certainly many of the countless invisible microbes dwelling throughout the Aniara would have survived, also in a dormant state. Certain ancient microbes have been revived and started reproducing after being discovered in a dormant state for millions of years.
A recent record for this incredible ability is 101.5 million years by some aerobic bacteria found under deep sea sediments in the Pacific Ocean. Even more recently, scientists have found two-billion-year-old microorganisms buried in some igneous rocks from South Africa that may still be alive!
The meanings for the remaining Aniara organisms are two-fold: If the transportation ship is ever found by ETI, they will have viable terrestrial life to examine along with the technological remains of a particular human era.
If by chance the Aniara impacts on a celestial body (it certainly came quite close to that one exoplanet in the Lyra constellation, one which most calculated odds say should not happen even after five million years), these Earth organisms may find a new home, assuming they survive the crash and the impacted world has the right conditions to support them.
Now let us look at some of the possibilities for the probe’s reasons to exist that are a bit more esoteric, yet still not entirely out of the range of plausibility. After all, if Aniara exists in an existential universe, then the mere presence of reality is inherently absurd to begin with, yet it still exists.
It’s Da Bomb
There was some speculation that the probe was not a probe in any of the previous senses, but instead was a weapon sent from the inner Sol system, either as an accident (a test flight having gone astray, as one example), or to conduct a mercy killing of the Aniara’s passengers, since a rescue was not seen as a viable option by those in charge.
OBSERVATION: The probe is referred to as the Spear in the poem (and just once in the film in the Year 6 title card). A spear may not be a bomb, but it is often used as a weapon, probably among the first such devices made by ancestral humans. Then again, if one sees a military rocket carrying a warhead as the sophisticated descendant of the sharp stone and wooden spear, it could also be labeled as an explosive weapon.
One may find the second concept to be an extreme and horrific response to the Aniara, since no one onboard appears to have asked for such a fate as befell them. However, the ship and passengers are part of a much larger society that is undergoing harsh measures and is therefore focused primarily on survival: An uncontrollable ship speeding out of the Sol system with thousands of people who are destined to die slow and unpleasant deaths as the vessel runs out of resources and power might be seen as a liability with few practical solutions for resolution. A quick destruction of the Aniara may be seen as preferrable to a demise that could take decades.
As we know, if the probe were indeed some kind of “mercy” device meant to finish off the Aniara in one stroke, it either never activated or had some kind of mechanical failure while attempting to implement its one purpose. The probe inspection crew did not consider their subject to be that kind of a danger, at least not openly. Otherwise, they may not have been so eager to drill into the probe’s metal hull as they attempted to do, multiple times over.
The inspiration for this idea may have come, in at least some cases on the Internet, from a television series that was itself inspired by Aniara: Titled Avenue 5, the plot of this satirical production also involves a large spaceship carrying thousands of people which becomes stranded in deep space. Incidentally, this luxury cruise ship remains in our Sol system and they are heading back to Earth, but much more slowly than originally planned.
One story late in season 2 of Avenue 5 has the Earth authorities deciding that rescuing the people aboard the cruise ship is just too complicated as well as very expensive, so they deliberately launch a missile at the Avenue 5 with the intention of destroying it and its hapless denizens.
To learn about their fates and much more on this well-done program, see my essay section on this topic titled Aniara… the Comedy Series?
The Alien Conspiracy
This idea is probably stretching things a bit, but this is the place for such concepts. This one is inspired by the Alien franchise, in particular the first film that was released in 1979. This hypothesis also goes against every assumed intention of the originating Martinson poem, but still…
Going on the theme that the probe is of extraterrestrial origin, the human authorities actually detected its presence in our Sol system long before The Astronomer did on the Aniara. Determining that it is artificial in composition but unable to deduce anything else about the probe, they want to investigate it: Not just for scientific curiosity, but also to see if the object might be either some kind of threat or if it is perhaps useful to humanity in some way, indirectly or otherwise.
However, preoccupied as they are about saving what is left of the human race, these same authorities have neither the time nor the resources to send a vessel to investigate the probe before it leaves our system forever. They do note that the refugee transportation spaceship, the Aniara, is either already on its way to Mars or will soon be leaving for that world, depending on the situation.
The authorities decide to change the destination plans for the Aniara from Mars to the probe in deep space and make the change look like an unfortunate accident by targeting some anonymous space junk precisely at the ship’s engines. This forces the Aniara off course from Mars and places them instead on a parallel deep space course with the probe.
COMMENT: In the 2018 film, it is never said how many ships like Aniara exist, while in the 1956 poem, the author declares there are thousands of these huge goldonders roaming the spaceways. He even mentions one such ship with a much larger crew compliment coming to a bad end at Jupiter in “its evil death-quilt of gelid hydrogen / which to a depth of near ten thousand miles / armors that devil-star in helium and cold.”
The result would be that the Aniara encounters the probe in roughly six years’ time: Hopefully far enough from the inner Sol system in case the alien vessel is somehow hostile or otherwise dangerous but also close enough so the Aniara can relay anything the authorities find of interest with the visitor.
What about the lack of communications on the Aniara, you may be bringing up at this point? The authorities set up the ship so it could not send a distress signal and thus foil their ulterior plans but would be able to transmit data on the probe assuming a successful encounter.
As has been said before here and elsewhere, and will be again, it seems absurd that the Aniara would have all its communications shut down for the three-week journey to Mars, especially in the event of an emergency. Even in the poem, the ship was able to receive signals from Earth, although they were still unable to be rescued.
If you are (hopefully) wondering how the authorities in this scenario could be so seemingly heartless as to sacrifice eight thousand human lives just to investigate some unknown object deep in the outer Sol system, I give the following response:
The society in this future world of Aniara is in dire straits: Earth’s ecosystem is collapsing so drastically that humanity – or at least those members of the species who can be rescued – is being evacuated to the planet Mars. As that distant globe is much too harsh for most terrestrial life to live upon unprotected, this further restricts how many people can settle there with at least some quality of life. The authorities may see an extra pragmatic “benefit” of sending the Aniara away: There will be eight thousand fewer humans to take up room and consume resources on Mars.
This may sound incredibly cold and inhuman – and it is – but that is part of what this scenario is about: Sacrificing eight thousand lives to preserve billions more who are already struggling to survive. In the film Alien, the Company felt the (admittedly much smaller) crew of the ore hauling starship Nostromo was expendable to secure the dangerous xenomorph they found when sent to investigate a reported distress signal on a remote alien moon.
COMMENT: It turns out the distress call received by the Nostromo was in fact a recorded warning from the long-deceased crew of a derelict ETI vessel resting on that exomoon about the deadly lifeforms they had on board. The Company had intercepted this message in advance, deciphered its true meaning, and decided upon using one of their own vessels that happened to be in the vicinity as the easiest, fastest, and safest (for the corporate executives at least) way to transport home their prize under the guise of a rescue mission.
For the Company, it was cheaper and easier to sacrifice a few lower-level employees who were already in the cosmic vicinity to retrieve a potentially invaluable alien life form, with their bioweapons division among others wanting such a creature. To use a phrase, it was nothing personal, just business.
As I said at the beginning of this section, the idea is admittedly a stretch and certainly not high on my list of purposes for the existence of the probe in Aniara. As we saw by the end of the film, about the only thing learned regarding the probe was that there was very little to learn about it.
At least if the probe was indeed some kind of threat, the crew was unable to release whatever was inside. Their actions subsequently ensured the probe would remain entombed in their spaceship traveling among the stars for a very long time.
If you would like to know more about the film Alien, I invite you to read my fortieth anniversary essay on this science fiction classic, which includes an examination of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, here:
A Work of Art
Here is another thought to consider on why the probe exists: It is an art sculpture.
Art can exist in many forms and in many places; this naturally includes outer space. The first art exhibit sent to the Moon was supposedly snuck aboard the Apollo 12 lunar module Intrepid in November of 1969. A small sculpture titled Fallen Astronaut was placed on the lunar surface almost two years later by the Apollo 15 crew, commemorating with an accompanying plaque a number of astronauts and cosmonauts who had perished in the first decade of the Space Age as part of exploring the Final Frontier.
Other artworks have followed these pioneers, including ones made by Trevor Paglen, the previously mentioned head of The Last Pictures project. You may learn more about these images here on his official Web site, which includes further examples of his space art:
https://paglen.studio/2020/01/21/the-last-pictures/
As modern (and future) art can be just about anything conceivable, why not a large metal cylinder, especially one from a society with a permanent space infrastructure that can build planetary level sky lifts (space elevators), transportation vessels miles long, and permanent settlements on other worlds.
Even during the most difficult times in human history, there have been brave artists who persevered to keep the humanities and the human spirit alive, often in direct response to these disruptive events. Why should artists in the era of the Aniara be any different?
So what is the artistic meaning of the probe? Why is it a seemingly impenetrable metal tube sent hurtling through the void like a spear towards an unknown destination, assuming the probe has any meaning at all?
Any good art student will tell you that art can and often does possess more than one true meaning and purpose. At the other end of this spectrum, some artists actively discourage definitive interpretations of their creations, as they can dilute the higher purpose and quality of their work. To give just two examples of this:
Stanley Kubrick preferred not to explain everything that was seen and took place in his iconic 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. As his cohort Arthur C. Clarke elaborated on this decision by the artist: “If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered.”
Another example involved the famous American painter and illustrator Winslow Homer (1836-1910). One of his better-known oil paintings is The Gulf Stream from 1899. The canvas presents us with an anonymous Black man sitting in a small fishing boat being rocked by choppy seas, its sail mast broken off and gone. Surrounding him in the foreground are a group of sharks, undoubtedly hoping for a meal. In the distance to the right churns a huge waterspout (basically a tornado over water); on the left, the faint silhouette of a three-mast sail ship on the horizon. 
Winslow Homer’s 1899 painting titled The Gulf Stream, depicting yet another kind of lost ship and crew encircled by multiple dangers and with an uncertain future. The artist preferred that viewers of this oil on canvas work come up with their own interpretations of what is occurring here – and then keep their thoughts to themselves![/caption]
COMMENT: I interrupt this essay to throw in a bit of knowledge I learned while researching what a collection of sharks is formally called: It turns out there is no one formal name for a gathering of these fish. They may be known as a shiver, frenzy, herd, gam, shoal, grind, or college!
Why was the man in this predicament? Did he get caught in a storm while fishing? Will he be eventually rescued by the ship in the background, or will he end up in the belly of a shark, sucked up into the sky by that waterspout, or resting at the bottom of the sea? Or perhaps stranded on a desert island?
Homer had little interest in answering any such questions about his work. When an admirer said that several women had inquired with concern about the fate of the character in his painting, the artist had this written response:
“I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description…. I have crossed the Gulf Stream ten times & I should know something about it. The boat & sharks are outside matters of very little consequence. They have been blown out to sea by a hurricane. You can tell these ladies that the unfortunate negro who now is so dazed & parboiled, will be rescued & returned to his friends and home, & ever after live happily.”
If the probe is an art sculpture as we speculate here, does its design and residence in deep space have any meanings? Does its designer prefer that those who come across his work make their own guesses about it? Did the artist even want it to be found, ever? How would they have felt knowing their sculpture was picked up by a desperate spaceship crew who had placed hopes upon it which were diametrically opposite to the artist’s vision?
If I may return to Paglen’s space-themed artworks, the artist once wanted to engrave upon the protective container of the wafer surrounding The Last Pictures the following messages:
I always thought the [EchoStar XVI Artifact] cover would be something deliberately surrealistic, a nonsensical image or pattern. At one point I thought the cover should be an image of a tall, goat-headed man towering over a startled child. But as the deadline for the final design got closer and closer, I started to have a dramatic change of mind. At another, I thought the cover should bear a simple inscription: “Please do not disturb me. Let me stay here so that I may witness the end of time.”
When I was doing research for my essay on Paglen’s art project, I came across another artist who designed time capsules which contained nothing except for any air that became trapped inside them during their construction. The artist would even write messages on some of his art pieces which said, in effect: This time capsule is empty, don’t bother opening it.
Perhaps this is what was inside the probe and why it had no obvious openings, for there was literally nothing to encounter but an empty shell. Were such artists trying to make a point about there being only true meaning and substance to be found outside of the material world? Or maybe they were just being pretentious jerks, playing some kind of cosmic joke on the Universe. Perhaps even a combination of the two?
Some of the Aniara crew might have found this kind of art to be ironically funny – if they were not in the serious predicament they were already deeply in when the probe came into their clutches. I have to wonder if the ambiguity of the probe, deliberate or otherwise, drove some of the passengers in the film version of our story in the same direction as the ones in the original poem: To insanity, suicide, and even forming yet another cult.
I can claim this much to my readers here: As Martinson said about the mysterious visitor, I too was “struck by the spear, head on,” just like the Aniara’s passengers and crew. As you have witnessed by exploring this section, I spent a good number of pages and time about the probe/spear, attempting to interpret its “path and origin,” just as the ship’s passengers had done with each other for many hours. However, I am happy to report that I became quite enlightened in several areas delving into the subject, thankfully avoiding the fates of some of the characters.
In the end, the probe or spear or whatever it truly was, whether you view it through the interpretations of the poem or the film, is ultimately best described in Canto 53:
But no one knew, and nobody could know.
Some tried to guess, but nobody believed.
In some sense, it was not to be believed,
lacked meaning as an object of belief.
It was simply flying through the Universe.
The Void-spear moved along its pointless course.
But nonetheless this vision had
the power to alter many people’s brains.
First Distant Messenger: The Void-Spear Called Oumuamua
As you read my essay section about the probe/spear which existentially vexed and tormented the human compliment of the Aniara, you encountered several comparative mentions of Oumuamua, the Sol system’s first confirmed (emphasis on the word confirmed) visitor from interstellar space.
Oumuamua, which is a Hawaiian native term roughly meaning “first distant messenger” (the object was detected using the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakalā Observatory in Hawaii), was discovered on October 19, 2017. Although no astronomer had ever knowingly observed an interstellar body before, it was soon clear that Oumuamua was not quite what they were expecting – especially after the second interstellar object named Borisov was detected in 2019.
That second known celestial body looked and behaved much like a comet, complete with a surrounding coma and long trailing tail of particles. Borisov even began fragmenting after its closest path through the Sol system as many comets have done, being relatively fragile and ancient ice balls susceptible to sudden sources of intense heat like our star.
In contrast, Oumuamua was first thought to be more like a planetoid due to its reddish (dark) color, a trait common to many minor outer Sol system bodies, and lack of any visible outgassing. Many artistic renderings of Oumuamua in the media solidified in the public mind that the visitor was roughly shaped like a cigar, though other examinations from Earth (when Oumuamua was discovered, it was already about 21 million miles, or 33 million kilometers, from our planet and moving away on an escape course from our Sol system), indicated a flatter disc shape.
Oumuamua also did something unexpected: It began to accelerate as it left our planetary neighborhood. Now of course there were natural possibilities for this behavior, with some astronomers wondering if Oumuamua were an outgassing comet rather than a dormant planetoid. However, the fact that this visitor was moving faster as it headed away from our yellow dwarf star led a fair fraction of folks to wonder if Oumuamua were an artificial probe of alien origin. That the object might also be shaped more like a light sail than a well-known tobacco smoking product only served to enhance this perception.
Although the epic poem Aniara was written and published decades before Oumuamua literally came upon the celestial scene, there are some interesting parallels between the spear/probe and our first interstellar interloper.
Oumuamua is most often considered to be shaped roughly like a cylinder, in part due to its detected tumbling. In the early days following its discovery, there was a call to name the object The Shard due to this projected shape.
Another interesting aspect of Oumuamua’s history is that it came from the direction of Lyra, in the general location of the star Vega, the brightest one in that constellation (Vega featured prominently in the 1985 novel and 1997 film versions of Carl Sagan’s work Contact). The Aniara’s accidental course change pointed it in the direction of Lyra, where almost six million years later, the derelict spaceship arrived in the planetary system of one of its many suns.
I do not know if the filmmakers were aware of Oumuamua and if the object and its characteristics played any role in the design of the probe. In interviews they claimed to have conducted many conversations with astronomers and other scientists on certain astronomical aspects of Aniara, in particular about portraying stellar brightness. In addition, the film project began in 2014 with a treatment, moving to the pre-production phase two years later, followed by its initial release in late 2018.
With Oumuamua receiving a great deal of publicity due to its origins and unusual features, all these events together make plausible the suggestion that the cinematic probe was influenced by this real alien visitor. However, in the absence of any solid evidence, I will stay for now with the idea that the probe’s design came to be far more by its label of “spear” in the poem.
Even if Oumuamua had no influence on the appearance of the probe/spear in Aniara, it is both ironic and important to note the parallel when it comes to how humanity responded to the visitor: Like the spear in the poem, Oumuamua flew near enough to Spaceship Earth be noticed, but not enough for a good identification of its constitution and even less about any purpose it may have had to move through our system.
Many have debated about Oumuamua’s true nature, often fiercely, to this day: Is it a natural body, like a planetoid or comet, randomly moving through space? Or is it an artificial one, such as an interstellar vessel exploring our region of the Milky Way galaxy and reporting its findings back to its makers?
As the actual appearance of our first interstellar visitor was expected by astronomers for decades but could not be known precisely, no automated deep space probe missions were available or even seriously planned when Oumuamua came careening through our star system in 2017. As a result, many initially thought we would be incapable of mounting an uncrewed mission to Oumuamua that could reach the object in a relatively short time.
However, a feasibility study was soon formed that eventually determined a probe could reach Oumuamua within 26 years, depending on certain parameters and available technologies. The name of this study is Project Lyra, after the sky location where the visitor came from.
If all goes well, perhaps we will one day see our historic visitor up close and learn if Oumuamua had sailed among us either by cosmic chance or on purpose.
Life Will Be Knocked Off Course: The Aniara Film Posters
For a film that received neither a wide release nor much attention when it premiered, Aniara certainly seems to have quite a few cinema posters advertising its presence – and in a wide range of designs and promotional catch phrases.
You have already seen the official Aniara poster at the beginning of this essay: The long rectangular transport ship, its main propulsion system shooting twin blue-gray thruster flames out its stern, moving through what could be a representation of a gravitational field against a stark black background towards a bright red sphere, symbolizing either the planet Mars or even a red dwarf star.
The poster caption reads: “A simple trip to Mars will become the journey of a lifetime.”
Talk about understating what is going to happen in the film! I got the impression the filmmakers did not want to scare off potential audiences with the truth that the ship’s residents would become permanent ones and they would not be partaking in a grand Star Trek-style journey through the galaxy. I am also guessing they assumed, and maybe even hoped, that some viewers were not familiar with the original Martinson poem – a definite possibility outside of Sweden, at least at the time of the film’s release.
A few posters did try to sell Aniara as yet another Hollywood-style space adventure. These posters dared to make the film look akin to the kind of posters associated with Star Wars and similar genre works. A number of them had a headshot of the Mimarobe dominating the piece: The Mimarobe is looking over her shoulder at the viewer, her expression hard to read, leaving us to wonder if she is trying to warn us or plead for our help. Below her is the curved representation of a planet, either Earth or perhaps the exoworld the ship will encounter in the very far future.
Other poster versions where just MR’s face is shown are taken from the scene where she is using the Mima, floating in a calm body of water just before we are made aware that the AI is in emotional and moral distress from her relentless dealings with the mentally burdened humans onboard. One particular work which bemused me took this image and made it look like the Mimarobe was in a blissful state while embedded in a shining and dramatic rendition of the Aniara with the cylindrical sectioned sky lift nearby.
Then there were the posters that followed the minimalism of the official film poster and mirrored their catch phrases to be vague about what was going to happen to the riders of the Aniara. Others cut to the chase and were blunt in letting the potential viewer know that this was not going to be another Star Wars space fantasy by any stretch of the imagination.
These latter film posters intrigued me: Not only did whoever design each poster truly get what Aniara was about, they decided to narrow their aim for the real target audience, the ones who avoid the multiplex cinemas with their mass-market fare like the plague and support instead the small art house theaters which keep alive the films which remain truly creative and intelligent. This is where Aniara was intended to be.
Now for the poster examples, which may be viewed here: http://www.impawards.com/intl/sweden/2019/aniara_gallery.html
- One poster really got me because its design and words made me wonder if the artist was trying to scare away all but the most existential masochists! We see the Aniara, with four propulsion thrusters firing, appearing to be inside a giant gray structure with triangle-shaped segments. The ship is heading towards the only panel open to outer space: On its left side is a fairly realistic looking Mars, while on the right we see a star just peeking over the edge. Its caption reads: “Between the past and the future lies only darkness.”
- The makers of Aniara should not be too surprised that their creation did not do well at the box office with publicity like this. One might rightfully ask if they were aiming for a form of horror, a genre which also has a relatively small but dedicated subset of participants. However, certain horror films can and have become popular classics of cinema. The difference is that American audiences prefer their scares to be both tangible and ones they can eventually have some control over. In Aniara, the plot “monster” is the vast, indifferent Universe, which humanity can barely comprehend, let alone control or defeat in any serious way. In essence, slasher horror sells, existential horror does not.
- Another one actually captivated me by its design, even though it had a glaring error: We see multiple versions of Mars receding into the blackness of space. On the right are multiple versions of the Aniara, also receding into the distance and, significantly, further away from the Red Planet with each iteration. The issue I have with this poster is that in all versions of the transport ship, which represent different moments in time, the vessel’s thrusters are firing on full throughout as the Aniara moves deeper into space. Not only did the spaceship’s engines fail early in the journey due to that collision with space debris as a major plot element, but the thrusters are firing in the direction the ship is moving towards – a clear violation of a key basic principle of rocket physics. I grasp that the artist was attempting to show the Aniara tumbling out of control, but… the ship had its nuclear-powered thrusters operating the whole time! Nevertheless, this is still one of my more artistically preferable posters made for this film.
- The poster caption is: “There is nowhere to go, except on.” It is just ominous enough to make you wonder what will happen to those aboard the Aniara, and just vague enough to make one hope their only choice in direction will ultimately turn out okay. It also reminds me of the phrase “the only way out is through.”
- One cinema poster turned space into an elaborate maze: Please feel free to check if this pattern is an actual maze, or just a bit of artistry to appear as such. At the bottom is an open area containing the film title connected with one clear path to the poster top, where we find its caption: “Life will be knocked off course.” Buried deep within this cosmic maze is one small red glowing dot. Is it a star? Mars? Or the “little bubble in the glass of Godhead” called Aniara?
- One poster is a rather unimaginative near copy of the poster showing the Aniara inside a giant gray structure heading towards an opening. In this case, the opening is either some kind of bright interdimensional hole in space or a white dwarf star. Perhaps it represents the passengers’ cultish desire for starlight, but I am probably giving this work more credit than it deserves.
- As for the caption: “Civilization lost. Civilization reimagined,” it is technically correct. That the denizens of the Aniara kept things relatively together, to say nothing of just staying alive for over two decades, is impressive enough. However, I am not sure that the kind of new civilized society they were forced to reimagine would be very popular or appealing to the residents of contemporary Earth. Thus, there is a hidden dark meaning to this caption that is not immediately apparent.
- My final example is a bit different from the others: While the upper half of this poster is reminiscent of the one showing the Aniara drifting past Mars (yes, the thrusters are blasting again in each iteration, but at least this time they are pointing away from the direction of travel), the bottom section shows the scene where MR is sitting on the floor of the Mima Hall after a private session, surrounded in yellow light. She is looking up at the AI’s flickering ceiling, worried at what the Artilect just showed her and what it is concurrently saying out loud.
- Regarding the caption: “Welcome on board. To the beginning of the rest of your life,” it is not only portentous, the artist even added an extra flair of the frightening by having the last five words of the second sentence start to break up as if they were being shown on the screen of a defective computer. Even the film title above the caption is starting to crumble a bit on this imagined screen – a hint of the eventual collapse of the technological and organic systems on the Aniara.
- There is another poster similar to this one, though it has MR depicted inside the Aniara geometric logo. This symbolism implies she is a perpetual prisoner of the spaceship and its fate.
For a limited distribution film like Aniara, it had quite a few different cinema posters. Here is one showing the transport vessel careening away from the planet Mars in multiple takes with an ominous phrase over the scene: “There is nowhere to go, except on.”