What It Means to be Human Without Earth: Existential Horror and Hope in Aniara

In the summer of 2018, I took a vacation with my family on an ocean cruise. Being on that cruise ship was very much like being in a small city – minus any vehicles larger than a forklift truck – with just about anything you might want only a stroll away, unless you asked someone to bring the desired item to your cabin. 

With just a little effort, you could even avoid and outright ignore the vast watery expanse just outside the confines of your ship with only a little effort if you so desired. Often, I was reminded of being in a large and expensive shopping mall of the kind usually found on dry land. The ship was so big, in fact, that in many instances one barely even noticed when the ocean was moving beneath and around you.

One of the many things this vacation offered was a chance to meet and talk with the cruise ship’s captain and first officers. This was an opportunity for the passengers to ask the chief crew personnel just about anything related to the ship and their roles within it.

On that day several hundred of us sat in a large auditorium and addressed our questions to the captain and his officers, who were seated on the stage before us. I cannot say I recall anything particularly noteworthy from the questions the various passengers asked the captain or his replies to them, other than I thought that most of their queries probably could have been answered with a brief Internet search. But what fun would that have been, am I right?

When my opportunity arose, I decided upon a question I had kept in my mind for a long time, not only for the officers of this cruise ship but for all similar venues and situations…

If a nuclear war suddenly happened during a cruise and the ship and its thousands of passengers were in such a place that they survived the initial attack, what would the crew do next? 

As you might imagine, the captain was definitely taken aback by my inquiry. It was quite obvious that he did not expect such a question, certainly not from a guest on a pleasure cruise where a passenger’s most difficult issue would be where to get a really good tan or what time dinner is served. It was also plain that he himself had never contemplated such a scenario, either personally or in his official line of work.

The captain simply replied that everything would be alright. However, from his facial expression, it was clear to me at least that he really did not have any idea what would happen to his ship and those under his command should a nuclear holocaust ever take place while he was at sea. Like many who grew up during the Cold War, we often just assumed a nuclear war would either never happen, or if it did, then most of us would not survive the conflict long enough to imagine what we would do after the main event. 

I was not entirely surprised that this captain would have not previously even entertained the idea, or that the cruise line company had ever addressed this contingency to their many employees. Nevertheless, I honestly held the hope that this thought and concern would now be implanted in his mind. In this manner, should the unthinkable ever come to pass, by that time this captain would have given his situation some concrete thought and put into plan some action that might save the lives of several thousand human beings while billions of others would not be so fortunate. 

Or, if not this particular fellow, then perhaps other ship captains, including vessels in addition to maritime ones, had contemplated what they would do if global thermonuclear war broke out while they were on duty and taken personal action to save their charges.

COMMENT: As mine was the last question of this Question and Answer (Q&A) session, I soon joined the audience in getting up to exit the auditorium. Behind me had sat a young woman who then turned to her companion and said regarding my comment “What a question!” While I wasn’t sure if she knew I could hear her or if she even cared that I did, her reaction emphasized that people come on cruises to push away the typical worldly cares of our modern society and have their idea of fun. Mentions of nuclear conflict and its aftermath along with a dose of existentialism are among those topics that just do not tend to generate obscene amounts of money for cruise lines.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, just a few months before my ocean voyage and my fateful question to that captain, a Swedish film premiered at the 43rd annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) titled Aniara. Based on a famous epic poem of science fiction published in 1956 by Swedish author Harry Martinson (1904-1978), who in 1974 won a joint Nobel Prize in Literature with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson (1900-1976) “for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos,” the cinematic Aniara closely follows Martinson’s poem…

In an unnamed future era, a vast spaceship transporting thousands of people from an Earth ecologically ruined by humanity to a new life on the neighboring planet Mars suffers an unprecedented accident that sends the vessel careening out of control into deep space. With no way to get back onto their original course or the hope for a rescue of any kind, the Aniara plunges into the void with its hapless passengers who must now face the fact that this ship is their permanent and final home. 

Let us just say that things do not either go or end well for the crew and passengers of the Aniara on their unplanned voyage into the very Final Frontier.

FIGURE LINK and CAPTION: The official film poster for Aniara. As you will find in detail later in this essay, it is but one of a surprising number of varied posters made to promote this film.

Welcome to Angst Science Fiction

“Good science fiction doesn’t have safe spaces.” – Mark Pontin

I became aware of Aniara shortly after its premieres in Sweden in 2018 and the United States in 2019. However, at the time I was not particularly compelled to seek it out, for Aniara felt like one of those films made by people who were neither writers nor fans of science fiction and only saw the genre as a way to express very terrestrial ideas and agendas couched in the palatable clothing of science fiction, one which many to this day do not take as seriously as they should. 

I assumed any science in this category of fiction would be merely a combination of window dressing and vaguely designed machinations for the real story the makers were trying to say. One example of this which I wrote about was on the film Interstellar from 2014, where producer Christopher Nolan (born 1970) made an attempt to be the next Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999). You may read my essay here:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2014/12/19/interstellar-herald-to-the-stars-or-a-sirens-song/

To be even more specific, I give you the following quote from writer-director Michael Kuciak reviewing Aniara for Final Draft, a company that produces software for writing screenplays:

“Script-wise, Aniara tangentially fits a sub-sub-sub-genre of sci-fi scripts that might be called the long trip spec. Most of them go a little something like this: The characters are on a ship that’s on a long mission in space. An inciting incident occurs; it’s either an accident (usually something to do with an asteroid), or the ship happens upon an anomaly (usually leading to an alien). In a large percentage of these scripts, one of the characters goes insane and gives everyone a hard time. That character is almost always either the captain, or an android/robot.”

You may read Kuciak’s full review here:

https://blog.finaldraft.com/writer-director-pellan-kagerman-on-aniara

Due to my explorations with Aniara, I was inspired to arrive with my own term for this subgenre: Angst Science Fiction, or just Angst SF. Angst is a German word describing a “feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish.” In terms of Existentialist philosophy, angst is “the dread caused by man’s awareness that his future is not determined but must be freely chosen.” These quotes are taken from The Free Dictionary here: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/angst

To fully realize what I mean by Angst SF, these definitions may be combined with what Kuciak described above, with the further addition of the trope that often the science and technology depicted in such works are secondary to what is happening with the plot. This in turn leaves these story items anywhere from a state of ambiguity to being physically implausible. They are still science fiction, but the science part is largely there to prop up, window dress, and even serve as a decoy or shield for the main themes of the story so that they have a chance to reach a wide audience. 

All this is Aniara in a nutshell, and a big reason why I was not terribly motivated to see it at first – or even later, to be honest. Not that such a film must be relentless in its scientific accurate to win me over, but more than once the cinema has given us Angst SF which could easily be a story set on contemporary Earth with baseline humanity. In other words, a typical terrestrial drama. 

These are the kinds of film which receive praise from the cinematic literati precisely because they do not focus on the science in their fiction – as if plausible, accurate science were some kind of blemish and therefore unworthy of being ranked among the so-called great works of cinema and literature. 

This is one reason why the works of French author Jules Verne (1828-1905) were often shoved into the children’s section of most libraries and bookstores: They dealt in often meticulous detail with what were then considered science fiction topics such as flights to the Moon and mechanically powered submarines, regardless of their literary worth in every other respect. As insult to injury, publishers often abridged Verne’s books, removing those very technical details on the presumed assumption that their readers had no interest in them.

I blame this attitude in no small way on what British chemist C. P. Snow (1905-1980) described in a lecture he gave in 1959 on The Two Cultures: A socially induced division between the worlds of the arts and humanities and the sciences and technology that has hobbled modern humanity’s knowledge and understanding of the wider and more rounded picture in many fields. The films which suffer from this blight use what they see as the tempting treat of science fiction (and not without reason, which I understand) to get the audience to swallow their deeper and often bitter truths about Life, the Universe, and Everything. 

Aniara certainly falls into this category in its poetic, operatic, and cinematic forms, though it must be said, to their credit, that the sugar coating employed is a rather faint ruse and anything but the sticky-sweet kind we have been saturated with since the days of Star Wars and the subsequent Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). 

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.

– Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), “Prometheus”, The Roving Mind (1983), Chapter 25.

The Existential Horror, the Existential Horror

In February of 2024, I saw that Aniara was available on my primary digital media streaming device. Having a bit of free time on my hands at that moment, I decided to finally give this product of Sweden a try, via my large and no longer quite as astonishing plasma television screen.

One hour and 46 minutes later, I was done. 

I did not want to see this film again, ever. Not because Aniara was either badly made or poorly acted – neither was the case – but because it was a deliberate attempt by the filmmakers to slap me in the face about how poorly modern humanity is treating its home planet, then to knock me down completely by saying if we don’t take care of Earth, we are doomed, and everyone will die after experiencing pointless, empty lives as a form of punishment for our collective neglect and abuse. End of the story, so far as they were concerned.

To top it off, the characters were placed in their permanent peril through a series of incidents that probably would not have happened had the filmmakers been as concerned about scientific and technical plausibility as they were about getting their points through and across. 

For one final kick for good measure, these messages were wrapped in an existential crisis that permeated the ship’s occupants and went right through the screen to the audience. In addition to the fact that Aniara had a very limited release in American theaters upon arriving in this country, it is little wonder that the film only made forty thousand dollars during its initial box office run in the United States.

COMMENT: Yes, the 2015 film The Martian had to resort to an implausible reason to strand Ares III astronaut Mark Watney alone on Mars – a dust storm blown by winds far more powerful than what can actually occur on the Red Planet due to its very thin atmosphere – but otherwise the plot managed to blend technically realistic scenarios with drama, humor, and above all, an optimistic attitude and can-do spirit that served to keep Watney alive and eventually return him to Earth. All I am saying here is, you can have your cake and eat it, too – if you are willing to make the effort.

Despite my experiences with and feelings towards Aniara, or perhaps because of them, the film compelled me to see what others had thought about this work. Surely, I could not have been the only one who reacted as I had to this film.

What I discovered initially surprised me: Many of the more thoughtful reviews I came across were quite positive. Of course, the nihilistic state of life aboard the runaway spaceship was acknowledged and in certain cases caused the reviewer to respond as I initially had. However, others had praised Aniara for rising above the usual science fiction fray and daring to have a story with no standard happy ending, only a large lesson.

Were these reviewers right about Aniara and my feelings were misplaced? Or to be more generous, was I too heavily influenced by my emotional reactions to the melancholy, sometimes shocking, at certain times brutal, and the overall hopelessness of what I had seen to truly grasp its more enlightened and enlightening aspects during my first experience with the film? 

Certainly, this latter notion can be the case, as I am not one to respond impartially to the plight of others, even fictional characters when I get caught up in a well-crafted story with well-developed characters. At the same time, it bothered me that I was emotionally ensnared by Aniara’s sadness and sense of ultimate failure, feelings which I know the makers of this work had every intention of eliciting from their audience. After all, what film does not try to create a mood for its participants, no matter the genre.

When I began delving into this network of positive reviews and essays on Aniara, comprehending on a deeper level why certain folks liked this film and the epic poem it arose from despite the darkness, my path to enlightenment served several purposes: On a basic level, it felt good to know my initial reactions were not misplaced, that some people were pushed away by the slow, unrelieved suffering they witnessed. Others also had to read Martinson’s poem as well for the full picture of Aniara to find the deeper meanings on top of all the ennui, fear, anxiety, depression, decay, and death. 

The filmmakers knew they could not simply present their message as a series of dry facts or soak it in the standard Hollywood treatment, for either method would have slipped out of their viewers’ minds as soon as they left the theater or turned off their home screens. 

I now see why they chose this epic poem, for only a shock to our nervous systems would accomplish this goal in a world now swamped in a constant deluge of entertainment and information media with varying levels of quality. As a result of this state of affairs, most of what we receive ends up being filtered out by our brains for one reason or another.

Aniara could not be about another space vessel traveling among the stars with a crew of likeable, even lovable characters having a series of cosmic adventures to be wrapped up with a happy bow at the end of two hours. There are already far too many of those kinds of science fiction plots with such inhabitants. Aniara had to be meant for mature thinking adults, for the contents of its messages could only be appreciated and resolved by such beings. 

The assumption was that these presumed adult viewers have already been through much in life on a personal level, along with the possession of a certain degree of education, and at the same time are aware of the way our planet has been treated by human civilization with its potential consequences. They could come to terms with a film containing characters who try desperately to cling to whatever purposes and happiness they can either find or create while trapped in a world that has but one ultimate destination: Oblivion.

I soon found myself becoming fascinated with Aniara and the history behind it all, which goes back to the first half of the Twentieth Century. In my journey with this work, I have had several epiphanies and paths of thought which I will gladly share with you throughout this essay. Among them will be discussions on how Aniara ties in to studying one of our earliest and continually captivating concepts for humanity to directly explore and settle the Milky Way galaxy.

“Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket.” 

– British-American poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

Warning!

Usually at this juncture in my essays on science fiction cinema, I alert my readers that I will be describing the story of the film in detail, so one should expect major plot spoilers along the way. I also recommend that if one has not seen this particular film before, they should probably watch it first before continuing to read further on.

This time, however, I am compelled to add a very strong warning before you attempt to view Aniara. As you may have surmised by now, this is not one of the typical fare fans tend to seek out and enjoy in this genre. Neither is it a horror film in the mainstream sense of the term.

Aniara does have its share of displayed sex, violence, and dark themes: The film is most definitely not for children or even impressionable, sensitive teens and some adults. However, what may really be concerning and emotionally harmful to any and all viewers are the film’s existential elements. 

We watch a spaceship full of people who think they are taking a rather brief cruise to a new and hopefully better home, escaping a world that their society has wrecked beyond repair. Instead, they end up becoming trapped in this vessel due to an incident ironically caused by the wanton and random neglect of their own species. 

Once the passengers finally realize their ultimate fates, panic and rising desperation quickly manifest themselves amongst these souls. Their circumstances bring about anxiety, depression, hedonistic behaviors, cults, oppression, violence, murder, and suicide, all of which only increase as it becomes clear they are never going to Mars or ever leaving this ship. One cynical character bluntly calls their permanent home a “sarcophagus… a coffin.”

There are cinematic and intellectual reasons for all this, not the least of which is the makers of Aniara attempted to follow the founding poem as closely as possible, as requested by the author’s family, with some updated touches. Nevertheless, I feel a sense of duty and concern to warn anyone reading this that they and those folks they might consider wanting to tell about this film that Aniara has more than its share of triggering elements which could cause a certain level of emotional harm to someone not quite prepared for what is in store. 

I was certainly bothered by this film for a while, until I began my examination of its fuller self and meanings, in ways I am not normally disrupted by most science fiction films. However, as I said before, Aniara is not a typical member of the genre but rather a relatively new and now prominent member of Angst Science Fiction. 

The odds are more than good that you will survive the experience – it is fiction, after all, and our world has not yet reached this stage of desperation, if ever it will – and hopefully even become enlightened by it, but I could not ask you in good conscience to just dive in without due awareness of the film’s potentially troubling key traits.

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

― T.H. White (1906-1964), The Once and Future King (1958)

Mars and Beyond the Infinite

I am dividing up my in-depth retelling of Aniara into the same kind of title card sectioning as conducted throughout the film. We and the crew of the spaceship may be headed for oblivion, but at least we will have some signposts to know just where we are in time if not always literal space; a small sense of order in a reality that is far more titanic and more ancient than humanity and even its home world.

Here are the card titles of what may also be called the story chapters of Aniara. The film displays them in both Swedish and English. Their meanings will become clearer as we travel through the plot:

• 1:a timmen – Hour 1; Rutinresan – Routine Voyage
• 3:e Veckan – Week 3; Irrfarden – Without a Map
• 3:e året – Year 3; Yurgen – The Yurg
• 4:e året – Year 4; Kulterna – The Cults
• 5:e året – Year 5; Kalkylen – The Calculation
• 6:e året – Year 6; Spjutet – The Spear
• 10:e året – Year 10; Jubiléet – The Jubilee
• 24:e året – Year 24; Sarkofagen – The Sarcophagus
• 5,981,407:e året – Year 5,981,407; Lyra Bild – Lyra Constellation

What Does Aniara Mean? An Initial Interpretation

The meaning of the word Aniara in the context of the film and even the epic poem is not straightforward. Harry Martinson himself said that “the name Aniara doesn’t signify anything. I made it up. I wanted to have a beautiful name.”

With all due respect to Mr. Martinson, I must question the complete validity of his statement. He may indeed have merely wanted a beautiful name for his epic work, but as I have found, it also possesses a number of meanings both real and speculative, not to mention even contradictory. Of course, that may have been the author’s intention, to present a word without explanation and leave it up to the interpretation of the reader and viewer. 

My leading interpretation for the name’s meaning is the feminine denominative of the ancient Greek adjective aniaros, which means sorrowful as well as sad and despairing. This makes for a great deal of sense in terms of the plot narrative. It is also an example of Angst Science Fiction, for a vessel is – usually – not given such a negative and downer name.

There are enough potential meanings to Aniara that I have given them their own essay section. My only other note here on the name for now is that, perhaps being an American English speaker, it was a struggle for a while not to automatically use the word Ariana instead. 

Speaking of Aniara…

A Mote of Dust Suspended in a Sunbeam

As the creative credits open our film against an utterly black background representing space, a small white dot appears, moving slowly across the upper half of the screen from right to left like a floating speck of dust in sunlight. 

This glowing dot is very likely the vessel Aniara: Right from the start, the film puts into perspective just how truly small the ship – and the species that built and occupies it – are in the much grander scheme of things.

The main title appears; the moving dot reaches the upper center of the screen between the letters I and the second A of Aniara.

As more credits roll, the background darkness fades, replaced by a sea of churning water coming into view. This is quickly followed by hurricane winds, then driven flood waters wrecking a community. A building is toppled over. Then huge dark tornadoes rip across the landscape, followed by massive fires consuming an entire forest.

This is the state of our planet Earth in an unnamed future era. It has been ravaged by uncontrolled climate conditions aggravated by human society. Our home world has become increasingly unlivable. Humanity and countless other native species are threatened with extinction.

Our vantage point suddenly switches to low Earth orbit. A cylindrical form floats upward on a very long black cable while a massive hurricane churns far below, bursts of lightning flickering along its edges.

As the cylinder comes closer to our vantage point, we see it is a large, sectioned space lift – also known as a space elevator – a collection of passenger and cargo “cars” connected and stacked atop one another in a wheel-shaped pattern. The space lift is moving along the cable towards what appears to be a huge rectangular platform floating above it. This platform is a rather dark shape except for a smattering of external lights and windows glowing from its interior.

We are abruptly brought inside one representative car of the space lift, where we find a group of people who we will learn are basically the latest refugees escaping from their ruined world to start new and hopefully better lives in another one. 

The camera moves around this gathered sampling of humanity: A young girl praying. An older woman with burn scars on her face. A mother talking to her fussy child.

A different young woman with red hair and wearing a black blouse is sleeping, her head leaning up against a small rectangular window with stars showing beyond its protective glass. This is our main character, who goes only by Mimarobe or MR. Her real name is never given, only her job title. MR will be our focal point, our Everyperson, if you will.

COMMENT: I wondered why MR’s real name was never mentioned and that neither she nor anyone else had any outward issue with this. In the poem Canto 34, the author Martinson has this explanation, which involves the positions of those who work on the Aniara:

Myself, I have no name. I am of Mima / and so am called no more than mimarobe. / The oath I swore is called the goldondeva. / The name I’d borne was cancelled at “last rounds” and had to be forgotten ever after.

MR awakens to the parent-child commotion, looks about the car, then stares out her small window.  

“Want to wave goodbye to Earth?” the mother asks her child. The response is a simple “no.”

“You’ll regret it if you don’t,” the mother counters. “Want to say bye-bye to Earth?”

“Bye-bye, Earth. Bye-bye…”

MR looks up through her private window. Our view follows her gaze, which changes to the lift approaching a large rectangular platform studded with white and yellow lights on its bottom.

As the lift slows next to this platform, a Public Address (PA) announcement cuts through the quiet chatter of the passengers.

“We will now begin docking with Aniara,” the PA address begins. “Please remain with your belts fastened until the gangway is ready and the seat-belt sign is switched off. Please note that checked containers will not be available during the voyage.

“We hope you’ve had a pleasant ascent and wish you a happy, new life on Mars.”

This platform is in fact the spaceship Aniara, a massive vessel that is a literal city in space. One critique of the film refers to the ship’s appearance as “a nightmarish integrated circuit.” Aniara does not resemble the current and past real crewed rocketships we are accustomed to, or the silvery needle-like vessels as imagined in the pre-Space Age days. Its size may be impressive, but Aniara is otherwise a purely utilitarian vehicle, meant only for hauling masses of people and cargo from Earth to Mars and back. Aniara is no vessel of exploration.

COMMENT: While no specific ship dimensions are given outright in the film, the producers did follow the parameters given in Martinson’s poem Canto 8: The Aniara is said to be sixteen thousand feet (4.8 kilometers or 3.03 miles) long and a width of three thousand feet, or 914 meters. The poem also declares the ship carries…

…in its vaults eight thousand souls,

that it was built for large-scale emigration,

that this is only one ship out of thousands

which all, of like dimensions, like design,

ply the placid routes to Mars and Venus…

In the film version, the Aniara is only traveling to the planet Mars. No mention is made of any other similar vessels moving people to Mars, Venus, or anywhere else in the Sol system or beyond. 

When Martinson created his work, to many astronomers the planet Venus was still a large question mark in terms of how habitable it was due to that world’s thick, obscuring clouds which envelop the entire alien globe. Nevertheless, the poet chose to go with the “swampy” and “marshy” concept of Venus, which was obviously friendlier to terrestrial life than the roasting desert theory. The hot, dry desert concept of Venus was later proven to be the correct one from the findings returned by the first automated probes to explore the planet in the 1960s.

While Mars was better known to planetary science than Venus in the 1950s and was seriously considered a place harboring hardy plant life and perhaps some simple and equally sturdy animals, there was little illusion by then that the Red Planet was another Earth. Martinson often referred to Mars as a “tundra-cold” world. 

The other item of note is that while this future humanity of the film is running away from an environmentally mismanaged Earth, the poem has our species fleeing from a planet wrecked by over thirty nuclear wars! Eventually one final nuclear attack turns our world into a completely lifeless ball of radioactive debris. 

The space lift stops at Aniara’s side. Multiple gangway tunnels simultaneously emerge from the spaceship to connect to the levels of circular transport cars for the passengers to disembark upon.

COMMENT: Here is the video clip of the space lift approaching and docking with the Aniara:

MR immediately gets up from her seat, moving over other still sitting passengers as she informs them that she works here as a way of explanation for her rushed behavior.

As MR leaves the space lift and walks onto the Aniara, she encounters two crew personnel greeting her – along with someone inside a tall, anthropomorphic duck costume, complete with a pink vest and oversized yellow bow tie. Undoubtedly this faux bird is meant to entertain, distract, and bring a level of comfort to the arriving refugee children – and perhaps even some of the boarding teenagers and adults.

Having likely encountered them multiple times before in her job, MR pretty much ignores this welcoming committee and heads down an escalator towards a nearby elevator. Even with this initial glance of Aniara’s interior, one already gets the feel of being inside a huge terrestrial shopping mall rather than an interplanetary space vessel.

COMMENT: The filmmakers utilized actual Swedish and Danish malls, ferries, and hotels for their sets, in part to save on their limited filming budget. For the real locations and details on this form of “movie magic”, see the section Further References and Resources (with Titled Subsections), in particular the subsection Concepts of Aniara Blog: Behind-the-Scenes and Production Designs, at the end of this essay.

Upon entering the elevator, MR encounters two ship crew officers. One of them is a rather severe looking woman holding a cup of coffee. Her name is Isagel, one of the Aniara’s pilots. MR seems uncomfortable around her. While not unfriendly to MR, Isagel’s reactions to her appear mild, almost indifferent. She acknowledges the presence of MR, but not in an overly expressive way.

COMMENT: In the 1999 English translation of the poem by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg, they claim that “the name [Isagel] suggests Isis, the Egyptian goddess associated with the cosmic order.” This could be so; after all, she is part of the crew maintaining order aboard the Aniara, and a pilot navigating the ship through space to another world, to be specific. 

To me, at first glance, Isagel sounds like Isabel, a form of the name Elizabeth. Isabel comes from the Spanish and Hebrew language meaning either “pledged to God” or “devoted to God”. Why Martinson himself gave this character that name I cannot find.

While in the elevator, we notice that even in this future, the music played in this confined space is still stereotypically bland and unremarkable, perhaps so not to incidentally disturb its passengers in some way. 

When the camera aims on the elevator level indicator, we see names and icons for various sections of the ship. They include the Nova Foodcourt, Ceci shopping, a bar, a bowling alley, Hytt (Hyatt?) room numbers 2801 – 2899, and between them a Stardeck with a symbol of a refractor telescope next to the label.

This panel indicates when the elevator stops at the Forebody level. Note: A gym and spa are listed just above Forebody. This is where MR is getting off.

Our scene shifts abruptly from the confines of the elevator to a wide exterior shot of the entire spaceship from overhead, the European continent looming far below. Unlike our views of planet Earth from near space with its vivid blues and whites, the landscape of Eurasia is largely brown in color, with little green to be seen. 

Even what we can observe of the surrounding Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea are far darker brown than the currently familiar blue waters. A hurricane swirls off the coast of the United Kingdom. One gets the feeling that such drastic and once primarily tropical zone weather is no longer uncommon for Europe.

The “nightmarish integrated circuit” that is the Aniara hovers over the Eurasian continent made desolate by humanity as a massive hurricane menaces Europe from the northwest.

We move in from the distant view of the black rectangular slab that is Aniara to sail just over its hull towards several levels of the ship illuminating their windows. Presumably we are approaching the aforementioned Forebody section.

MR jogs up to a door along a wood paneled wall. Above her and the door are a singular row of identical electronic viewscreens displaying pleasant images of nature. In the middle of each screen in large white stylized block letters is the word MIMA. The word keeps folding over itself.

MR enters a code into a small black keypad just above the thick wooden door handle. An expected metallic click replies to the proper code: MR pulls the door open and rushes inside. We are given another glimpse of the word MIMA flipping again on two representative screens, in case one missed where we are the first time.

Inside a large and tall white paneled room devoid of any furniture or wall fixtures, MR drops her tan luggage bag at the foot of some long narrow stairs and runs up its steps.

At the top of the stairs, MR presses a button. The wide ceiling transforms from a soft sky-blue palette into a bright sea of churning orange and yellow abstract patterns. An electronic sound emanates from above, resembling gentle ocean waves.

MR sits in a chair overlooking this large and seemingly empty room. Tired emotionally and physically, RM lays her head down on the balcony edge and breaths heavily.

The screen becomes filled with crystal clear water flowing over some rocks. We find MR no longer aboard an artificial ship in black space but instead walking along the bank of a beautiful stream. There is lush green foliage all around her. Moss covers several large boulders nearby. A horizontal tree log adds to her scenery. In the background there are two active waterfalls.

The Mimarobe is immersed in her memory of a beautiful place on Earth which may no longer exist, courtesy of the shipboard Artilect called the Mima.

MR steps around carefully, appreciatively. She does not seem tired or stressed now.

MR approaches a wild raspberry bush. She plucks one of the small red fruits from the plant and puts it in her mouth. She sees a second berry and does the same, looking it over in her fingers before inserting the berry. MR chews the raspberry thoughtfully, then turns to look at the waterfalls.

We and MR are brought back into the MIMA room. MR lifts her head up from the countertop, appearing tired again. Overhead the ceiling patterns continue to glow and flow their orange and yellow patterns.

MR and MIMA disappear, replaced by the Aniara name and logo above it on a white background, as upbeat instrumental music begins to play. The rotating logo depicts an outline drawing of a cube and a triangle superimposed on each other.

This is an introduction video broadcast for the passengers throughout the ship. Our host is the Aniara’s resident Astronomer, Roberta Twelander. Wearing a light blue crew uniform accentuated with a dark blue tie and bearing the Aniara logo on her shoulder, the older woman walks steadily towards the mobile camera filming her.

COMMENT: Although she is only referred to as The Astronomer in the film credits as well as the 1956 epic poem, a woman’s name appears in the lower right corner of this welcoming video, so one must assume this is her actual character’s name. The Astronomer is played by Anneli Martini (born 1948), a veteran Swedish actress who has been in over thirty films since 1977.

The name Twelander does appear once in the poem, in Canto 62, but this moniker belongs to someone who is teaching the ship’s children how to construct a Goldonder, the name Martinson gave to the type of space vessel that Aniara is. This Twelander is described as “calm and cool.”

“Welcome aboard Aniara,” she begins with a smile. “A state-of-the-art transport ship which will take you all the way from Earth to Mars in three weeks.”

As she speaks about this aspect of their ship, a graphic displays, showing a noticeably brown-colored Earth globe to the left of The Astronomer with another smaller sphere representing an orangish Mars to her right. An animated line of red dots arcs over The Astronomer from Earth to the Red Planet: A very simplified version of the intended flight path for the Aniara.

As ship staff are shown preparing a large bar/restaurant for their new guests, The Astronomer continues her verbal walkthrough of the Aniara…

“The air we breathe on the craft is completely natural. It derives from our extensive algae farms. And our 21 restaurants…”

The Astronomer adds to the list of luxuries aboard the ship, which “feature a spa, a tanning salon….  You’ll want for nothing.”

COMMENT: This is the clip from the film where The Astronomer introduces the Aniara’s numerous amenities to its passengers. The video also shares the next scene to be described here. 

As The Astronomer continues her spiel, we see passengers being directed by staff to their rooms to settle in.

The vessel’s PA system cuts in, telling the passengers to “please lie down with your seat belts fastened until the gravitational load has adapted to our cruising speed.” A member of the crew is shown securing an older woman to her bed.

“All communication systems will be down until we’ve reached our destination,” the PA adds, without any explanation as to why the Aniara would be completely out of contact with the rest of human civilization during its three-week voyage.

Encountering The Astronomer

MR enters her quarters, surprised to find The Astronomer lying in the bottom bunk, where she is writing in a journal with an ink pen on bound paper. 

“So, you’re in my room now?” MR observes to The Astronomer after their saying an opening “Hi” to each other.

“Yes, here I am,” The Astronomer replies. “Served my whole life. Still have to bunk. That’s how they treat astronomers here.”

MR half-humorously comments that she left “people behind on Earth instead so I can have my own closet.”

“I don’t care if they melt into the tarmac,” The Astronomer shoots back.

MR declares that she was only “kidding” in her remark about leaving the home planet, but The Astronomer assures her that she, on the other hand, was not.

“I’ve never been very impressed by people,” adds The Astronomer.

MR replies that she is sorry to hear about The Astronomer’s take on fellow human beings, as she stares at the scientist’s collection of astronomy and physics texts occupying much of their mutual cabin shelves.

COMMENT: Interesting that in this technological future where natural resources are undoubtedly scarce and computers with their electronic storage and internetworking systems should be abundant, that books printed on paper still exist and are actively utilized – at least by The Astronomer. I also note that the titles I could read on the book spines date from the late Twentieth Century. Then again, this might be The Astronomer’s personal preference for reading material both in subject and format, regardless of how most information may otherwise be stored and read in their time.

“You sure seem to enjoy books,” MR observes with an underlying message that her new roommate appears to be dominating their cabin with both her possessions and her presence.

“I took the top shelves,” The Astronomer explains as she stuffs her journal behind her pillow. She then shifts topic gears and asks MR if the woman snores. MR at first says she does not, but then revises her answer with “a little, maybe.”

“Then I’ll have to change cabins on the way back,” responds The Astronomer.

As the two involuntary roommates strap themselves in to their beds, the Aniara’s artificial gravity system begins its load adjustment to adapt to the vessel’s cruising speed. Not secured well enough, The Astronomer’s thin journal floats out from behind her pillow and away from her bed. Unable to grab her private book while being strapped down, Ms. Twelander swears in frustration.

MR can only roll her eyes and quietly shake her head in response to The Astronomer’s outburst. This work shift is going to be a long one, MR is undoubtedly thinking.

1:a timmen (Hour 1) – Rutinresan (Routine Voyage)

The massive bulk of the Aniara heads towards us, the viewers, as she leaves behind an almost unrecognizable Earth as viewed from space. The rumbling ship mimics a big city or industrial park at night. 

The Aniara moves away from a dreary-looking Earth towards what both her crew and passengers assume will be a three-week space cruise to the planet Mars, their new home world.

As we watch the Aniara smoothly glide under us, the ship’s captain speaks to the thousands of passengers via the intraship communication system.

“This is your Captain Chefone speaking,” he announces. “We are now cruising at a speed of 64 kilometers per second and are expected to dock with the space lift Valles Marineris in 23 days, 7 hours, and 25 minutes.”

FUN FACTS: 64 kilometers per second (kps) is equivalent to 39.7 miles per second (mps), or almost 143,164 miles per hour (mph). This means the Aniara passed the orbit of the Moon in less than two hours – a distance which took the Apollo missions three days to reach. Valles Marineris is undoubtedly named after the location where the receiving space lift hovers over Mars, one of the largest known canyon systems in the Sol system. Revealed by the American space probe Mariner 9 in 1972, Valles Marineris would stretch across the continental United States if placed there on Earth.

We move back into the Aniara, where a store is shown displaying various pressure suits meant for living and working on the Red Planet. Behind these outfits is a large mural of a Mars settlement containing bland gray domed structures strewn across a rocky reddish landscape. A woman with shoulder-length dark hair named Libidel reluctantly buys one of the pressure suits, which she critiques as “not exactly designer stuff” and asks the store clerk to wrap it up for her.

There is a quick scene of kids playing in an entertainment center. I note this because there are some rather young children bowling with those large and heavy ten-pin bowling balls. One of the little boys, grabbing a rolling lemon-yellow sphere returning to the ball rack, gets his hand pinched by the moving ball and he starts crying in pain. 

I am of the impression this was not something staged but rather a real and unfortunate accident during filming. Was this presumably unplanned event left in the film as a symbol and prelude of the emotional and physical pain the passengers and crew will be enduring for the rest of their lives aboard the Aniara?

We are brought back to the entrance of the Mima room. MR is standing near the door with a small group of passengers attending her. MR tries to get more folks strolling by to join them in the Mima Hall, but the ones she addresses politely decline her invitation.

Realizing how fruitless it will be to acquire more visitors at this point, MR introduces herself and her job “as a Mimarobe here on Aniara.”

MR starts to give a “quick back story” about Mima, which “was originally created for the first settlers on Mars…” before two teenage girls in her group visibly lose interest in her budding little history lesson and walk off. 

MR recovers from this snub and its clear nonverbal message, reducing her introduction to the Mima to just one sentence:

“Simply put, she transports us back to Earth as it once was.”

MR invites everyone inside, holding open the entrance door for the group as they stroll inside. This task completed, MR closes the heavy wooden door behind her.

We are transported outside Aniara again, this time at some distance from the vessel, where a loose cloud of metal debris drifts through space past us. Among these discarded pieces are a metal screw and a small cylinder with an unknown function. One may assume we are not being shown these random pieces tumbling through the void for nothing.

COMMENT: This is what we would call space junk: Leftover parts from previous space missions, set in their courses through either accidents or other careless actions of those working in the Sol system. 

For decades now, Earth has had many thousands of such artificial objects circling our planet, threatening to damage or even destroy whoever and whatever may be operating up there: Anything that can stay in orbit has to be moving at a velocity of at least eighteen thousand miles per hour, or almost twenty-nine thousand kilometer per hour. At this speed, even impacts from paint flecks can be disastrous.

A future society with a permanent presence in the Sol system would undoubtedly generate even more space refuse due to an increase in vehicle traffic and various industrial projects. With MR’s society focused on trying to leave a dying and dangerous Earth, cleaning up the Final Frontier is probably not high on their lists of important duties to perform.

MR walks into the Mima room leading her small gathering. The crowd stares up at Mima glowing a bright orange and yellow on the ceiling above.

MR asks one woman with reddish facial scars to help her demonstrate how to access Mima. The Mimarobe produces a small yellow device resembling a cell phone designed to scan a person’s thoughts. MR asks the woman for her permission to look at what is in her mind and holds the device just behind her head. 

We are shown a placid pond filled with green reed water plants just below the surface. Black-winged dragonflies with reflective blue bodies flit about in this vision, with one such insect landing on a singular thin reed just above the water. 

MR turns off her little device and puts it away, then tells the woman to look up. 

“What you see is personal to you,” MR explains to her charges. “Since Mima has access to your memory banks.”

COMMENT: A hand-held device that pulls memories directly from a person’s mind and displays them for anyone to see? Sidestepping the technical question of how this rather small machine can separate memories from other thoughts in a human brain, the potential for the invasion and violation of a person’s privacy and other abuses should be alarming. The film never pursues these intriguing avenues, however.

The Mimarobe begins to describe how to use the Mima when suddenly there is a violent jolt and the floor tilts. The entire crowd is flung downwards, sliding involuntarily across the floor.

We Lay with Nose-cone Pointed at the Lyre

From space we see the Aniara turning at a sharp angle towards us. Sunlight glints off its black hull as the sound of some power mechanism losing its energy reaches our ears.

On the ship’s bridge, the crew is attempting to deal with an emergency situation. The officers work to stabilize the Aniara while all around them warning sirens blare and the status indicator for the Saba nuclear reactor which powers their massive vessel blinks red in distress. An officer reports that they have “got protruding sections by the Saba reactor,” likely revealing that something has struck this critical area and damaged it.

Captain Chefone orders an officer named Hondo to “initiate course return,” which the officer does not respond to until Chefone calls his name again, sharply this time.

COMMENT: In the 1956 poem, specifically Canto 3, the Aniara must avoid an asteroid (a more accurate term would be planetoid) called Hondo (which the poet says the ship has discovered at the same instant) and subsequently encounters “great swarms of leonids,” which apparently strike the vessel and “led to [the] breakdown of the Saba Unit.” However, from this canto quoted below, the Aniara may well have been struck by a different “ring of rocks.” In any event, it is apparent that the incident itself and not the source of dislocation is what matters more.

Hondo is one of the names for the main island of Japan where Hiroshima sits – the first city to be destroyed by an atomic bomb designed to end that nation’s involvement in World War 2. The Leonids are one of the more prominent meteor showers, so named because the meteors appear to radiate from the northern hemisphere constellation of Leo the Lion as Earth moves through the trail of debris left by Comet Tempel–Tuttle as it circles Sol. The Leonids are famous for having a huge outburst of meteors every 33 years.

Here is all of Canto 3. Compare it to what the 2018 film did and did not borrow from the poem. Also note how certain celestial designations made it into the film, yet with no further clarity than in Martinson’s work.

A swerve to clear the Hondo asteroid 

(herewith proclaimed discovered) took us off our course.

We came too wide of Mars, slipped from its orbit

and, to avoid the field of Jupiter,

we settled on the curve of I.C.E.-twelve

within the Magdalena Field’s external ring;

but, meeting with great swarms of leonids,

we headed farther off to Yko-nine.

In the Field of Sari-sixteen we gave up attempts

to turn around.

As we held our curve, a ring of rocks

echographically gave back a torus-image

whose empty center we sought eagerly.

We found it too, but at such dizzying angles

that the passage to it led to breakdown

of the Saba Unit, which was hit hard by space-stones

and great swarms of space-pebbles.

When the ring had moved off and space had cleared,

turning back was possible no longer.

We lay with nose-cone pointed at the Lyre

nor could any change in course be thought of.

We lay in dead space, but to our good fortune

the gravitation-works were still in service,

and heating elements as well as lighting

were not disabled.

Of other apparatus some was damaged

and other parts less damaged could be mended.

Our ill-fate now is irretrievable.

But the mima will hold (we hope) until the end.

The camera focuses on a bridge screen indicating the Aniara’s flight path through space as a wavy white line moving along a blue gridded background. The ship is represented as a yellow triangle slowly drifting off its planned direction towards three concentric circles in the lower right corner of the screen labeled Kupier [Kuiper] Belt, the region of deep space containing countless ancient icy bodies ranging from the solar orbit of Neptune to far beyond.

COMMENT 1 of 2: In the lower left corner of this bridge screen is a single circle labeled Origin [Tellus]. This is Earth, of course. What I find interesting is that the filmmakers called our home planet by its ancient Latin name, Tellus. This name comes from Tellus Mater, the ancient Roman Earth mother goddess. 

Initially, I thought that Tellus was also the Swedish name for Earth. However, it turns out their word for the third planet from Sol is Jorden.

COMMENT 2 of 2: Of all the potential places in our planetary system to display, why would this navigation screen show the Kuiper Belt? That region of space is way beyond where the Aniara is headed. Even the Main Planetoid Belt between the solar orbits of Mars and Jupiter would be too far for this vessel’s intended destination. 

Was this a form of foreshadowing by the filmmakers? Has this future humanity made it that far out from Earth? If so, do other vessels service those distant settlements? Such questions are left unanswered. 

We return to the Mima Hall. A woman asks the Mimarobe what is going on. MR attempts to distract the group by having them continue with the process for using Mima. She has the men and women lie with their stomachs aimed down on floor, then placing their faces into small white circular pillows with breathing holes spaced along their sides. MR tells her group they can lie there for as long as they want.

Once everyone is entranced by their memories generated from the Mima, MR gets up and runs out of the hall into the adjacent concourse.

Here MR encounters the wider chaos created by whatever caused the Aniara to abruptly shift: A baby is screaming in panic. Some people are being helped off the floor, while others are already up but staggering about.

“What happened?” MR asks a colleague near her.

“No idea,” is his only response.

Then the power goes out. The concourse becomes dark except for emergency lights. MR and her coworker look about in concern.

On the bridge, we hear an officer say that the nuclear fuel has been ejected away from the ship into space!

COMMENT: The Aniara crew just added more artificial space debris to the local Cosmos, and this time it is heavily irradiated refuse to boot! And they thought a single screw was a problem! I know space is vast and chock full of natural cosmic radiation, but other than what its loss will mean for the Aniara, the free roaming nuclear fuel will not be considered again in any other respect.

Captain Chefone asks for the “status on the backup system,” and he is told that the “techs are working on it.” Chefone then asks Isagel what their present course is.

“Field SARI-16, angle YKO-9. Lyra constellation ahead,” replies the pilot.

Back on the concourse, MR’s colleague is asking the nearby passengers to “just keep still! Everything is under control.” He repeats his command. MR peers about anxiously.

The main lights snap back on. The coworker looks at MR to inform her that “all is in order,” then just walks away. 

MR stays long enough to assist a few passengers around her, including one man who is messily covered in food.

We’ve Had an Incident

A short time later, a large display screen shows a serious-looking Captain Chefone with his arms folded and the following message next to his visage:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FROM CAPTAIN CHEFONE

A ship-wide announcement comes over the intercom system:

“We will soon be going live with Captain Chefone from the Light Year Hall,” it begins. “The broadcast will also be delivered across all audiovisual devices.”

People begin pouring into the spacious Light Year Hall auditorium. Others find places throughout the ship’s concourse to settle in before other viewing screens.

Chefone is standing behind the main stage of the auditorium. He seems clearly uncomfortable to address the entire ship with the news he has. Chefone does a sound check on the small microphone attached to his uniform by tapping it several times.

The Captain and a tall bald man called by his job title, The Intendent, walk out onto the stage. 

“Good evening, dear passengers,” Chefone says. “We’ve had an incident, and I understand your concern. Let me get straight to it. Something highly unlikely has occurred.”

As Chefone is speaking, MR enters the Light Year Hall and stands in the back, listening along with everyone else.

“We had to make an emergency maneuver to avoid a collision with space debris,” explains Chefone, assisted by a computer graphic on the large screen behind him showing the Aniara veering away from its original course to Mars.

“It saved our lives. But our reactor took a hit, as a screw penetrated the hull.”

As Chefone speaks, a new graphic appears showing an interior diagram of the ship’s propulsion section. A rather basic yellow graphic depicting an explosion covers a portion of the diagram where the impact took place.

“The power station caught fire and we had no choice but to eject all our fuel.”

Chefone and the cinematic background music become more somber.

“This unfortunately means we can no longer steer Aniara. We’ve been knocked off-course and cannot turn back.”

His audience looks at each other in mounting concern. 

“But… you can remain calm,” Chefone offers. “Once we pass a celestial body, we’ll use its gravity to get back on course.”

A new graphic appears on the screen behind the Captain. This one displays a nondescript spherical object with a small moon nearby that a smaller rectangle representing the Aniara uses to fling itself about and change its direction.

“I can’t tell you exactly when this will happen,” Chefone continues. But you should prepare for the fact that it could be a couple… Definitely no more than two years.”

This time the passengers gasp in shock. Many hands go to many mouths. Some people begin to cry.

The woman we saw earlier purchasing that pressure suit for Mars, Libidel, speaks up.

“Hey. Excuse me? It was supposed to take three weeks.” 

One of the crewmen in the audience hall approaches her.

“I’m afraid things have changed,” he responds. “Listen to the Captain now.”

“That’s not possible,” Libidel fires back. “I told my son I’d be there for his fourth birthday!”

“You will of course be duly compensated upon arrival,” the Captain continues. “But for now, we need to cooperate and be there for one another.”

“Remember we have much to be grateful for,” Chefone tells his passengers. “No one was hurt, and our voyage is still ahead of us. In that sense, we’ve been lucky.” 

The man finishes his speech with a brave smile.

Our view changes to the glowing orange yellow flows of the Mima. This calming visage is shattered by the screams from Libidel, who is being escorted into the Mima Hall by MR and Chebeba, the scarred woman we met earlier who helped MR demonstrate the Mima.

Kneeling on the Mima Hall floor, MR instructs Libidel to “just let the images come to you” as she looks up at the ceiling, already becoming mesmerized. 

Just as the Mimarobe has the distressed mother calmed and focused, Chebeba is also taken with what she is seeing from the Mima and falls to the floor. MR rushes to a corner of the room to retrieve one of the circular pillows and places Chebeba’s face into it. 

COMMENT: I learned that these unusual head rests are Thai massage pillows. It makes sense to have these particular pillows, as the clients of the Mima need to lay face down on the floor and their design allows the attending passengers space to breathe in comfort. 

Above them all, the Mima churns like a watery lava pool. MR stares up at Mima, seeming to be reveling in her own pleasant memories.

The film brings us next to the impressive stone Reception desk of the Aniara, where a lone staff member is being besieged by lines of passengers who are demanding answers from the poor woman. 

“I’ll let you know as soon as I have more information,” she offers, surrounded by frustrated and frantic people. “In the meantime, help yourself to a night snack from the management. Have some snacks, courtesy of the Captain.”

Some of the passengers are subsequently seen walking away while munching on long submarine sandwiches, momentarily placated.

We are cinematically transported to a small and very early Twenty-First Century-looking conference room where various ship department officers are meeting with Captain Chefone to report on the situations of their respective stations.

“How soon can we increase algae production to cover our food needs?” Chefone asks the officer to his immediate right at the discussion table.

“Immediately,” the man replies. “It won’t burden the oxygen system.”

Chefone then inquires of the Restaurant Manager, an older gentleman wearing a green sweater and sporting a rather large mustache, how long the restaurants will last.

“It depends, but in two months we’ll start noticing a difference.”

“Including the algae?” Chefone adds.

“We can survive on it. But it’s not exactly tasty.”

Viewing from a Distance

In another part of the vast spaceship, we find MR laying in her bed under her purple covers and feeling quite restless. Her cabin mate is in a similar pose in the bunk bed below her.

“How are you?” asks The Astronomer to MR.

“Good.”

“Nice repression,” observes The Astronomer.

“I don’t really have anyone waiting for me…” MR expands on her initial answer to the other woman.

“No family?”

“No. None still living.”

“You’ve got Mima,” notes The Astronomer.

MR asks The Astronomer if anyone is waiting for her.

“I’m separated,” the older woman replies. “After 31 years, in total.”

MR makes an exclamation of surprise at this news, then apologizes for her reaction.

“I’m sorry! It just sounds so… long.”

“Of course, 31 years is a long time in a human life span,” The Astronomer opines.

“How come it ended?”

“I don’t know,” is The Astronomer’s answer. “It’s so hard to tell when you’re involved…. You usually need to view it from a distance. Guess I’ll be able to do that now. So, check back with me in a few years’ time.”

Both women smile at The Astronomer’s little inside joke. 

3:e Veckan (Week 3) – Irrfarden (Without a Map)

In the third week of the Aniara’s new voyage – when her eight thousand passengers should have arrived at Mars by now – some passengers are still entertaining themselves in the ship’s arcade to occupy their time and distract themselves, including an older woman riding on a virtual motorcycle game.

In this entertainment center, a man walks up to the occupant of the duck suit to ask him where the Mima Hall is.

His inquiry takes us to that very place, where we find MR surrounded by a ring of people. All are bathed in the yellow glow of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) high above them. 

“Once you’re inside the images, you won’t feel your body,” MR explains about the Mima, which answers to us why Chebeba just fell to the floor earlier. “That’s why you need to lie on one of these.” She gestures with one of the special pillows in her right hand, waving it about. “Then you can spend hours in here.”

Another group of passengers suddenly appear in the Mima Hall doorway. 

“Hey! You can’t come in here!” MR shouts at these intruders. The Mimarobe apologies to her legitimate group for this interruption and runs up to the people crowding at the door.

“No shoes in here!” demands MR. “You need to take the introduction first.”

MR pushes the uninvited passengers out of the room until they have taken the proper steps to enter the Mima Hall.  MR then runs back to the group circle and starts helping people put their faces into their pillows.

Later on, we find MR standing at an empty information desk. MR looks around for anyone in charge of this station. On an upper level, MR sees Isagel and a male officer walking by behind a long glass partition; they do not notice MR below.

The bald officer known as The Intendent suddenly appears. MR quickly intercepts his walking path. 

“I need to speak to the Captain,” MR requests of the tall officer.

“He’s busy,” The Intendent responds, clearly distracted. “What’s it about?”

“This past week I’ve had more visitors than I usually get for an entire trip,” MR explains. “I need help.”

“I’ll pass it on,” he replies.

“They need training too.”

“I’ll write that down,” The Intendent answers and he begins writing something on a paper attached to a clipboard.

MR tries to ask The Intendent how long it will be before the ship can be turned around, but before she can finish her question, the officer has already moved along out of our sight.

MR stares after the man before she herself walks away, disappointed.

That evening, MR goes for a swim in the Aniara’s spacious swimming pool. She is unexpectedly joined by Isagel, who is wearing a black one-piece swimsuit like hers. MR surreptitiously watches the pilot swimming underwater. 

Isagel catches the Mimarobe observing her and suddenly stands up in her pool lane. She gives MR a brief smile as if to say she doesn’t mind before going back to swimming. MR swims off on her own path, noticeably happy at Isagel’s attention to her, mild as it appears on the surface.

Nowhere to Turn

We are taken to one of our first views of the Aniara now in deep space. It is faintly illuminated by our ever-distancing yellow star, whose own light is barely able to penetrate the ancient blackness around it. The low-rumbling ship appears to be moving at a very slow pace.

In her cabin, MR is in her cramped bathroom, staring at the mirror while brushing her teeth. The Astronomer is in her own bed, writing in her journal. 

Finished with her dental hygiene, MR gets into her bed before asking her roommate a question.

“Can I ask you something, as an astronomer?”

“Ask away,” invites The Astronomer.

“Do you have any idea which celestial body we’ll be able to turn at?” referring to Chefone’s earlier declaration that they will use the mass of a natural object in space as a gravity assist to redirect the Aniara back towards the planet Mars.

MR’s query is greeted with silence. Thinking she may have simply not heard the answer, MR asks The Astronomer if she said something.

“I didn’t say anything,” confirms The Astronomer. “Because I’m not… anticipating anything.”

“Okay. I thought you knew about that stuff.”

“I do know about that stuff. The answer is ‘none’.”

MR repeats The Astronomer’s last word and when the woman reiterates it, MR sits up in bed in disbelief before moving over the edge of her bed to look at The Astronomer beneath.  

“There’s no celestial body to turn at,” confirms The Astronomer yet again.

“You’re kidding?” says MR, in shock.

“GM-54 is the closest we’ll get to. But we’ll never reach its mass. The pilots must have figured that out too.” The Astronomer adds that she does not “get what they’re doing on the captain’s bridge.”

MR lays back down in bed, concerned and thinking.

Without much else to say on the matter, The Astronomer asks MR to turn off the cabin lights so she can sleep. 

Their room goes dark. In but a brief moment of time, MR hears The Astronomer start to snore.

COMMENT: Regarding The Astronomer mentioning a celestial object designated GM-54, there is a real worldlet with that name, 2014 GM54. It is a Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) about the size of the American state of Connecticut, orbiting Sol in almost the same time period as Pluto, once every 248 years. It would be a long reach, but this might be one explanation for the presence of the Kuiper Belt icon on the ship’s navigation screen.

However, according to this entry in Wikipedia, they claim the film is referring to planetoid 54 Alexandra:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/54_Alexandra

Alexandra (minor planet designation: 54 Alexandra) is a carbonaceous asteroid from the intermediate asteroid belt, approximately 155 kilometers [96.31 miles] in diameter. It was discovered by German-French astronomer Hermann Goldschmidt [1802-1866] on 10 September 1858, and named after the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt [1769-1859]; it was the first asteroid to be named after a male.

In Popular Culture

In the Swedish film Aniara (2018) it is mentioned that 54 Alexandra is the closest celestial body which the off-course and out-of-control spacecraft will approach before it leaves the Solar System.

I am not certain where Wikipedia came up with this claim, as they provide no references. I could not find it elsewhere and there is no mention of this planetoid in the 1956 poem. 54 Alexandra might make sense as a slingshot target, for it is much closer than 2014 GM54 in the Kuiper Belt. However, all this speculation seems moot since The Astronomer says the Aniara will not get close enough to any celestial objects to utilize their mass to get back on course to their original destination. 

COMMENT: Ironically, Aniara won the “Asteroid” Prize in 2019 for the Best International Film award at that year’s Trieste Science+Fiction Festival.

Unable to sleep at such disturbing news, MR gets out of her bed, dresses quickly, and exits her cabin. She walks down her corridor past a mother holding her baby, who is swaddled in a white blanket. It is apparent that the mother is trying to get her infant to sleep.

We are given a brief perspective of the Aniara exterior again, closer this time. In the background glows the center of the Milky Way galaxy, a huge bulge of billions of suns over 26,000 light years from our Sol system.

MR finds herself in a corridor where there are large windows facing the outside of the ship. She stops and looks at the band of the Milky Way galaxy in the immense distance. Breathing shakily, MR takes a swig from an unlabeled bottle of alcohol she acquired somewhere along her current journey.

As she continues to stare at the stars, MR begins to gasp for breath: She is having a panic attack at the existential realization of what The Astronomer said, exacerbated at what she is witnessing in the void.

MR runs from the indifferent stars all the way to the Mima Hall, still grasping her bottle. The Mimarobe quickly heads upstairs to activate the Mima, which turns from flowing blue to churning orange-yellow-red along the ceiling of the hall.

Running back down to the main hall, MR slips off her shoes, then lays down on the floor in a fetal position, cradling her bottle and still gasping for air.

We see what MR is experiencing through the Mima: A deep, lush, and green temperate zone forest. MR walks barefoot through these calming woods on dry, dead leaves. Nearby birds are chirping. She looks around at the beautiful tree canopy, seeming content.

The film does another one of its dramatic scene shifts: This time we go from a peaceful forest to staring down a large metal vat full of a whitish liquid resembling oatmeal being automatically stirred. A pan out shows kitchen workers in green aprons and darker brimless caps preparing algae for mass consumption.

We May as Well Live Here

Another scene shift: We follow MR moving quickly up a concourse where a crowd of people are gathered around a closed door between stores, guarded by a single officer.

MR proclaims to the crowd that she works here as she cuts through them and pushes open the large green metal door, bringing her into a two-toned access corridor. MR finds an older balding man wearing a horizontally striped shirt under a green sweatshirt sitting on the floor against one wall. He is attended by two ship officers on either side of him: One is The Intendent and the other is a younger man with a dark beard.

“It’s some kind of panic attack or psychosis,” explains one officer to MR about this situation she finds herself in.

“Hi,” says MR to the distraught man. “I work as a Mimarobe. I’d like you to come with me.”

The man on the floor responds to MR in Spanish. The bearded officer translates his words for MR.

“He’s asking if you’re a devil?”

MR merely stares at the translator, who continues his task.

“A woman at the Planetarium told him; she’s an astronomer and she knows…. She says we won’t be able to turn around.”

“No, that’s not true,” MR lies to the man via the translator. “Tell him… Tell him to come with me, I promise he’ll feel better.”

Still panicking, the Spanish man reaches out and grabs MR by her shirt collar, hitting the Mimarobe on the left side of her face. Suddenly realizing what he has just done, the man quickly pulls away his hand and stares at MR in fear.

Clearly not happy with this physical assault, MR looks at the Spanish man and says nothing for a moment. Then she leans in closer to him.

“What do you think life on Mars is?” asks MR without expecting an actual answer from the target of her ire. “Some kind of paradise? It’s not. It’s cold. Nothing grows except for a small frost-proof tulip, this small.”

MR aggressively gestures with her index and thumb at the Spanish man to show him the general puny size of this specialized tulip species – and perhaps the Spanish man and every other human being in comparison to the rest of the Cosmos as well. 

COMMENT 1 of 2: Since it is highly unlikely that terrestrial tulips would be found as a native plant on Mars, the alternate answer is that this humanity is trying to terraform the Red Planet to one day make it livable for Earthly flora and fauna. It will probably be a long process that will not bear literal fruit for generations. Emigrating humans will have to remain in artificial environments for now, be it in open space structures or in dwellings on other worlds. 

Even more difficult to overcome will be the fact that Mars’ mass is ten times less than Earth’s, making the smaller planet’s gravitational pull only 38 percent that of Earth. The only mass-comparable world in our Sol system would be Venus, but that place has its own special environmental issues which would make conventional settling quite difficult. 

COMMENT 2 of 2: It is interesting that tulips were chosen as the flower mentioned by MR in the film. The makers undoubtedly took this directly from the Martinson poem in Canto 40, where the author mentions “black frigitulips grow[ing], tempered to the planetary freeze.”

Were both the poet and the filmmakers trying to inject a symbol of hope into their work? I say this because tulips are symbols of new beginnings and rebirth, which is what the humans settling Mars are trying to do with their lives on that world. As for other relevant comparisons regarding this flower, I quote the following from this page:

https://foliagefriend.com/tulip-flower-meaning/

In spirituality, tulips are considered to symbolize new beginnings and rebirth. The flower’s ability to come back every year, stronger and better than before, is also one reason why it is thought to represent new life. Tulips are also believed to symbolize love, purity, innocence, forgiveness, and trust, making them a popular choice for religious and spiritual ceremonies.

Furthermore, tulips are often associated with enlightenment and spiritual awakening. The flower’s vibrant colors and delicate petals are said to represent the beauty and fragility of life, reminding us to appreciate every moment and live in the present. Tulips are also believed to have a calming effect on the mind and body, making them a popular choice for meditation and relaxation practices.

“Want me to translate?” asks the bearded officer of MR. Frustrated and feeling it would be pointless in any case, MR has only one response for the man.

“Just say we may as well live here.” 

Sometime later, we see the Spanish man at a food court getting a meal. He is looking a bit sheepish at his recent panic behavior. 

The man seems to be recovering from his bout of hysteria when he looks over at some tall black windows adjacent to the food court. Seeing through them the same stars that MR had earlier, he starts to panic again, yelling loudly in his native language and gesticulating wildly. 

Two nearby officers rush in and restrain the Spanish man before escorting him away. The court area crowd stare after him. One has to wonder if they worry when they will become the next existential “victims” of the hot yet cold stars.

The terrified man is brought to the one place on the ship that might calm him down: The Mima. As the two officers stand nearby at the ready, the Mimarobe coaxes the Spanish man to lie down among many other passengers already utilizing the Mima and place his face into a pillow. 

That task completed, MR notices the two officers are staring up at the shimmering patterns of the Mima on the ceiling. As happened with Chebeba, the man and woman become transfixed with the memories being released by the AI and collapse onto the floor. This time, MR is able to rouse the pair to get them to leave the Mima Hall and go back to their duties before they inadvertently become her latest clients.

COMMENT: I know the spaceship Aniara was on an interplanetary journey meant only to last three weeks; this is faster than a typical sailing vessel trek across the Atlantic Ocean back in the pre-steam and diesel-powered ship days. However, I remain both surprised and doubtful that there would be neither trained therapists nor spiritual advisors/clerics on board. Modern nautical cruise ships have both chaplains of multiple faiths and chapels to take care of their passengers’ spiritual needs, and most such cruises last but approximately one week and never leave Earth.

This is especially surprising since these thousands of passengers are fleeing a dying Earth and many of them bear both visible physical scars and hidden emotional ones from the plight of their home planet. One might also assume that the authorities would want to at least offer some mental health assistance to these emigrants if for no other reason than to reduce the number of potential safety and social issues which could arise when moving to an entirely new world with limited resources and room.

The Mimarobe seems to be the closest person to fulfill these more traditional caregiving roles, yet even she and the Mima were mostly ignored at first as just another form of entertainment and distraction offered on the Aniara. That there is an obvious lack of official spirituality and similar forms of comfort and help in this traveling artificial society speaks volumes about this future humanity.  

Our Own Little Planet

Later on, MR finally gains an audience with Captain Chefone in his office about the situation with the Mima. MR comes straight to the point.

“I really need some help. This is untenable,” begins MR. “I need to train them as well. Teach them to resist the images to maintain focus in the room.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Chefone responds. “How many do you need?”

“How many…?” MR says, a bit taken aback that her Captain has agreed to her request so readily.

“To help you out,” he clarifies.

“Right… five? Six.”

Happy with Chefone’s offer, MR then lets something slip out.

“People will freak out when they learn we’ll never be able to…”

MR pauses when she sees the look on Chefone’s face. 

“Never be able to do what?” he asks with a stony expression. “Who told you that?”

The Intendent, who has been in the same room with Chefone and MR quietly listening, turns away. MR becomes awkward, looking away and saying nothing.

“Right, I’ll get you at least eight people,” Chefone finally answers. MR quietly thanks him.

Chefone gets up from his chair and walks over to a shelf along an office wall. He picks up two stubby solid cylinders which resemble bongos. He places them on the floor near MR.

Putting one hand each on the cylinders, Chefone does a handstand as part of his exercise routine. Then he carries on with his conversation.

“Once the passengers get used to eating algae, we’ll go public with the situation,” Chefone informs the Mimarobe. “I mean, the fact is…”

“The fact is what?” she asks him.

“We’ve built our own little planet.”

3:e Aret (Year 3) – Yurgen (The Yurg)

In the third year of their three-week voyage, we watch the Aniara’s dark form passing us from right to left. Once again, if we didn’t know better, one might assume we were flying past a generic modern city at night. As the vessel rumbles before us, the faint sound of music starts to rise up. 

We find ourselves descending into a dance area: Strobe lights sweep about as an almost hypnotic techno beat reaches its peak volume, controlled by an actual disc jockey, or DJ, off to one side. 

On the floor are groups of people of various ages performing an almost choreographed dance routine to the music. It is reminiscent of the kind of formal ballroom dancing once done in the early Nineteenth Century where lines of men and ladies moved in specific patterns, but with techno music.

COMMENT: Here is a clip of this scene, to give you a better idea of the type of music and the dancing going o 

Here is the actual music titled Dorisburg – Tundra, by Aniara Recordings, no less:

MR is among those dancing here. She appears to be enjoying herself and letting loose. 

Later, MR strolls up to the bar in this discotheque, where she meets a young man named Daisi. They soon move outside into a corridor, where the two begin to make out. Just then, Isagel happens to walk by and observes MR and Daisi together, but expresses no outward reactions. MR sees her crush staring at them and becomes worried. Despite this event, the couple do hook up in Daisi’s cabin, but MR decides to leave him sooner than he expected.

COMMENT 1 of 2: In the 1956 poem, Daisy Doody is a young woman whose hedonistic escape from their fate is through a dance called the Yurg. This initially attracts MR to Daisy, and they briefly become a couple. Soon, however, just as in the film, the Mimarobe realizes they have little else in common and do not last.

COMMENT 2 of 2: During their make out scene in the film, the Daisi character says some futuristic slang, telling MR not to “be so lori.” When she questions the meaning of that word, Daisi throws another one at MR: “Don’t get all gammed down.” 

While the word lori does not seem to exist in the Martinson poem, a version of gammed was inspired by the source as Daisy Doody says to MR in Canto 12: “You’re gamming out and getting yile and snowzy. But do like me, I never sit and frowzy.” Author Martinson experimented with many new words for his denizens of the future.

I consider it a missed opportunity that the filmmakers did not try to incorporate more such language into their future world: Stanley Kubrick took many slang words from the original 1962 novel for A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) right into his 1971 cinematic version. The results only enhanced the social commentary in that film by making that fictional world much richer and exotic, drawing in its audiences. 

This being their first feature film, the joint directors and screenplay authors of Aniara, Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, may simply not have been up to the task of such worldbuilding. Or perhaps they felt the heavy use of slang, even words taken straight from the epic poem, would somehow detract from the vital social messages they were trying to aim at their contemporary audience. 

After all, Angst SF only uses and needs science fiction and its trappings such as outer space as an attractor, a prop, and a deflector. The Message is first and foremost: Anything that does not directly enhance it is often considered superfluous.

Green is Good

Our perspective switches briefly to that clothing store which once offered pressure suits for living on Mars: Now they display regular dresses in their large window, deliberately obscuring the Mars panorama in the background.

We watch some children playing a form of kickball in a corridor, representing the adaptability of youth to changing life situations – or perhaps just good ol’ youthful ignorance and the inability to focus on one subject for very long. At the same time, as MR rides up an escalator holding a cup of water, the PA system makes a ship-wide announcement: 

“An important message for all passengers: Right now we’re offering double points for new algae plant employees. Sign up for duty at your nearest desk.”

While this goes on, MR takes a sip from her cup, only to pull it back from her mouth while covering her lips with a finger and saying “nasty” out loud.

Meanwhile, The Intendent and Captain Chefone are in one of the ship’s bars tasting the water. After wondering if what is in a particular glass is contaminated with sulfates, Chefone tells his subordinate that they will “need more people on the water purification plant,” which The Intendent acknowledges and walks off to perform his ordered task. Chefone swears and then adds that aloud that “this is not good.”

We cinematically move to a view of a murky water tank full of algae. We and a tour group comprised mainly of children are led through the room of the Aniara’s algae processing plant by an older man in a plastic sanitary cap. 

“All the food we eat on the craft comes from here,” the worker explains to the group, who are also equipped with sanitary caps upon their heads (perhaps they are the ones answering the PA’s earlier request for more help with the algae plant?). 

“Look at that beautiful color,” he exclaims. “If it’s brown, it’s no good. It must be washed.”

The man leads the group to another room where he holds up a clear bag of the leafy green product and declares that this alga is the “good stuff.” He adds that “the only hard thing about this job is getting up in the morning.” This rouses a bit of chuckling from the crowd.

The scene switches to the Mimarobe attempting to move through a long line of passengers wanting to experience the Mima. She also encounters many others just leaving the hall. A little blond girl with glasses gives MR a drawing she made.

“It’s a tree, a duck, and a sea,” the girl explains of her creation. A grateful MR says her artwork is “beautiful.”

A tall older man with spectacles and adorned with a dress shirt asks MR if he “could stay a little longer” in the Mima Hall. MR replies that he cannot. The man attempts to bribe MR by offering to transfer points from his ship card to hers. MR turns him down again and he walks off, indignant.

When everyone has left the area, MR slips into the Mima Hall. Looking down from its balcony, we see there is a solitary figure still left in the room: This is Isagel, in her officer uniform. As MR watches, Isagel slowly gets up from the floor and looks at MR to thank her.

As Isagel starts to walk out, MR quickly explains to the pilot that the guy she saw her with this morning meant nothing. Isagel merely stares at MR for a moment and then continues her exit of the hall. As soon as she knows Isagel is gone, MR bangs her head down on her folded hands laying on the balcony and grunts in frustration.

Tiny Bubbles

MR and The Astronomer are sitting by themselves in what must be the Stardeck observation room, judging by the collection of personal-size telescopes in the background. MR is pacing about, talking animatedly about Isagel while her cabin mate listens patiently with a glass of alcohol and resting in a stuffed bright green couch.

“There’s much to be ashamed of in life, but that’s nothing,” we hear The Astronomer say to MR about her earlier actions.

“I don’t get her!” MR exclaims in frustration. “It’s like she has no emotions.”

“You need to understand, that’s how pilots are,” The Astronomer explains. “They’re a new kind of fatalists.”

“What?” MR stops pacing.

“They’re experts at repressing their emotions.”

Finally sitting down, MR ponders aloud what her companion just said.

“Isagel… represses her feelings!” MR starts to smile over this concept.

“The utter nonsense of living,” adds The Astronomer.

“What?” MR says in surprise. “Being in love is nonsense?”

The Astronomer widens her observations.

“It’s all so peripheral, what we’re doing. It’s so futile, so meaningless.”

The older woman holds up her drinking glass. She points to a tiny but visible speck in its thick base.

“You see this bubble?” she asks MR. The Mimarobe moves in for a closer look.

“If you think of it as Aniara, maybe you’ll understand the vastness of space. You see, the bubble actually moves through the glass. Infinitely slowly. We move forward in the same way. Even if we drift at an incredible speed, it’s as if we’re standing perfectly still.”

The scene, which has spent its last few moments focusing solely on the air bubble while The Astronomer talks, now fades into blackness, except for that singular miniscule object, which almost seems to glow. It is reminiscent of the small moving dot in the opening title sequence of the film.

“That’s us,” says The Astronomer. “A little bubble in the glass of Godhead.”

COMMENT 1 of 2: This scene is adapted from poem Canto 13, where The Astronomer (a male in this version) gives a similar talk to an audience in the Mima Hall, using a glass bowl embedded with a similar miniscule bubble. Upon being “chilled at such certitude” by the scientist, the Mimarobe flees the hall and searches for the much warmer if ultimately transient comforts of the dancer Daisy Doody.

COMMENT 2 of 2: It is ironic how The Astronomer provides the sober truth of their reality onboard the Aniara as she consumes alcohol, often to excess, to ease the emotional pain of their collective reality. The Astronomer may be a trained scientist with a rational and cynical outlook, but Roberta Twelander is also quite human. That she has the added burden of being one of the few people onboard who truly comprehends humanity’s miniscule place in time and space only compounds The Astronomer’s overwhelming sense of isolation from both her own species and the Universe.

Deliver Me from the Vision

We next find ourselves in MR’s mind, courtesy of the Mima. The Mimarobe is swimming alone in a pond surrounded by a green forest. MR lies back peacefully in this water to watch flocks of geese flying silently overhead.

Suddenly, the geese burst apart, their torn bodies plunging into the water around her.

MR awakens in the Mima Hall; she is alone. She rolls her face and body out of her pillow and lies back on floor, panting. MR sits up and stares at Mima, wondering what just happened.

The Mima reveals nothing apparent; she shows her usual vibrant waves of orange, yellow, and red accompanied by those sounds of electronic ocean waves.

MR gets up and goes over to an electronic control panel concealed in one wall. Sliding away the wall section cover, MR begins to check the lit panel. Just then, one of her new attendants lets the latest collection of guests come into the Mima Hall.

MR welcomes them in. She moves herself up to the monitoring balcony and looks at the guests below with her attendant, who has his head lowered just above the balcony edge. 

Looking at the attendant, MR realizes he is getting lost into the Mima. She slaps him on his right arm and asks him what he is doing. The attendant looks up at her, seemingly confused.

Without either warning or prompting, Mima starts speaking from above in her eerie echoing mechanical voice. 

“Three-VEB is fighting a cloud of shame. How terror blasts in, how horror blasts out. Deliver me from the vision.”

The semi-mysterious Artilect known as the Mima glows bright orange and yellow above a group of passengers lying on the floor of the Mima Hall. Desperate to escape their fate aboard the Aniara any way they can, the humans attempt to find solace in visions from their past on Earth brought up by the Mima.

Looking about, MR sees one of the people on the floor below, a large bald man with a goatee, starting to moan and spasm as if he is having a nightmare.

MR comes down to floor. As she approaches the man, she notices a few other guests are beginning to act in a similar fashion.

MR kneels adjacent to the troubled man and produces her small yellow device which shows what people are seeing in their minds during their individual Mima experiences. She places it next to the bald man’s head.

This time, instead of a typical comforting scene of beautiful nature, MR is confronted with a raging forest fire where people are trapped within it, running about and screaming in fear among the burning trees and choking smoke.

MR is able to get the man to walk out of the Mima Hall, where he lays down on the floor just outside of door. The man holds MR tightly, crying. MR tries to comfort him.

Looking up, the Mimarobe sees a very long line of people waiting to get into the Mima Hall. All of them are focused on her and the man in wonder and concern. MR looks away from the crowd and keeps holding the crying man for a bit.

Back in the Mima Hall, MR starts checking the minds of other guests with her yellow device. Frightened at what she sees, MR looks up at the attendant in the balcony and makes a harsh swiping motion across her neck with her hand, silently signaling him to shut off the Mima. Almost immediately, the room light changes from yellow to white.

“I’m sorry,” MR interrupts to the passengers lying on the floor. “I’m going to have to close early today.”

The guests look at MR, first with confusion, then a growing frustrating. As they leave the Mima Hall, they begin to complain loudly. One of the disgruntled guests, Libidel, is focused upon as she is seen walking away, with a definite thought on her mind.

Soon after, MR is brought before Chefone by the Intendent: The Captain is working out again, this time in one of the ship’s gym rooms. His face now displays a mustache. Chefone orders MR to sit down, which she does on an adjacent piece of gym equipment.

“How can you throw people out of the Mima Hall?” Chefone demands to know of MR.

“Mima needs to rest,” is her answer.

“How do you know?” he asks.

“She tells me.”

“She tells you?” Chefone is incredulous about this.

“Yes,” MR confirms. “And that she reduces herself to human speech is worrying. She sees everyone’s memories, what they’ve been through…”

“I know how a Mima works,” Chefone interjects rudely.

“Right, but people are starting to see awful things,” MR tries to explain. “I need to close up for a week, preferably a month.”

“That’s too rash,” Chefone snaps back, while moving over to use another piece of exercise equipment.

“We’ve got a system in place that works. People go to work, most of them contribute….” explains Chefone. “So, we’re not changing things or dictating over Mima images! Right?” he demands of the Mimarobe.

“It’s untenable,” MR replies almost quietly.

Chefone suddenly stands up. As he walks past MR, Chefone yells at her to get out. MR removes herself from his presence as ordered.

No Protection from Mankind

Returning to the Mima Hall, the Mimarobe is with her artificial charge, accompanied by two attendants in the balcony. Worried and confused, all three of them are looking up at Mima, who is in her blue-green palate state. The AI is speaking again; MR is taking written notes of everything the Mima is saying.

“My conscience aches for the stones,” Mima declares. “I’ve heard them cry their stonely cries, seen the granites white-hot weeping…”

The male attendant turns to his female counterpart and asks her if she understands what the Mima is talking about. The woman simply shakes her head. Her growing fear is evident.

Mima continues unbidden.

“I’ve been troubled by their pains. In the name of Things, I want peace. I will be done with my displays.”

At that very moment, a new batch of guests walk into the Mima Hall. Almost instantly, the ceiling panel changes to its orange and yellow flows of color when reading human minds.

“There is protection from nearly everything…” says the Mima. MR runs down to the floor and desperately tries to remove the people beginning their session with the AI.

“Stop! You can’t be in here! Stop!” MR shouts at everyone, spinning about. The guests essentially ignore her.

“…but there is no protection from mankind,” Mima concludes.

MR frantically yells at the guests to get out. 

A new pattern appears on the ceiling, as if the Mima is revealing her inner workings as she prepares for her next action.

“Prolonging the very second when you burst,” Mima says. “How terror blasts in, how horror blast out.”

“Mima!” the Mimarobe cries up at her.

Mima makes one final verbal declaration…

“How grim it always is, one’s detonation.”

MR screams “No!”, but it is too late. 

There is a tremendous blinding flash as the Mima bursts. Debris like ash and fog rain down on MR and the passengers. MR is screaming and crying at everyone, but we cannot hear her. Behind and around MR, the guests stumble about in this artificial climate.

Later, MR has returned to her cabin, where she lays in her bed on her left side, unmoving. It is apparent she has been crying.

There is a knock at her door. MR doesn’t respond. The knock repeats, but MR continues to lay still. 

The scene changes to the wide corridor outside the Mima Hall, which has been transformed into a vast memorial to the AI. Many passengers are either standing or kneeling before the outside wall of the hall: They have covered it in memorial artwork, posters, and letters quite reminiscent of the kind of public memorials practiced on Earth after certain horrific events both manmade and natural where human deaths and destruction were involved.

The Aniara passengers collectively mourn the loss of their main source of escape from their existential nightmare outside the Mima Hall.

As the residents of the Aniara mourn their primary source of comfort and escape, Libidel is seen talking to a group of older men nearby. We hear her tell them that “the Mimarobe stayed in there at night and kept Mima all to herself.” Her captive audience responds with indignity.

Back at MR’s cabin, The Astronomer returns and has a question for the Mimarobe.

“Has Isagel been here?” the older woman asks MR. “I ran into her out in the corridor.”

“I need to get back,” is MR’s reply and she stirs from her bed to return to the Mima Hall.

“Rumor has it you will be punished,” warns The Astronomer. MR stops climbing halfway down the side of their bunk beds.

“Punished?”

“Yes.”

We return to the bar we saw earlier, where we find Captain Chefone, The Intendent, and several other officers holding court. Chefone is eating a meal from a bowl. Isagel enters and approaches her boss.

“You can’t blame the Mimarobe,” Isagel comes right to the point. “It’s not her fault.”

“Two things,” Chefone begins his reply. “One: We can do whatever we want. Two: She’s gotten a number of complaints.”

“What has she done?” the pilot demands to know. The Intendent answers her question.

“She’s been locking herself in the hall to sabotage Mima.”

“You know that’s not true,” Isagel fires back.

A smirk finds its way onto Chefone’s face.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this upset,” he tells Isagel. “Nice to see you’ve got a little heart beating in there…”

Chefone attempts to touch Isagel’s chest. The pilot responds by kneeing the Captain in the groin. Chefone falls to the floor doubled-up in pain.

Realizing she has just struck her commanding officer, Isagel backs up and quickly leaves the bar, as Chefone shouts for someone to stop her.

Elsewhere in the ship, we find MR walking back to her cabin. MR suddenly freezes when she notices two officers nearby talking about her to someone on their radio.

“We’re headed for her cabin now,” the male officer says. “It’s 3151.”

MR begins walking towards the officers, or so it seems: Instead, she diverts herself into a nearby elevator. The officers see where MR is going and try to stop her, but they are too late.

In the elevator, MR attempts to flee to one of the higher passenger cabin levels. The electronic menu shows her progress floor by floor. 

Without warning, the elevator stops. MR watches the menu showing her steadily moving back down the ship levels, undoubtedly to the waiting officers. Realizing that the crew has taken over control of her car, MR hits the emergency stop button.

“Emergency stop is activated,” alerts a female mechanical voice. “The operator has been notified and will arrive shortly.”

MR quickly exits the elevator and attempts to find an escape route on her current floor. Peering down the various corridors, she realizes they only lead to more cabins and are all disconcertingly similar in design: Grayish, dimly lit, and lacking in any real character.

Choosing one hallway at random, the Mimarobe walks the length of the corridor, where she encounters the same group of men who were at the Mima memorial earlier listening to Libidel spreading rumors about MR. They eye the Mimarobe suspiciously as she moves uncomfortably past them.

MR arrives at the end of the corridor, where is she brought to a halt by a single panel of those same tall windows whose views of the stars had given her a panic attack. MR stares at her reflection in the glass, which is otherwise surrounded by the blackness of space. The two pursuing officers soon join MR’s reflection in the window and calmly escort her away.

We see MR’s pursuit and capture in part through various security cameras that are seemingly everywhere inside the ship. They are being monitored by another officer in a remote control room. Above his rather unkempt desk, this officer has multiple active camera views splayed across several large monitor screens. 

As MR is shown being led away in one corner of a monitor, in another sector we view a horrific sight via a second monitor: The Intendent is violently striking someone lying on the floor: His victim is just out of camera view. 

We soon learn that The Intendent was exacting his own retribution on Isagel for her insubordination to Chefone (at the Captain’s orders or was this his own reaction?). We discover this along with MR as she finds herself with Isagel in a poorly lit detention area somewhere in the belly of the Aniara. The pilot lays on the floor of this brig with a bruised and bloody face.

QUESTIONS: Did the Aniara always have a brig or at least some place to hold and isolate passengers who commit crimes and are a potential danger to others? Or was this something set up by the officers once it was realized that the ship is essentially their new and permanent home? 

Nautical cruise ships have brigs, and they usually spend less time at sea than the Aniara was going to be in space during its original destination plan. Being the practical and materialistic culture that exists here, it could be almost a foregone conclusion that a detention section was part of the Aniara’s original design plan for its thousands of anticipated civilian passengers.

4:e året (Year 4) – Kulterna (The Cults)

In the fourth year of Aniara’s journey through space, we find a group of passengers on their knees facing a collection of those tall windows looking out into the void. The group is quietly chanting to the distant stars outside to “come closer. Give us light.” As they repeat this mantra, the members of this cult sweep their arms out towards the windows, then back to their chests.

As this activity goes on, we are with Captain Chefone and The Intendent in someone’s cabin. We learn that the resident of this room has committed suicide. His bedsheets are stained with blood.

The Intendent is reading a note to Chefone.

“He does not, and I quote, ‘want his body to be buried in the Light-year grave.’”

“What exactly does that mean?” asks Chefone as he turns away from the bed. The Captain now wears a full dark beard. 

We see the now former occupant of this cabin, lying naked in the bed and covered in blood. It appears to be the Spanish man that MR had once helped with the Mima.

“Seems he was frightened of space,” is The Intendent’s answer.

“What’s the suicide count,” Chefone asks his subordinate offscreen as the camera lingers on dead man.

“Forty-eight,” is The Intendent’s reply.

“Forty-eight this month?” asks Chefone for clarification. The Intendent affirms this number.

“That includes the family in 32?”

“Yes.”

Their tallying done, the two officers leave the cabin. The ultimate fates of the Spanish man’s body and all the others recently deceased are left unknown to us.

The scene switches to the Aniara’s brig section, where MR and Isagel have been incarcerated for the past year. We find them standing next to each other among a line of fellow inmates as an officer walks past each of them. To certain prisoners he simply says “you” and they move forward from the line. 

MR and Isagel are selected last in this fashion. The officer herds the chosen inmates into another room, where they encounter The Intendent. He hands each prisoner a small purple card.

“We’re in need of staff,” The Intendent explains. “You’ll be reassigned to your jobs.”

As the bald officer hands each person a card, he verbalizes their new positions written on the card with one word, such as “algae” and “deoxidation”. 

At first, Isagel refuses to take the assignment card handed to her. 

“You can stay down there, up to you,” The Intendent says bluntly to Isagel regarding the brig.

MR begs Isagel in a high whisper to take it. Her companion complies.

“You’ll be going back to Logistics,” The Intendent tells Isagel. He then hands a card to MR.

“MR, you’re going to teach,” the Intendent states. “We need to focus on kids with a talent for tensor theory.” MR wordlessly nods in response.

The former prisoners are then told to find a properly fitting uniform from a nearby stack of clothes and to “make us proud.” MR actually smiles and laughs a little in relief as she chooses her uniform, probably the first new outfit she has worn in over a year.

The two women are assigned their own suite, as they are now clearly a couple. The place is much nicer and more spacious than the standard small ship cabin MR once occupied. A large bed dominates the center of the room.

As they look around at their new home, MR asks how Isagel could have considered wanting to remain down in the brig.

“I’ve got my principles,” Isagel answers.

“You don’t say,” returns MR, bemused.

There is a small rectangular radio in the room. Isagel turns it on: A song is playing, with the singer crooning “Stay with me forever.” Isagel looks at MR and smiles. MR giggles.

As the two embrace, the lyrics continue: “We’re gonna make it through the harder times.” They hold each other and slowly dance to the music. The couple eventually find their way to the bathroom, where they make love in the shower. We note that the bathroom has a view of the stars through a large circular window. 

Technobabble and Seeking Absolution

The next morning, MR and Isagel, wearing their new uniforms, walk up a set of non-functional escalator stairs to their new assignments. At the top of the stairs, the couple kiss each other goodbye before taking their own directions.

As MR moves down one of the Aniara‘s wide corridors, she sees just how much of the shipboard custodial work and maintenance have fallen away: Plastic trash bags and loose garbage line the walls of the half-lit hallway. Some stores are either shuttered with metal gates or sealed up with clear plastic and tape. Among the trash, MR discovers a woman splayed out on the floor, face down. MR starts to move towards this person, wondering if she is still alive: MR stops herself when she sees the woman stir a bit. 

The scene switches to MR in her classroom, lecturing to her young students sitting at their desks. Many of them seem only half-interested in the subject matter at best.

“Let’s talk about artificial gravitation,” says MR. “I’m quoting: ‘Only with the new era’s fifth tensor theory’ did it become possible to outsmart gravity. Previously, we had tried shooting ourselves out of the curve vectors, or, which worked slightly better, pulsating the spaceships ‘out of the fields using force cadences.’”

COMMENT: MR’s verbiage reminds me of the scenes in the 2014 science fiction film Interstellar where they said they had solved the “gravity problem” of spaceflight, without ever really describing what it is, how it works, or what made it different from previous methods. 

Interstellar is a classic example of Angst SF in this regard, despite having big names, a big budget, and the most scientifically accurate representation of a black hole up to that time. Both films are also playing the technobabble card, made virtually infamous by the Star Trek franchise which created terms to explain its aspects that otherwise defy known science and technology. For more of my thoughts on Interstellar, read my essay here:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2014/12/19/interstellar-herald-to-the-stars-or-a-sirens-song/

Our vista changes to a view down one of those innumerable long grayish hallways connecting cabins that honeycomb the Aniara. We see a small collection of passengers coming in our direction, but this is not just some ordinary group of people. Instead, we are witness to yet another cult that has sprung up among this involuntary sampling of humanity, one that is far more bizarre and frightening in its appearance and behavior than the ones chanting “give us light” to the stars earlier.

Strapped to a former luggage cart like a team of horses, several naked people are seen crawling on their hands and knees slowly pulling the cart. Riding this contraption is a young woman with long blond hair who appears to be blind. The members surrounding the woman chant “forgive us” repeatedly as they move along the hallway.

Mima, We Pray at Your Grave

Thankfully, we are taken away from this medievalesque moment to join MR and Isagel enjoying a swim together in the Aniara’s large pool, apparently being better maintained than the ship’s thoroughfares and stores. 

After their time in the pool, the pair retire to an adjacent steam room. They are slightly startled to find they are not alone: A nude woman is sitting in one corner; she turns out to be Chebeba, whom we met early on in our first look inside the Mima Hall when MR asked her to volunteer as an example of how to use the Mima to guide the other guests. 

Chebeba suddenly cuts the silence in the steam room.

“Libidel wants you to carry the lantern,” she says to the other women. “Libidel and her Libidellas.”

“Sorry, I didn’t get it. What?” responds MR, suspiciously.

“Libidel and her Libidellas…” Chebeba repeats. “We’re going to canonize Mima.”

Still not quite believing what she is hearing, MR again questions what Chebeba has just said.

“We’re going to canonize Mima. We’ll form a choir at her grave.”

“Then what? You’ll sacrifice me for killing Mima?” retorts MR, not without reason in this changed society.

“Mima killed herself,” explains Chebeba. “She died of grief. You have to come with us.”

COMMENT: MR has a good reason for such concerns, and not just because she had been arrested and incarcerated under false pretenses regarding the demise of Mima. In Martinson’s poem, some of the cults that evolved on the ship did involve human sacrifice as part of their rites. We neither see nor even hear of such practices in the film version of the story, but it is hardly an impossible situation when considering the behavioral directions of this confined society.

We are taken to the Mima Hall: MR and Isagel are there with a group of women who are part of this Libidellas cult. MR is having green coloring put around her eyes in the form of an infinity symbol. Isagel has already been painted in a similar fashion. 

eader Libidel takes MR by the hand and leads her to one section of the ten women who have formed a line at one end of the room. Then she prays to Mima at her “grave” out loud.

The rest of the women, some of whom have red paint bordering their eyes, repeat this chant and then remove their shoes and clothing.

Naked, the cult members walk to the other end of the room. Isagel and MR follow suit after sharing a look at each other. They group picks up large rectangular mirrors from the floor and face their reflective sides at Libidel, who stands in the middle of the circle they form around her. Libidel, who is still dressed in a shimmering green robe, lays on the floor in the center. The women hum in turn; Isagel tries not to laugh.

A group of men are led into the Mima Hall. They too are nude and have paint on certain parts of their bodies. Soon enough this “canonization” of the AI turns into a hedonistic orgy, a baser substitution for the personal pleasures they have lost with the absence of the Mima. 

MR quickly adapts to this situation and becomes intimate with two of the women. Isagel, still standing with her mirror, is hesitant to join in. Eventually, she capitulates with a younger man.

5:e året (Year 5) – Kalkylen (The Calculation)

We are back in MR and Isagel’s suite at some later date. Isagel is laying in their bed; she wears a white silk pajama top and is not moving, facing away from our perspective. MR emerges from their bathroom, wearing a bath robe. 

MR sits upon the end of the bed, looking at Isagel. MR playfully tickles Isagel’s facing side to get her attention. Still unmoving, Isagel only whispers something in return, which MR doesn’t quite catch.

“What did you say?” asks MR of her partner.

“There are no possibilities…” Isagel answers. “There are no possibilities here.”

Isagel turns towards MR, exposing her swollen pregnant belly, a result of “worshipping” the Mima with the Libidellas cult.

“I’ll give birth to a prisoner.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true,” Isagel replies. “I’ll deliver someone to eternal night.”

“It’s going to be fine,” returns MR, ever optimistic. “I promise, it’s going to be fine. You’ll feel better.”

MR lays her hands on Isagel’s bare stomach and kisses her smooth skin. Isagel closes up her top, pushing MR’s hands away.

“You can’t promise that,” Isagel says.

MR goes over to one of the large circular windows in their room and pushes aside the long purple curtain covering it.

“Yes, I can,” answers MR. “I’m going to get rid of the darkness.”

MR removes her robe, revealing that she is wearing her work uniform underneath, and exits their suite. Isagel stares at and through the uncovered window, revealing the ever-present multitude of distant alien suns. Tears appear and run down the side of the pilot’s face.

CONTINUITY ERROR: I caught an error in continuity during this scene. It is quite minor in the scheme of things, but it is the first one I noticed in this film. When MR opens the long curtain to the window, she only pushes it just beyond the right-side curved window frame. When we see the view from Isagel’s perspective from their bed after MR leaves, the curtain is even further to the right than MR left it. In fact, it is far enough to be off screen, much further than MR had pushed it; and no, Isagel certainly did not get up and push the curtain more. 

A Substitute for the Substitute

The Mimarobe visits the Mima Hall again, alone this time. She walks over to a part of one wall that is charred black from floor to ceiling. Nearby lays a pile of discarded head pillows.

Into the open area of the damaged wall, MR shines a flashlight beam. The light lands upon a vertical cylindrical device with small clear tubes running through it. Debris dust swirls about, also illuminated by the light beam.

MR heads back to her old cabin, which The Astronomer still occupies. She enters and sees the older woman lying in her bed with her arms sticking over the side, apparently unconscious. MR pushes on The Astronomer to see if she will respond. The unkempt scientist awakens with a grunt and angrily pushes back at MR. Unsurprisingly, The Astronomer is quite intoxicated.

“What are you doing here?” The Astronomer demands to know of MR, who has run to the cabin’s bathroom sink to wash her hands after realizing her old roommate is in a less than hygienic state.  

“Why aren’t you with Isagel?” The Astronomer asks MR. She repeats this question even louder when it goes unanswered.

“She wants to be alone,” MR finally answers about her partner. “I’m sneaking into the reception.”

Without leaving her bed, The Astronomer uses a clear drinking glass to scoop up alcohol stored in a plastic lined waste basket next to her on the floor. The woman’s right shirt sleeve is soaked with the liquor from repeated visits to this basket.

“What reception?” The Astronomer asks as she consumes her drink.

“It’s called ‘Eternal Spring’,” MR replies as she searches for some of her old clothing still on the shelving. Only two of The Astronomers science texts are left, visible among the piles of unfolded clothing.

“Want to come?” invites MR. 

“Eternal Spring,” repeats The Astronomer, thinking it over while fishing for a new drink. 

“What’s the point of it?” is both her question and her conclusion.

“I want to talk to the Captain,” MR responds as she measures a blouse against her torso. “I want to build a beam screen outside the windows. To escape the darkness.”

At first The Astronomer almost seems to be showing some interest in MR’s plan, but upon further reflection declares a different view.

“You want to build a substitute for Mima,” The Astronomer realizes. “A substitute for the substitute!” She begins to laugh drunkenly at the irony.

Without responding, MR simply takes her chosen outfit for the party and leaves the cabin.

The Eternal Spring party appears to be in one of the 21 restaurants that the Aniara welcoming video had once boasted about. Scattered groups of well-dressed people are there mingling and talking. Light, bland instrumental music plays in the background. Captain Chefone is seen talking to one woman before he excuses himself.

MR walks into the room, dressed for the event. She prepares herself before plunging into the party, putting a smile on her face.

The Mimarobe walks up to Chefone, who is now conversing with three different women.

“Excuse me,” says MR to Chefone. “Got a minute?”

Chefone seems a bit annoyed with MR’s sudden interruption, but he gives her his attention, nevertheless, facing MR at a small round table that was directly behind him.

“It’s about a beam screen,” MR explains. “I’d like to build one.”

“Instead of teaching?” Chefone inquires.

“Yes,” declares MR. “It would display images, like Mima. But outside the windows, so we’re shielded off from… space.”

“You don’t grasp how serious this is,” Chefone counters, clearly not happy with her new career plans.

“But I do!” MR begins to protest.

“We must think of future generations,” declares Chefone. “Make a home for them here.”

“Absolutely,” agrees MR.

“I guess you want that too?”

“Yes, and that’s why…” MR begins before Chefone cuts her off as she tries to explain her idea.

“Then nothing is more important than the work you do. The kids you teach, every little piece of sh*t… are our best and brightest. Understand?”

MR agrees with her Captain and tries to make him realize what she is trying to do for the whole ship, but Chefone shuts her down.

“You won’t be allowed to build your invention. Okay?”

MR obeys Chefone’s command, but the disappointment in her face is clear.

Welcome, Little Buddy!

We are deliberately jarred by the sudden image of Isagel screaming in pain, for she is giving birth in the bathtub of her shared quarters. MR is holding her left hand while kneeling at the outer edge of the tub. To her right is a male midwife, an older gray bearded man who is assisting in the birth of their child.

“I don’t want to!” Isagel screams repeatedly. MR tries to support Isagel by telling her she is doing great. 

“One more push, Isagel, and it’s over,” instructs the midwife. 

As the camera focuses on MR, we hear a splash of water and the Mimarobe’s face changes to wonder and joy at the sight of their newborn baby.

“Hello! Welcome, little buddy!” greets the midwife to the infant.

Isagel lifts the baby out of the bath water, who immediately begins shrieking. Isagel has a look of apprehension at what they have brought into existence, while MR radiates only happiness. Isagel kisses her baby’s small, curled fist, causing her first to smile and then cry tears of joy.

Sometime later, MR is trying to get the baby to sleep while Isagel looks on, smiling. MR asks her partner if she is done feeding the baby, which Isagel affirms. MR switches off a lamp next to their bed and tells the baby “Now, it’s night!” 

MR tries to help their baby along in his slumber by singing a lullaby to him.

“Two children play/ In a field of wheat/ Play with the thought/ That they might with their eyes/ Walk high atop the spikes/ Walking on water is hard…”

“Stop singing,” Isagel requests of MR. The song and the singing have disturbed the pilot.

MR pauses, but only for a moment before she continues her song. Isagel is clearly unhappy that MR has ignored her, but she says nothing further to MR.

“If you just let/ Your eyes wander round/ And allow you to turn/ Into a butterfly or a wind/ You’ll be able to go….”

We change to an exterior scene of the Aniara traveling through deep space. The vessel seems a bit dimmer than in past views, a reflection of its slow deterioration. Even the stars seem somehow less brilliant.

MR is teaching her students in a makeshift classroom, writing equations on a chalkboard. The technobabble is flowing freely.

“But then came Gopta through QWI,” explains MR. “Without this major discovery, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

COMMENT: The word gopta comes from the ancient Sanskrit language and means “occult,” so take that as you will. This brief lesson is borrowed from Canto 62 of the Martinson poem, quoting MR:

“With this new age’s re-evaluations and new expansions of the tensor doctrine, the way was opened for the possibility of finding the proportioned symmetry which by the Gopta formula through qwi was simplified and proved the right approach for every longer run in heaven’s coach.”

We swiftly exchange the classroom for the Aniara’s big swimming pool, where we find Isagel with her baby. Isagel is not smiling. She wordlessly decides to put the infant underwater and hold him there. 

Thankfully, another officer just happens to appear on the opposite side of the pool and beckons the pilot over to him. Isagel quickly lifts the baby back up to the surface. The infant coughs a little, but otherwise he seems fine. Isagel cradles him against her chest.

We return to MR’s classroom, where the former Mimarobe is trying to explain an equation on the board to a student. The student expresses that he is not grasping the lesson, which makes MR audibly sigh in frustration. Just then, MR sees Chebeba through the classroom windows facing the hallway: The woman is walking towards MR, carrying her son.

Chebeba enters the classroom. Immediately MR stops teaching and runs over to the woman, demanding to know where Isagel is.

“She was called up to the bridge,” Chebeba answers.

“How come?”

“They’ve discovered a rescue ship,” Chebeba replies in a near whisper, but not quietly enough.

“We’re being rescued?” inquires an overhearing student out loud. The rest of the class looks intently at the two adults in the room.

A Clearly Deviating Spectral Signature

The scene changes to the exterior of the Aniara. This time we see something new to us: An elongated metal gray radio antenna consisting of two parallel vertical sections. Small white lights frame portions of its exterior. With a whirring mechanical sound (in space; yes I know), the antenna turns and aims itself at an object somewhere in the direction of the galactic center.

On a screen being monitored by The Astronomer on the ship’s bridge, a computer graphic consisting of a blue square and a small grid pinpoints a tiny body against the starry bulge it labels New Track ID#2410 and a short list of changing celestial coordinates below it.

Isagel is sitting just to the left of The Astronomer at the controls discussing the relevant data with Chefone, who is standing on the other side of the scientist. 

“Fourteen arcseconds,” reports The Astronomer. “It’s moving closer.”

“Seventy-six kps,” Isagel announces the mysterious object’s speed in kilometers per second. 

COMMENT: For those who want this factoid in miles per second, it is 47.2 mps. For those who want this velocity in miles per hour, it is 169,920 mph. As you may recall, the Aniara left Earth at an announced speed of 64 kps, or 39.7 mps, or almost 143,164 mph.

“How fast was Samara supposed to go?” asks Chefone, perhaps referring to a particular model of high-velocity space vessel or propulsion system.

“Upwards of 73 kps,” answers Isagel.

COMMENT: In the poem, the Aniara uses “phototurb” fusion engines designed with “Gopta” physics for its propulsion.

MR walks onto the bridge and asks what is going on.

“I’ve discovered an anomaly,” replies The Astronomer. “Using one of the Stardeck telescopes. It displays a clearly deviating spectral signature.”

COMMENT: The Astronomer does not definitively indicate if she were deliberately searching for potential objects that could save the Aniara. Nevertheless, the fact that she was examining space shows that, despite her outward cynicism about life in general and their chances in particular, the scientist was inwardly hopeful for either a natural body or a vessel to change their fate. A touchingly human act. 

Even if The Astronomer was searching at the orders of Chefone, that she cooperated with the Captain shows still that the woman has not lost all hope.

“It’s not big enough to be a rescue ship,” explains Isagel. “It’s about 100 meters long, two meters wide. Linear.”

“Then it’s probably a high-speed probe,” guesses Chefone.

“Containing fuel?” inquires The Astronomer, hopefully. The rest of the crew look at her.

Chefone asks if this vessel is indeed big enough to carry nuclear fuel rods, which Isagel affirms. 

“Enough to turn the ship around?” Chefone asks further.

“Yes,” says Isagel with a smile.

“Yes!” shouts Chefone with joy, slamming his palm on the panel in front of him. He walks around and declares “Yes!” again.

MR is also overjoyed.

“That’s amazing!” she says, beaming. “How far off is it?”

“Fourteen months,” answers Isagel, still smiling.

Chefone chuckles and pats a male officer next to him. Even our cynical astronomer is smiling at this news and the hope it may bring.

QUESTIONS: As the Aniara had shut off all communications with the rest of humanity during its initial three-week voyage to Mars (an action that does not make a lot of sense to me, but that is what they did), how would any would-be rescuers know the crew had ejected the vessel’s nuclear fuel rods, or that they even had a collision with space debris to begin with? Did someone find the fuel rods drifting in interplanetary space? Was this due to the authorities sending out a search-and-rescue mission after the Aniara failed to arrive at the Red Planet as scheduled? The ship was thrown off course very early into their journey: Unless the presumed search team cast a very wide search net, how would the authorities even know where to aim a rescue probe, let alone what the Aniara might have needed to get back?

The animated Aniara logo dominates our screen and all the viewscreens on the ship, accompanied by what can now be labeled as Aniara’s corporate theme music. 

The image switches to a very confident Captain Chefone looking sharp in his dress uniform. He is playing a game of pool, or billiards. Chefone looks up at the camera aimed on him and stops what he is doing. We notice that his still full beard now has some gray in it.

“Dear passengers,” Chefone begins. “I’m happy to announce help is finally on the way. 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. Tonight, we have every reason to celebrate.”

Chefone makes his final speech points by aiming the business end of his pool cue, or stick, at the camera, then leans down over the table to sink a purple ball with it into a pocket across the table to complete his news.

COMMENT: Chefone sinks a pool ball with the black 8 ball rather than the cue ball, which is solid white in color and has no number. Normally, in a game of 8-ball, this is not a proper move, but as Chefone is only doing this to demonstrate his confidence to the rest of the ship and not playing an actual game of billiards with anyone, the only thing that matters is showing him sinking the ball. 

If one wanted to get philosophical, one could also claim that Chefone has been and is playing by his own rules regarding the entire ship and its compliment, with no one else about to even question, let along challenge, his authority – including what he declares the approaching object to be.

The broadcast camera zooms back out to show a smiling Chefone placing his hands on his hips. The unexpected sound of a small banging noise just out of sight below makes Chefone look to his right: The pool cue he leaned against the table has slid off on its own volition and hit the floor.

COMMENT: I wonder if the pool cue falling to the floor was cinematically deliberate or not? In either case, it is a brilliant, subtle moment as Chefone tries to maintain the appearance of control and this otherwise minor and wordless event betrays him, even if his audience is not initially aware of what has just occurred.

The scene changes to a group of passengers in a bar celebrating Chefone’s news. As videos of colorful and noisy fireworks explode across large screens in the background, people are drinking, dancing, and playing games. They are feeling happy and hopeful for the first time in years.

6:e året (Year 6) – Spjutet (The Spear)

COMMENT: This title card is the only place in the film that the probe is referred to as The Spear (in Swedish, Spjutet). Otherwise, it is called the probe and variations thereof, but never once as The Spear. That term is reserved for the Martinson poem and then only in the relatively short but potent Canto 53. Further discussions on what the Spear/Probe is and what it means in both mediums is to be found in the essay section titled Meaningless or Meaningful? The Multilevel Nature of the Probe/Spear.

We are shown a section of the exterior of the Aniara, for which again one might be forgiven if they thought they were observing an office building at night.

In this particular area of the massive vessel, there is a long row of rectangular windows lit from the inside with a bluish glow. In six of these center windows, we can just make out one silhouette each.

Directly below these windows, six large grappling claws with active searchlights in their centers emerge from a row of openings. The claws move away from the ship parallel to each other, attached to long flexible cables. As the devices move further into space, the three talons on each claw flower open.

The claws are being operated by the owners of those silhouettes: Six young people standing in front of those windows are manipulating them with small hand controllers. Wearing headsets with microphones, this probe capture team is going through a training exercise, practicing the grappling of the approaching mystery object detected months earlier. The kids, given call signs of A-1 through A-6 for this operation, are led by an older male officer called the Chief Engineer.  

COMMENT: In the film subtitles translating from Swedish to English, this man in charge is labeled Male Pilot when he is speaking, but in fact he is the ship’s Chief Engineer, played by actor Peter Carlberg (born 1950). This character has a much larger role in the 2018 film in terms of screen time than his mentions in the 1956 poem, although an entire canto is dedicated to him for his talent and service in the latter work.

The claw controlled by A-2 starts to wobble. It quickly collides with the other claws to its right, getting entangled in their cables.

“Damn it! What are you doing?” the Chief Engineer shouts in anger. “Want to be stuck here for the rest of your lives?!”

The man orders the simulation to be stopped.

“You just shattered the probe and tore a hole in the craft,” the Chief Engineer chastises A-2 in front of everyone. “We’re all dead. God help us.” The officer stalks away in frustration.

MR is in the same room with the capture team: She tries to soothe the situation.

“We just need to keep practicing,” MR recommends to the young men and women.

Sadly, the Chief Engineer is not done with his harsh commentary.

“And you’re supposed to be our best? Unbelievable,” he insults the whole crew. “Do it again! Goddamn it!”

Mercifully, our scenery switches to the day of the Aniara encountering the “emergency fuel probe” as Chefone called it. 

MR and Isagel’s child, now a toddler, walks along a wood-paneled corridor, cooing happily. His parents watch the young boy as they follow after him. Isagel smiles at her son, while MR looks around with an expression of concern on her face. They reach their child and Isagel picks him up, playfully tossing the toddler into the air a few times.

Chebeba meets up with the couple, looking a bit disheveled and tired. MR tells their babysitter it is “not okay to be this late today,” for which the woman apologizes while taking the boy. MR and Isagel then head off for their respective duties as part of the probe encounter and recovery effort.

Elsewhere in the massive ship, people are milling about an open public area, watching and waiting for the probe to arrive. The Astronomer, Roberta Twelander, is among the passengers excitedly talking about her discovery. She is neatly dressed in her uniform: The Astronomer is also clearly sober and shines with a renewed enthusiasm.

The Astronomer begins talking to two young women in her sphere of influence. They politely inform the scientist that they do not understand her Swedish and only speak English, to which Roberta immediately accommodates them about what will soon happen with the approaching probe.

Isagel is seen by herself staring out a large window as Chefone gets on the PA system. She is not quite in her officer uniform yet.

“This is your Captain Chefone,” he informs the entire ship. “We will soon begin docking, so we ask you to return to your cabins.”

As the passengers obey him en masse, Chefone explains why they need to secure themselves.

“To slow down the probe, artificial gravity levels may have to be increased up to seven or 9 g.”

We are taken to the probe reception team, which includes MR, who are wearing full body light blue hazmat, or hazardous materials, suits. The group lays face up on the hard deck of the receiving area to better deal with the predicted increased gravitational forces. This team is led by the Chief Engineer, who bears a crucifix: He crosses himself before laying back.

Thin rows of blue light emanate from the Aniara towards the approaching craft, spreading a shimmering halo of blue-white light. The cylindrical probe arrives and enters the much larger ship’s extended artificial gravity field, giving the strange vessel an elongated appearance as it passes through.

Once the Aniara’s gravity levels are neutralized, the blue halo disappears. On cue, the six grappling claws exit the ship and smoothly glide towards the probe, monitored by the officers on the bridge, who are strapped into their seats.

Just seconds apart, the half-dozen metal hands seize on to the object, dimmed in appearance by the surrounding darkness of deep space. Secured onto their target, the claw cables tighten, and the probe is carefully reeled into the Aniara.

From a viewscreen, the reception team watches the probe being delivered on a wheeled platform into the cargo hold. The team enters the hold from a hatchway; as a further precaution, they are now wearing breathing masks. 

At last, we clearly see what has held the attention and hopes of the Aniara passengers through the last year, thanks to the bright fluorescent lights of the holding bay…

The probe is a long silver metal object with a pointed nosecone, thin seamed sectioned areas spread evenly along its body, and no visible signs of either identification markings or any damage. As Isagel had stated fourteen months ago, the probe is 100 meters long and two meters wide, or 328 feet long and 6.5 feet wide, for those still unaccustomed to the metric system.

COMMENT: For a comparison, this probe is only a matter of yards shorter than the length of the real Saturn 5 rocket that took humans to the Moon with the Apollo program: That rocket was 363 feet, 8 inches long, or almost 111 meters. For decades, the Saturn 5 ranked among the largest and most powerful rockets ever built by humanity. One cannot help but wonder why someone built such a relatively large vessel, for what purpose, and how it ended up in the depths of space in the vicinity of the Aniara.

he mysterious probe/spear sitting in a large cargo hold of the Aniara after its successful capture. Will it be the salvation of the desperate passengers and crew that Captain Chefone promised months earlier? This is Aniara: Take a guess.

The team walk along the length of the probe, inspecting its hull. Then the men and women stop at a certain point along the vessel to set up their analytical equipment to start examining their visitor. One person uses a special hand-held device to scan the hull for radiation, projecting a small blue grid of light as it moves across the probe’s surface.

As one team member attempts to drill into the probe’s metal hull, the team leader reports out loud that they are “only getting a read on the cosmic radiation” – likely from exposure to cosmic rays traveling through space – and not any ionized particle energy transmissions from inside the vessel. This is what they would likely be detecting if the probe contained nuclear fuel rods, as they all hope.

“Listen up!” the Chief Engineer calls out. “Pack up our analytical instruments, all of them. We need to report to Chefone now.”

The members of the team obey their leader – except for The Astronomer, who is still busy looking at something through a microscope.

“You, too! Hey!” the leader shouts at The Astronomer as the rest start walking away. “We need to report to the Captain.”

“Quiet, I’m busy,” the scientist responds, without even bothering to look up from her microscope. 

The Chief Engineer becomes insistent, but MR steps in.

“Leave her. She’s more useful here.”

The rest of the team leaves. One of MR’s students, a young man with a crewcut named Tivo, stares at The Astronomer as he walks behind and past her.

We meet up with the reception team in that small conference room where Chefone apparently prefers to meet with his officers. 

“Neither the initial spectral analyses nor the goptic-STEM could determine the elemental composition,” explains the Chief Engineer about the probe. 

Tivo, who is sitting next to the probe team leader at the conference table, speaks up next.

““It’s not necessarily an issue,” Tivo adds. “I mean, our method of measuring may be… out of date.” MR, sitting on the other side of Tivo, nods in agreement.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have said it’s a rescue probe?” The Intendent offers to his superior.

“Have you seen what that information has done?” counters Chefone. “How motivated everyone has become. We should have said it was coming long before we even knew it was coming!”

Chefone then focuses his attention back to the team leader.

“So, we’re not ruling out that it can contain fuel?” he asks the older man.

“Absolutely not,” the Chief Engineer responds, taking off his glasses. “Probably the material itself can be turned radioactive… though we don’t know exactly how. But we’ll find a solution.”

Miracle and Chance

We travel next to a very different scene and a brief time later: A miniature golf course with a very artificial background, complete with equally artificial birdsong to roughly simulate terrestrial nature. MR is sitting on the ground as she plays with her toddler while Isagel watches them seated in a chair. The two women also spend a happy intimate moment together as a couple.

Their family time complete, MR, Isagel, and the child in the pilot’s arms are walking towards a restaurant. MR sees The Astronomer sitting at the bar holding a glass with alcohol, her head on the counter. 

COMMENT: I caught another brief continuity error in this scene: At the bar, The Astronomer has her chin resting on the bar counter in closeup. However, right before and after this view, when we see The Astronomer at some distance when MR is first approaching her, the scientist has her head up and is leaning it against her left hand. The scene changes here are too quick for The Astronomer to have changed her positions so fast.

“I need to get her home,” says MR to Isagel about her former cabinmate.

“Of course,” Isagel replies and starts walks off with their son, who runs slightly ahead of her.

As MR approaches The Astronomer, it is obvious that the older woman has taken up drinking again.

“Hello? Time to go home?” MR says encouragingly to her friend.

The Astronomer looks up first at the Mimarobe and then to her receding toddler, smiling at the sight.

“How’s his vocabulary coming?” the scientist asks of MR’s child. “Is he learning anything? Has he mentioned spiral galaxies?”

Staying focused, MR tries to escort The Astronomer out of the bar.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“No,” The Astronomer balks. “Why?”

“We need to get to work in a few hours. It’s important!” answers MR.

“It’s a goddamn waste of time,” returns The Astronomer, who then turns to a random male passenger sitting near her at the bar.

“Hey!” she shouts to the patron. “Do you believe in the probe?” The man just stares at The Astronomer.

“Cut it out!” demands MR. “You can’t act like this in public! Come!”

Taking The Astronomer by the arm, MR is able to escort the inebriated scientist out of the bar. It is then that we notice how far The Astronomer has relapsed: She is not wearing any pants, only some black underwear covered by fishnet stockings.

COMMENT: As one reviewer of Aniara said, it is both amazing and amusing that the alcohol has managed to last after all this time with so many people onboard from what was supposed to be a three-week trip. Unless someone has figured out how to distill new batches of these liquids from the algae? 

Sometime later back at the probe, we see the investigation team still trying to wrest secrets from the object. The once pristine hull of the probe is now marred with several circular scars where the team tried to drill through its skin, presumably without success.

“Let’s take a twenty-minute break,” declares the Chief Engineer. No one argues with him as they abandon their work stations.

MR tells the team leader that the probe “is a revolutionary discovery” whatever else may come from their efforts. 

“It’s a miracle,” the Chief Engineer agrees. “If only we could extract some data.”

MR sweeps up some shattered glass created by several dark brown test tubes that were accidentally dropped on the deck earlier. 

Having heard their conversation, The Astronomer walks up to the Chief Engineer and MR.

“Did you say it was a miracle?” the scientist inquires. “Don’t you know that ‘miracle’ and ‘chance’ come from the same source?”

COMMENT: Although I could find no linguistic evidence that the words “miracle” and “chance” come from the same source, this line of thought by The Astronomer is taken from Canto 47 of the Martinson poem: 

A philosopher, or “numerosopher” as author Martinson cleverly calls him, of “number-groups” and a “mystic of the aleph-number school” brings data cards to Isagel to feed into the ship’s computer, “the Gopta-works”, the results of which are thus…

The question dealt with “rate of miracle”

in the Cosmos mathematically conceived.

It seems to coincide so much with chance

that chance and miracle must have one source;

one answer seems to do for either force.

And Dr. Quantity (we use that phrase)

makes a silent bow, resigned to grief,

and tiptoes down Aniara’s passageways.

The numerosopher was searching for what he hoped was a hidden design and therefore meaning in and of the Cosmos. He has hardly been alone in this endeavor: Pythagoras of Samos (circa 570 to circa 495 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher (the first man to give himself this title) who made many mathematical and scientific discoveries (or perhaps his contemporary colleagues or earlier wise men were the ones who deserve the real credit) but then went beyond into metaphysics, using math to find deeper patterns in nature, which may or may not have actually existed. 

The many teachings of Pythagoras influenced such notables as astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) whose studies of the heavens brought him to conclude among other things that God was the Ultimate Geometer and that the planets moved in elliptical solar orbits that made harmonic musical patterns, the “music of the spheres.” Another was Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727) who used mathematics to find numerical “codes” or messages from God in the Bible. You can read more about this aspect of Newton’s life and work in the section of this essay titled Aniara… the Comedy Series about the television series Avenue 5.

Sadly, for the Aniara’s resident philosopher, his computations of universal miracles and chances concluded that they both came from the same source, where “one answer seems to do for either force.” In existentialism, since everything is already considered an absurdity and a product of chance, any and all aspects of life which merely exist can be declared a miracle. Thus, the inability for us to tell the difference between the two concepts.

As The Astronomer speaks, she briefly grasps the worn silver crucifix chained around the Chief Engineer’s neck.

“Okay, that’s great,” interjects MR, trying to avoid the confrontation she sees coming.

The Astronomer dismisses her friend and colleague with a handwave and continues focusing her conversation on the team leader.

“That thing showing up has nothing to do with us,” she declares. “It’s chance. Devoid of any meaning.”

The scientist looks at the crucifix around the older man’s neck and grabs it again, holding it up to his face.

“What’s this?” The Astronomer asks, knowing full well what it is. “What is this thing? You think it’ll save you?” she says with a mocking laugh.

The Chief Engineer becomes very agitated with The Astronomer and tries to pull away from her.

“Let go!” he demands, his aggressive side rising to the surface.

“So hit me!” The Astronomer dares him.

MR tries to physically intervene, but the two adversaries remain focused on each other.

“Why don’t you hit me?” The Astronomer demands again. They start to struggle, and the Chief Engineer does attempt to strike her. The scene is cut away before we see any more of this particular breakdown in order.

We Came from Earth, from Dorisland

Tensions among the residents of the Aniara are also brewing in other areas of the ship: Just outside the probe holding area, two ship officers are trying to restrain a small mob of passengers who are frustrated from receiving no news regarding the probe and are demanding answers. One person even asks why the ship hasn’t turned around yet, as Chefone had clearly and deliberately said in his announcement that the vessel was an “emergency fuel probe.”

One man breaches the restriction rope and is tasered by the woman officer. The man falls to the deck, screaming in pain. Surprised at this, the woman declares aloud to her partner that the taser’s power level “wasn’t even cranked up that high!”

The male officer wildly waves his taser at the rest of the encroaching mob, threatening to use his weapon on them. The passengers back up in fear, not wanting to join the man still writhing on the ground from his “encounter” with the taser.

Returning to the focus of this agitation, we find The Astronomer seemingly asleep against a column in the probe holding bay. She is now wearing a dark green sweater over the top half of her protective blue suit. 

With the sound of drilling in the background, Chefone and The Intendent walk up to the scientist, who is unaware and uncaring of their presence.

“What are you doing?” Chefone demands of The Astronomer, who remains sitting on the floor with her eyes closed and doesn’t bother to answer him.

“You’ll be receiving an award for your discovery tonight,” Chefone informs The Astronomer.

At this news, the scientist becomes a bit more alert. 

“Award?” she asks. “So, you’re going to use it as a prize?”

“You’re not going to spread any fear,” Chefone warns her. He then turns to the rest of the team.

“Listen up,” orders Chefone. The entire team stops what they are doing and looks at their captain.

“We’ve all had high hopes for this object,” Chefone begins. “And until we have certainty, we don’t say anything. The last thing we want is for people to lose hope. So tonight, I’ll say everything is going as planned. And we’ll need to present a united front. Is that clear?”

The team nods in agreement with Chefone, including MR. 

The Astronomer gets up of the deck, groaning in the process of having to move. 

“We are in a sarcophagus… a coffin,” she declares defiantly. “That’s all we know with certainty.” The scientist starts to walk away from Chefone and the rest of the probe team.

Chefone is furious with The Astronomer’s blatant insubordination.

“I won’t have that tone!” Chefone shouts after her.

“I won’t have any hypocrisy,” The Astronomer fires back, not even bothering to turn around as she continues to leave the holding bay.

“You’re not spreading any rumors this time!”

Chefone grabs a taser from the holster of the fellow officer nearest to him and shoots The Astronomer in the back. The woman cries out only once from the impact of the electrified darts and then collapses to the deck with a heavy thud. The Astronomer lies still. 

Everyone freezes in shock at what has just occurred. Even Chefone doesn’t respond at first. Then The Intendent and another burly officer pick up The Astronomer and remove her from the hold, carrying her limp form past the probe and the scientist’s one-time hope.

Having died from the effects of the tasering, The Astronomer is given a funeral service. Her body lays wrapped in a white sheet upon a large table draped in a black cloth. At each corner of this table on the floor stands one tall, lit candle. A selection of people surrounds the scientist in mourning: These include MR, Isagel, and Chefone.

With a large image of The Astronomer projected on one wall of the room, MR reads a poem as part of her eulogy to her coworker and friend. It is, in fact, a verbatim reading of Canto 79 from the Martinson poem.

“I knew she wrote…” MR begins. “But not that she wrote poems.”

MR reads aloud The Astronomer’s work from her bound paper journal:

We came from Earth, from Dorisland, the gem in our solar system.

The only orb where life could grow, a land of milk and honey.

Describe the landscapes we found there, the days which there dawned.

Describe the man who sewed the garb for the funeral of his spawn, till God and Satan hand in hand through a ravaged, poisoned land took to hills, fled up and down from man: A king with ashen crown.

As the last line of the poem is being read, The Astronomer’s shrouded mortal coil is shown being ejected from the Aniara into space. From a distance, her remains resemble a small bright dot moving through the starry void. 

MR watches The Astronomer silently drift off in the direction of the Milky Way center. The ultimate fate of the older woman is unknown, but she herself would probably have said it doesn’t matter. At the very least, The Astronomer will truly be among the stars she knew and loved, and not left in the ship she ruefully called “a sarcophagus… a coffin.”

COMMENT: The Astronomer’s funeral is borrowed from the Chief Engineer’s singular event described in Canto 78. A valued and popular person in the epic poem, the Chief Engineer requested that his body be sent from the Aniara in a “rescue-module” towards the bright blue supergiant star Rigel, also known as Beta Orionis, the foot in the constellation of Orion the Hunter.

It is interesting to realize the following facts about Rigel, even though this BA-class sun is not the apparent celestial direction that The Astronomer was sent in the film: 

The star type that Rigel belongs to is noted for burning very brightly and being relatively short-lived compared to other stellar classes. Perhaps this is why Martinson chose Rigel, to reflect both the vaunted life of the Chief Engineer and the human species overall, for compared to the age of the Cosmos, we have very brief lives that often shine for a bit, then burn out much too soon. 

The ancient Egyptians believed that Rigel was the bright star which guided the souls of the departed to Osiris, their god of the underworld and rebirth, where the deserving ones would attain eternal life. Martinson not only peppered his poem with names from mythological deities such as those from ancient Egypt, he also felt, as one will find in the last canto, that humanity would only find final peace and redemption in the presumed realm after this one.

In the film version, the Chief Engineer was one of the few prominent characters who openly displayed his Christian religious belief and not an ancient Egyptian or a ship-born cult.

This is Our Punishment

After the funeral, we find MR in her bathroom, looking rather disheveled. She grabs a small white square among a few others on a small purple rectangular plate, perhaps one of the job assignment cards given to her and Isagel when they were released from the ship’s brig. The little white square has a blue dot in its center, a hallucinogenic narcotic which the poem calls opium. MR puts it in her mouth and wipes her nose.

MR stares into the bathroom mirror. The drug causes the Mimarobe to see things: First, a vision of The Astronomer, alive and standing in a forest in winter: She has a knowing smile on her face. Then suddenly, the surrounding trees are burning and melting.

We see that Chebeba and Daisi Doody have joined MR and Isagel in their quarters; all are getting high off that drug.

Chebeba says aloud what she remembers about one of the many disasters that befell the planet Earth; perhaps the one which left her scarred.

“It was during autumn time. Stones were glazed. All that could burn turned to ash.”

“This is our punishment,’ Chebeba then declares about being trapped onboard the Aniara. “I’m living through my own funeral.” Daisi just laughs at her comments.

Chebeba screams wildly like a banshee: This awakens the toddler, who starts to cry from the commotion. As Isagel tries to console her young son, she warns their sometimes babysitter.

“If you’re going to scream, you need to leave!”

Chebeba fluctuates between laughing maniacally and sobbing.

“I don’t want to live here,” Chebeba cries.

Daisi has decided to leave this party. MR smiles at Daisi, then gets up off the floor and begs him not to go. 

“Daisi, Daisi Doody!” MR calls out to her brief, one-time partner. “Don’t go! Wait, I’m coming with you. I want to dance!”

The pair arrive at the discotheque where they first met. On the dance floor, Daisi beckons MR to dance with him to a new techno beat, which she accepts. Soon they are dancing wildly together and even making out. We see them through their drug-induced haze.

Outside, the band of the Milky Way seems to have somehow transformed into a strange shade of mauve. However, it is not those stars themselves that have changed: Instead, the tiny black visage of the Aniara is encountering a pale purple, pink-tinged cloud of unknown origin and composition.

The mysterious cloud envelopes the spaceship. Many passengers are simply staring out the windows in wonder at it. One elderly man, wearing glasses but lacking a shirt, starts slamming the palms of his hands frantically against the window, as if he is trying to get the attention of this massive cloud. 

COMMENT: In poem Canto 69, Martinson mentions that some elderly ship passengers were hoping this cloud had come to destroy them all and put an end to their long suffering. Was this man a representation of the desire by those like him wanting their trapped lives to be over?

As this goes on, MR and Daisi are still in the discotheque, dancing to the same techno beat. Suddenly the ship rumbles and vibrates, knocking the couple to the floor. Unafraid and unaware due to their drugged state, the two only laugh together in response.

The cloud now reveals large pieces of debris throughout its foggy interior, which begin striking the Aniara. A pilot officer gets on the PA system and orders the passengers to “return immediately to your cabins and fasten your seat belts!” The gawking crowds begin to run and scream in panic as their vessel shakes even more violently.

In one of the smaller bars, The Intendent is ordering the people around him to get back to their cabins and buckle up. The fellow we saw much earlier in their voyage who was wearing the man-sized duck costume – and still is, only he has unzipped himself out of the top half – comes up to the tall officer and asks him what is happening.

“The bow shock is killing all our equipment,” The Intendent responds, then pushes the man out of the bar with the words “Run… birdie!”

We witness the passengers who could not make it back to their cabins in time being thrown about the corridors and down stairwells. 

In the discotheque, Daisi Doodi is flung across the room and slams against a wall, where he falls to the floor unmoving. At that moment, the passing cloud disappears and the Aniara stops shaking.

Already on the floor, MR slowly gets up: With an expression of awareness and realization on her face, she runs out of the dance hall and unsteadily half-crawls up some enclosed stairs, where an officer lays face down unmoving and an alarm klaxon blares repeatedly in the background.

COMMENT 1 of 2: While we learn almost nothing about the composition of this cloud in the film, Martinson’s poem describes it in Canto 69 as a “fog-bank” and “a cosmic sand-cloud” composed of “cosmic granules or of ice” that had been traveling for eons as “an everlasting snow/ floating around for several billion years/ and searching for its mount/ to settle on…” 

COMMENT 2 of 2: Of the five real deep space probes we have sent into the interstellar regions since the 1970s, none have encountered any type of large particle cloud of the kind the Aniara came across, if such objects even exist. However, space itself is vast and there is still so much we do not know about even the nearer realms just beyond our Sol system. To give one relevant and recent real-world example:

In late 2023, the New Horizons probe, which made the first flyby mission of Pluto and its moons in 2015, reported detecting an unexpected increase in free-floating dust far beyond the planetary edges of our Sol system, in the region of space where the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO) dwell. While these dust grains are certainly not big enough to disrupt the spacecraft, such scientific evidence gives us more proof that we are only beginning to learn what exists in the wider Milky Way galaxy.

She Calls Out to Me

MR rushes into her cabin, where she finds her toddler calmly sitting in his playpen and drinking from his bottle. Isagel is nearby, wearing her pajamas and perched up in the bottom arcing curve of one of their room windows, just staring into space. 

MR first cradles the head of her son, then almost crawls over to her partner, kissing and hugging Isagel while staying on her knees, apologizing profusely for running off with Daisi.

Isagel continues to focus out their window. Then she says something strange.

“She calls out to me.”

MR sits back on her legs, perplexed.

“Who?”

“She cries out to me,” answers Isagel “but she calls me by another name.”

“Listen to me, Isagel,” says MR. “You’re high. But you’ll come down.”

Just then the young boy calls out “Mama” and MR turns her attention to him, embracing their son and laughing a bit in relief. Isagel remains at her vigil by the window.

After the Storm

We then get an involuntary “tour” of the state of the Aniara after the cosmic particle storm…

On the concourse, rows of white bedsheets cover the bodies of the many victims of the encounter laid to temporary rest there. On a nearby bench, Chefone and the Chief Engineer sit together, surveying the aftermath. Chefone’s right arm is in a sling. 

“Make sure to gather sheets… and clothes,” Chefone orders to the Chief Engineer of the sight before them; he gets up from the bench and responds with a simple “Yeah.”

The Chief Engineer walks over to the nearest body and lifts up its covering sheet. He discovers The Intendent, staring straight ahead at nothing and crowned with a bloody head wound. Another sheet removal reveals the mortal coil of the young student Tivo, whose eyes also remain open.

Our cinematic tour takes us to the holding bay, where the once hoped-for probe now sits in semi-darkness, clearly abandoned. Its shiny metal hull is now dirty and scarred with multiple circles where the probe inspection team tried to wrest its interior secrets. Even the deck below this mystery object is covered with various debris.

We see what happens with the bedsheets and clothes collected by the Chief Engineer from the cloud victims: A representative washing machine is shown dutifully cleaning some of the clothes and sheets, where they are then dried, pressed, and folded by at least two women attendants. Little can be wasted now.

QUESTION: Were the bodies from the particle cloud incident merely dumped unceremoniously naked into deep space, without even so much as a sheet to shroud them in? Considering how their clothes and the sheets were salvaged due to need, plus the fact that the surviving passengers have been subsisting on reconstituted algae for years, I toyed with the idea that some of the dead may have ended up being consumed rather than given wholly to the void: The survivors have undoubtedly been desiring a change of fare for quite some time, and, as there have been no views or even mentions of any gardens or livestock onboard the vessel, I had to wonder if at least some of the passengers considered it. 

There are solid examples from real life where people on various ill-fated voyages resorted to cannibalism when their situation became desperate. For the record, I could find no mention of such an act in the epic poem, either after the storm or anywhere else in the work. This is a bit surprising, as Martinson did portray some of the passengers performing rather barbaric acts that were not transcribed into the film, such as human sacrifices, and I had to wonder if cannibalism might be among them.

We find ourselves back in the old Mima Hall where MR and two young assistants are finally able to work on building the beam screen. MR’s toddler, whose name is never revealed to us, is also there so she can keep watch on him. 

The young boy is naturally interested in what his mother is doing, but she asks him to go play with his toys. Instead, the child grabs a black cylinder off a work bench next to the beam screen device. The cylinder slips from his little hands and falls to the floor, causing the toddler to reach for it.

“No, no, no!” MR shouts to her son, whisking the device away from him. “You cannot play with that! It’s very dangerous.”

The startled boy starts to cry. MR apologies to him and cradles him in her arms. Realizing the child may also be tired, she tells her assistants they are going home while praising them for the job they have done so far on the beam screen.

Mother and son reach their cabin, where MR lets the boy activate the door’s automatic lock. As they enter, Isagel gets up from their bed and greets them with a forced smile. She is wearing her silk pajamas.

MR lays down the tired toddler in his playpen and covers him with a blanket before moving off to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

COMMENT: This personal care ritual we have seen MR perform multiple times is a smart habit not only for general dental hygiene, but also for the likely condition that there are no professional dentists onboard the Aniara. However, how long can or did the supply of toothpaste last on the ship, and if it is gone, what are they using for a substitute?

Isagel gets on her knees next to the playpen and looks at her toddler; she is clearly distressed. The pilot rubs her son’s cheek as he sleeps. Then Isagel stands up, looks at the toddler for a bit longer, then crawls back into bed. 

MR watches them through an adjacent bathroom window that looks into the bedroom. She then briefly emerges while still brushing her teeth to tell her partner that she is “on the verge” of making the beam screen work.

“That’s great. Congratulations” says Isagel with a smile but limited enthusiasm.

MR finishes up her dental hygiene and runs out of the bathroom to playfully belly flop on the bed next to Isagel, smiling at her.

“What’s wrong?” MR inquires of her partner, noticing her despondent mood at last.

Looking quietly at MR, Isagel tells he she is “so talented.”

“At brushing my teeth?” MR jokes back.

At that, Isagel smiles and reaches out to rub the corners of MR’s mouth with her left thumb.

“It’s like you can’t be sad,” Isagel tells MR. With that comment, her partner makes an exaggerated sad face, drooping her mouth and chin downwards. This makes MR laugh at her own antics after a moment, as Isagel smiles back and laughs just a bit.

“I admire you. How you persevere,” Isagel tells MR with genuine feeling.

“Wait till you see the result,” MR informs Isagel about the beam screen. “I want you both to be proud of me.”

MR lays her head lovingly against Isagel’s chest. Nearby, in his playpen, their toddler stirs a bit in his sleep.

I Want It to be a Paradise…

We return to the old Mima Hall, where MR and her small staff are readying the beam screen. The former Mimarobe is making adjustments on the projector device.

“Should I go with another image?” MR asks one of her assistants, who is standing next to a small monitor screen on a nearby wall, studying it.

The young woman shakes her head and tells MR that “this one’s great. Really.” MR asks her again and the assistant confirms her statement.

“God, I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” MR says aloud, making some final adjustments. “I want it to be a paradise…”

Finished, MR stands up, giving the equipment one final look over before turning to her assistant.

“Let’s do it,” MR orders. “Turn it on.”

The brunette woman wipes her finger down the wall screen to activate the beam screen. Through the open door of the Mima Hall entrance, they can see a bright green glow coming from the adjacent concourse. The assistant smiles at MR and they both walk out together to see their results.

Just outside the Aniara, two massive panoramas of a beautiful terrestrial waterfall streaming down a rock face border either side of the spaceship, dwarfing it in their size. The projections blot out the surrounding stars with their blue-green glow.

We witness some of the passengers quietly looking in wonder at the sight just beyond their vessel, bathed in its colors: An older man, an elderly woman, and a young mother holding her toddler son.

MR heads back to her cabin. As she walks through a hallway “garnished” with clothes strung across a laundry line and a black trash bag on the floor along her path, MR stops to ask a passenger she sees in a cabin with their door open if they have observed the beam screen image and what they think of it. 

An unseen man responds that “it’s nice”, to which MR naturally agrees. MR informs this person that she can change the images as well before continuing her journey home with a near bounce in her steps.

At her cabin door at last, MR goes to open it to tell Isagel of her good news. However, she has trouble trying to enter her home: The door seems to have a weight on the other side, blocking it.

MR pounds her fist on the door, calling out for Isagel. Finally, MR uses her hip to help force open the thick wooden door just enough so she can slip in. 

Isagel is sitting in a slumped stance at the base of the door. A cloth bathrobe belt is wrapped around her neck at one end and the door handle at the other. 

MR screams and swears at Isagel in shock, then lays her on the floor and starts compressing her chest to revive her. Isagel’s open eyes merely stare upwards at nothing. MR leans in to see if Isagel is breathing but receives no response.

Whimpering and panting hard, MR stands up, where she suddenly begins to look around for their toddler. Neither seeing nor hearing him in their bedroom, MR dashes to bathroom, where she discovers that Isagel has drowned their son in the bathtub.

As MR screams and wails in agony, the camera shows four stuffed toy dolls laid out next to each other on their bed, arranged by Isagel as a final act. 

Isagel continues to lay on the floor, staring but not staring at the ceiling, while the unearthly green glow of the beam screen light shines through their circular window.

MR exits the bathroom carrying their child, whom she has wrapped in a towel. She knees next to Isagel and with one hand begins tugging on her companion’s robe, begging her over and over to get up.

10:e året (Year 10) – Jubiléet (The Jubilee)

Four years have passed since MR created the beam screen and then subsequently lost her family. We find Captain Chefone looking at himself in a mirror, wearing his officer’s uniform and preening. Strange throbbing atonal music plays in the background while Chefone gets ready.

In the Light Year Hall, there are a scattering of passengers in attendance in the audience seats radiating out and upwards from the stage. A DJ is at the podium operating some controls: He is the source of the subdued techno tones that border on being white noise. MR is sitting there with the other people, alone, staring ahead without enthusiasm.

There is a final tone, and the DJ finishes his musical performance to scattered applause. On cue, Chefone walks out onto the stage from a side door. The Aniara name and logo in white swirls about on the large dark screen behind the two men, each letter of the ship’s name spinning once in turn repeatedly.

Standing in the middle of the stage, his figure enhanced by a distant spotlight, Chefone looks at the silent reduced gathering.

“Punt and Tyrus,” he begins, without extrapolation. “Vinland and Da Gama. NASA and Aniara. We are pioneers who have gone further into space than anyone before us. That’s worth a round of applause.” 

The audience responds as asked, although their clapping is somewhat weaker for Chefone and his words than what they had just given to the DJ with his performance. The camera also fixes on MR, who remains still in her seat, although the facial muscles in her jaw twitch reflexively when Chefone says the name Aniara.

COMMENT 1 of 3: Chefone is referring to the following in his speech: Punt was an ancient African kingdom which the equally ancient Egyptians sent multiple trade expeditions to. Tyrus was the chief city of the ancient Phoenicians, who were renowned for being great maritime sailors and explorers. Vinland was the name given to the modern Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and New Brunswick, which the Vikings explored and briefly settled around 1000 CE. Vasco da Gama (circa 1460–1524) was a Portuguese explorer who became the first man to successfully navigate a sea route from Europe to Asia. NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the American space agency founded two years after the release of Martinson’s epic poem. I am pretty certain I do not have to explain his mention of Aniara here at this point.

COMMENT 2 of 3: These first four names come directly from poem Canto 99. However, there they were spoken not by Captain Chefone, but rather an unnamed passenger gone insane, who is giving a final lecture to those few survivors around him. Both men attempt to put an optimistic spin on their deep space journey, although the mad man soon openly realizes this fact has no substantive meaning to what is left of their lives – and not just because most of his audience is quite literally dead.

COMMENT 3 of 3: I find it rather interesting that the three places and one name mentioned by Martinson and repeated in the film all involve exploration that was primarily conducted for trading goods and territorial expansion. In other words, they existed for and due to material gain, as opposed to exploration primarily for the advancement of human knowledge and enlightenment. 

Aniara was built not to explore space, but rather to rescue portions of the human population from a ravaged Earth to live on Mars. The passengers onboard are civilian refugees, not trained astronauts. No scientific data from their journey into the far reaches of space would be returned by the crew, and not just because they were technically unable to communicate with the rest of humanity back in the inner Sol system. 

Perhaps this is why Chefone did not mention any of the first five space probes to leave our Sol system and enter interstellar space: Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizons. They were and are missions of pure science and technology that have returned priceless in situ data about regions of the Final Frontier we would have known far less about otherwise.

These robotic vessels also managed to function for decades beyond their initial designs, largely due to being both non-organic and nuclear-powered. Perhaps Chefone realized that bringing them up could possibly demoralize his passengers even more if they made any reflective comparisons between those probes and themselves.

Chefone follows his own request and claps along with the crowd, putting his hands together a bit longer and louder after everyone else has stopped.

“I would now like to hand out an honorary medal,” Chefone announces next. “May I ask you, MR, to come up on stage?”

MR gets up from her seat and steps down some adjacent stairs towards Chefone. The audience applause for the former Mimarobe is even weaker than their previous hand claps.

MR stands before Chefone. He takes out a large round medal attached to a blue sash from his right jacket pocket and places it around MR’s neck. She gives him a brief nod of acknowledgement in return. Chefone swivels back to the gathered audience to speak again.

“MR is awarded the Aniara Honorary Medal for her beam screen, which has helped us remember our origins and transported us to glittering waterfalls, wonderful pine forests, and glorious summer meadows.

This scene of MR being given an award for her beam screen by Captain Chefone says all you need to know how things are going with the remaining folks aboard the Aniara ten years into their “mission” through deep space.

As Chefone talks, MR looks over Chefone: A rough yellow tourniquet is wrapped around his right wrist and hand. Dried blood stains much of it. 

The audience makes one more effort at applause as Chefone ends his little speech. 

QUESTIONS: Who physically made this “honorary” medal for MR? Does this Aniara have the facilities for such metal work and design? It could, I suppose, as even our International Space Station (ISS) possesses a 3-D printer to make certain tools and parts for the resident astronauts. 

Does the medal actually commemorate what Chefone is using it for (our brief views of this object show nothing clearly beyond its shape and color)? Does any of this really matter at this point in the story? Is this also a strong sign that Chefone and whoever is left in authority have given up on the younger students figuring out ways to get back to Mars, now that the beam screen is allowed?

COMMENT: Our collective society has an entire historical industry around awards for nearly every conceivable achievement, for we so crave to be recognized and rewarded by others. Aniara has shown the ultimate hollowness of these awards: They are little more than self-congratulatory actions to make ourselves feel better emotionally and, more importantly, improve our social and material status among the rest of the herd. On a dying spaceship with a slowly expiring crew so far from home without a destination in sight, any award is at best a psychological band aid. Otherwise, it is just a painful reminder of all they have lost that once mattered.

After the ceremony, we see MR walking back with the rest of the crowd down a nondescript corridor. No one is smiling, talking, or interacting in any meaningful way with anyone else. Their actions are reminiscent of the kind one sees in a group of zombies in a typical film of that horror genre. 

COMMENT: I was also reminded of the scenes in the great German science fiction film Metropolis (1927) directed by Fritz Lang (1890-1976), where the working class are shown early on trudging off to and from their strenuous jobs deep under the immense main city, almost as if they are automatons: No facial expressions and no interactions among themselves, just a slow and steady march towards their prescribed fates.

MR enters her now long empty cabin. We see clothes scattered haphazardly about the room. MR halts her steps just long enough to remove the medal hanging from about her neck and lets it drop to the floor with a dull thud. MR then faces her bed and crawls on top of it, where she lays face down and doesn’t move.

As the camera lingers on MR’s prone form, we hear water dripping in the background. The sound is coming from a leaking faucet in the bathroom. Dirty water is seen slowly and steadily trickling down a drain below the faucet. 

We are then shown transparent bags of algae hanging somewhere: It is alarmingly apparent that the algae are no longer green in color and have all gone bad. 

QUESTIONS: Is there no one left who can maintain the Aniara’s water and food supply? Or simply no one on the ship who cares to perform these tasks anymore? What and how are the remaining passengers surviving on? And for how long?

24:e året (Year 24) – Sarkofagen (The Sarcophagus)

As the ever-present Milky Way shines in the cosmic background, the Aniara enters our view in the foreground, as it has often done before. This time, however, the vessel no longer resembles a glowing city at night, for no lights are visible anywhere along its blackened metallic bulk. The beam screen, which once surrounded the Aniara to blot out the stars and that MR was once so briefly proud of, is also gone.

The Aniara is not completely dark, however: Just outside a now desolate interior corridor, there is a white light shining from the entrance to the former Mima Hall. In the room which once housed the spaceship’s AI, we find those who are left of the vessel’s original compliment of eight thousand human souls…

Shrouded in an ashen light, perhaps ten people listen silently to a blind woman speaking as they either sit or lay on the floor. She is most likely the same person we saw during Year 4 who was being pulled by penitent cult members on a former luggage cart.  

What is left of the Aniara passengers sit in what is left of the Mima Hall, almost one-quarter of a century after they left a ruined Earth for what they hoped would be their new home on Mars. MR sits among the survivors as they wait to make their final journey.

“On Earth I saw the light… with my skin,” the blind poet begins. “The vision seared me… my skin. I was blinded by a god. Give us light. Give us light. Give us light.”

Among the survivors we find the former Mimarobe. She has aged since we last saw her fourteen years earlier: MR is barely able to keep her eyes open as the sightless woman begs the Universe for a return of the natural light they once knew. The scene fades on MR’s worn and tired face.

COMMENT 1 of 2: Some of the lines spoken by the blind poet in Year 24 are close to what the same character says in Canto 58 of Martinson’s poem. They also resemble the chants of that other cult we witnessed in the film version twenty years earlier, as they asked for light from the stars to “come closer” to them. 

COMMENT 2 of 2: It is also ironic, expected, and sad that the Aniara has finally become exactly what The Astronomer had predicted in Year 6 and was essentially killed for saying aloud: “A sarcophagus… a coffin.” That anyone has managed to stay alive aboard this vessel for over two further decades, when systems and resources were already in the process of failing years earlier, seems nothing short of a miracle. 

Or is it chance?

5,981,407:e året (Year 5,981,407) – Lyra Bild (Lyra Constellation)

“…with a vessel large enough to contain the necessaries of life, a select party of ladies and gentlemen might start for the Milky Way, and if all went right, their descendants would arrive there in the course of a few million years.” – John Munro, A Trip to Venus (1897)

As the title card makes powerfully clear, an incredibly long time – by human standards, at least, if not cosmic ones – has passed since we were last with the Aniara. 

A brilliant white star glares in the center of our film screen. On the left half of the screen is a smaller shining object, although it is hard to tell if it is another star or a planet. To the right of the star, we can just make out a small black shard heading towards the shining sun: It is the Aniara. Now the vessel is truly dark, for its systems ceased functioning untold ages ago.

In the Year 5,981,407, somewhere in the Lyra constellation, we are almost blinded by a brilliant star with a much dimmer shining object near it. Nearly lost in the glare is a small, dark, and very silent spaceship drifting towards one of this system’s exoplanets.

We return to what was once known as the Mima Hall, lit by that alien sun with a blue-white light streaming in from beyond. On an illuminated sliver of its floor are piles of dust: The ancient remains of the few passengers who sought refuge of a sort with Mima once last time, their wish for sunlight granted at last, though much too late. We wonder if MR is among them.

Above the dust float pieces of the algae that once sustained the crew and passengers. The descendants of these simple creatures could be the only organisms still alive aboard the Aniara after almost six million years, along with various unseen microbes. Their potential survival would have been assisted by the deep space cold permeating the ship. 

The screen is suddenly filled with the visage of an alien planet circling that unnamed star. Unlike the home world of humanity witnessed so very long ago, this globe has green continents and blue oceans. The patches of clouds drifting over its surface are white and calm.

The remains of the Aniara come into view, bisecting the planet from our perspective like a long black spear as it drifts in front of this world before moving over its nightside and disappearing back into the eternal darkness of space. 

The film credits begin to roll up as the camera lingers on the planet, leaving us with a multitude of feelings, thoughts, and questions on all that we have just seen.

Here is a video of the ending of Aniara, including the scrolling film credits

Thoughts on the Final Scene/Canto

To have credits appear at the end of a film listing all those who were part of and worked on it is certainly a standard practice for the cinema. Aniara is certainly no exception to this rule, as you can see in the previous linked video clip.

I think the credits here serve another purpose beyond mere background information: They provide a brief respite of sorts to bring us out of our collective trance as often happens with a film that pulls you in like Aniara. 

We have just experienced almost two hours immersed in a world where Earth has been ruined by a combination of human negligence and arrogance and a group of survivors are stranded in deep space with no hope of rescue, left to live and die after a long period of existential, emotional, and physical suffering – often at their own hands as much as the indifferent Universe.

In the final scenes, we are confronted with an immense stretch of time and a ship of the dead in nearly every sense of the word. All this is contrasted, ironically and even cruelly, with the Aniara arriving at a beautiful-looking alien world that the passengers might have made their new home, only of course it is far, far too late for this. Even this idea is tinged with the thought that if by some miracle the distant descendants of the humans onboard the Aniara had made it to this new planet alive, they might still possess the potential to neglect, abuse, and ultimately destroy their latest home as their ancestors had done with Earth.

The credits help to remind our engaged brain, especially if one sees this film in a darkened theater setting, that Aniara is a work of fiction – that what we saw has not happened in reality, at least not yet. We have been given our blunt existential warning: Now we need to respond accordingly.

The Lyra Constellation and Year 5,981,407

The Year 5,981,407 is an invention of the film. In the poem’s last Canto, number 103, the character of MR says the Aniara traveled to “Lyre’s figure” for “fifteen thousand years.” 

Although we were told the speed of the ship when it left the vicinity of Earth – 64 kilometers per second (kps), which equates to 39.7 miles per second (mps), or almost 143,164 miles per hour (mph) – neither work detailed exactly where the vessel was headed beyond the rather vague destination of the constellation of Lyra the Lyre, a human-created sky boundary where many millions of star systems reside in our galaxy across many thousands of light years.

Thanks to modern astronomical satellites like Kepler, whose examinations included the Lyra region, we do know of many real exoworlds inhabiting that section of space, and those are just a mere fraction of what is likely out there. That the Aniara would encounter any alien planets along its unplanned path even well after five million years’ time is highly improbable but certainly not impossible. 

COMMENT: In an interview from 2019, Hugo Lilja said that the exoplanet in the film was named Kepler and that it “could potentially support life which was only found a few years ago.” Lilja was probably referring to Kepler-62, a K-class star system about 980 light years (9,271,492,818,917,722 kilometers or 5,761,052,865,719,936 miles) from Earth which the Kepler astronomical satellite helped to determine had five worlds circling it in 2013. The outermost of these distant globes might fit the bill for the one depicted on screen. When Harry Martinson released the original poem in 1956, no confirmed exoworlds were known to astronomers.

In this 2018 piece from Popular Astronomy (in Swedish), the filmmakers mention Kepler-62f specifically as the exoplanet the Aniara eventually passes by. They also mention 2014 GM54 (523700) as the Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) the vessel might have been able to get close enough to and use its mass (one reference says it is the size of Connecticut) to slingshot itself back towards Mars

https://www.popularastronomi.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/2018_3_aniara.pdf

Our Milky Way galaxy may have over 400 billion stars and certainly appears crowded when we look towards the center of our stellar island, but the average distances between celestial objects are much vaster than we, who have spent our entire species’ history on a single small planet, can truly comprehend. 

At present, humanity has sent five deep space probes into interstellar space. This was done not as part of any planned missions to that region of the galaxy, but only due to the fact   that their need to reach the various worlds of the outer Sol system well beyond Mars required velocities which would subsequently cause them to escape the gravitational pull of our yellow dwarf star Sol. 

None of these robotic explorers were aimed at any particular star system as part of their missions, as their nuclear power sources will cease to function long before they could reach even the nearest star systems. These galactic ambassadors will pass relatively close to a handful of star systems over the millennia. By close, I mean within a few light years. The odds that any of them might pass an exoplanet as close as the Aniara did, even given a few billion years’ time, are quite low. 

COMMENT: This is why Paul Gilster of Centauri Dreams revisited in December of 2024 a plan he first wrote about in 2015 to intentionally aim the twin Voyager probes closer to certain stars while these machines are still functioning, although the distances will still be measured in light years and the flyby dates in millennia. Until more deep space probes become available, the Voyagers are our best chance to pass relatively near some of our celestial neighbors: The two Pioneer probes have been lost to the void since 1995 (Pioneer 11) and 2003 (Pioneer 10) and New Horizons may still be able to reach another Kuiper Belt object before it too runs out of power.

The details are here:

Interstellar Reprise: Voyager to a Star

The filmmakers of Aniara could have shown the space vessel simply drifting off into the starry void at the end, the final cosmic seal to its ultimate fate. The ship did essentially just that in the final canto of Martinson’s poem. For dramatic purposes, however, that the Aniara encountered what appears to be a habitable planet resembling Earth as it once was does add that final ironic twist to the story, coming much too late for any of the vessel’s passengers and perhaps any other humans left in the galaxy.

As for that specific year number – 5,981,407 – it was primarily selected as the correct period of time the Aniara would need to reach Kepler-62f at the speed it was moving. My other thought is that this number is a fair approximation of how long the ancestors of the human species have existed on Earth, so there is this symbolic element. 

Could the filmmakers have been saying with this number that this is how long humanity will last and the extinction-level end of our species is upon us? Or are they suggesting that our species could exist another six million years or longer if we can learn to coexist and better steward our current planetary home? 

Though we are given no visual evidence whatsoever as to who or what may be on that alien world set before the Aniara, it is not out of the question that the distant descendants of humanity settled there long ago and learned the lessons from their ancestors how to take properly respect and care of a planet. 

This would mean that despite what was done to Earth, the settlers who did make it to Mars managed to survive and thrive well and long enough to reach not only other places in the Sol system, but mount missions to other star systems, including the one we see circling a sun deep in the Lyra constellation. We can even hope that our future children in this reality were able to eventually return to Earth and repair their home world to make it livable again.

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 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 chimes in 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 mysterious vessel bears the scars of the crew’s failed efforts to wrest its secrets.

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 mysterious vessel bears the scars of the crew’s failed efforts to wrest its secrets.[/caption]

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 that medium. 

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.

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 a future humanity or another intelligence descended from Earth could find one of these 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 invaluable.

Earth’s 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’s left of human knowledge and history for either any surviving future generations or ETI with interstellar capabilities – or both. 

Here are the reasons why the probe 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, with those who can migrating to nearby planets which 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. 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 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 even save us perhaps, this would involve a much bigger container. 

That the probe appears to be quite durable, resisting efforts by the probe examination team to penetrate its hull, the vessel may have been designed to withstand not only multiple 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 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.

One thing 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! They 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. [/caption

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 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, they 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 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. 

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2013/01/18/the-last-pictures-contemporary-pessimism-and-hope-for-the-future/

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: He wants his species to be around for a very long time, including long enough to find and open his time capsule effort. 

The same can be said for the producers of the Aniara film: Despite the downbeat nature of their 2018 work, they have stated they actually 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 to change things now. These artists know the best way 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 the 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 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 high contrast with the poem, Canto 6 reveals that the Mima can detect many alien worlds with native life forms, including technological civilizations, and presenting the 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.

In fact, there is evidence that the exoplanet the Aniara arrived at in the 5,981,407th year of its journey somewhere 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 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 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 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 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 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 or perhaps even deciding 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 party. 

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 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

The 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 a 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 it.

The ros 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 commenting 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 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, it might even 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 fast enough 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 might still imagine 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 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 for 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 out of scientific curiosity, but also to see if the object might be some kind of threat or 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, forcing them off course, but putting them instead on a parallel 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, 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 “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 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 it were some kind of threat, the crew was unable to release whatever was inside and 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:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/

 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 they explored 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 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, if it has one at all?

Any good art student will tell you that art can and often does possess more than one true meaning and purpose. Some artists even actively discourage definitive interpretations of their creations, as they can dilute the higher purpose and quality of their work. To give just two examples:

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: “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 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!

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 see 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 undoubtedly 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 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 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 celestial 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). As should be well known by now, 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, which like the spear in the poem flew past 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 fly through our system. 

Many have debated about its 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.

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: MR 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 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 “monster” is the vast, indifferent Universe, which humanity can barely comprehend, let alone 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 a defective computer screen. 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.”

Deeper Meanings for Aniara 

Early on in this essay, I wrote an introductory section on the meaning of the name Aniara. I did this not only for the most obvious reason – it is both the name of the film and the spaceship where the plot takes place – but also because the word is not a familiar one for English speakers. It also turns out that Aniara does not have either a simple origin or a single reason for being the word chosen to represent this story.

As I stated in that earlier section, the poet Harry Martinson said that “the name Aniara doesn’t signify anything. I made it up. I wanted to have a beautiful name.” 

I believe that Martinson said this in part to let the reader find their own interpretation of the word. In a 2019 article from The New York Review of Books on the poem, opera, and film versions of Aniara, the author Geoffrey O’Brien had this to offer on the subject:

A glossary to the MacDiarmid Schubert translation [from 1963] describes it as a combination of letters, rich in vowels, which represents the space in which the atoms move. The adjective aniaros (fem. aniara) in ancient Greek means sorrowful. Thus, Aniara = the ship of sorrow. When sung by a chorus in Blomdahl’s opera, “Aniara” becomes a wail of lamentation.

An excellent piece from the International Planetarium Society (IPS) published in 1988 and authored by Aadu Ott and Lars Broman which focused on an interpretation of Aniara created for planetariums went into more detail on the topic:

The name Aniara has been interpreted in several different ways. In his earlier poetry Harry Martinson sought a word which could name the strange space in an atom where the electrons moved around. This word later became the space through which planets and stars move. Aniara has also been interpreted from the chemical symbols for argon, one of the elements in air, and nickel, an element in the ground. As the letter a implies a negation, the word Aniara can be imagined to mean not in air and not on Earth; i.e. in empty space. Another interpretation is that the word contains several letters a, as in the word mama. This could be a sign of his lifelong longing for his mother who deserted him.

Finnish literary historian Johan Wrede (born 1935) further explained in a 1997 Swedish edition of Aniara that Martinson was inspired by reading a work from English astronomer Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944) regarding the idea that Aniara means the “name for the space in which the atoms move.” 

Further evidence of Martinson being strongly influenced by Eddington and the scientific discoveries of his era are found in his 1938 essay titled “The Star Song” – which also contains the first time the poet mentions the word Aniara in his writings!

The New York Review of Science Fiction  Issue 353 translated Martinson’s earlier work into English in 2020, which may be read here:

https://www.nyrsf.com/2020/06/harry-martinson-the-star-song.html

The translator Daniel Helsing had this to say about the meaning of the word in his introduction:

“The Star Song” also contains the first known use of the word “aniara.” In a discussion of the inability of ordinary language to capture atomic processes, Martinson refers to a passage in Arthur Eddington’s popular science book The Nature of the Physical World (1929), where Eddington quotes two lines from Lewis Carroll’s [1832-1898] poem “Jabberwocky,” included in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871): “The slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” 

Eddington suggests that this grammatical sounding yet nonsensical language parallels our understanding of the atomic world; we can describe what is going on to some extent using the language of mathematics, but we lack concepts for truly imagining it. 

Martinson follows Eddington in this line of thought, but instead of translating Carroll’s lines directly, Martinson formulates his own version: “de löjande glomenarerna / gölja och vanja genom aniara,” which I have translated as: “the loging clomenares / gole and veineer through aniara.” 

While Martinson scholars have argued that Martinson constructed the word from a Greek word that means “sad” or “despairing,” the first appearance of “aniara” is thus as a nonsense word illustrating the difficulty of understanding the worldview of modern science – which, as it happens, also parallels the confusion aboard Aniara.

Martinson may also have chosen Aniara due to the fact it is a Sanskrit word meaning “Precious Gift of God”. Apparently Aniara is also a Danish word and baby name which supposedly means “With Eight Number People Must Learn How Money Can Be Used for The Greater Good. They Are a Symbol of Infinity, Which Leads to the Next Life.”

The Spiritual Predecessors and Descendants of Aniara

Early on in this essay, I introduced my new term for a particular subgenre of science fiction, which I call Angst Science Fiction, or Angst SF. As I described it, these are stories which are light on the science and technology while leaning heavily towards the social commentary to make a strong contemporary message to their audiences.

Aniara in all its forms is certainly a stalwart member of this class. In terms of film history, the first serious heights for Angst SF cinema in terms of numbers was during the 1960s and 1970s. 

This unsurprisingly coincides with the rise of the counterculture revolution, where youth and other like-minded folks across the planet made a concerted effort to throw off certain traditional values and rituals in the face of a society they saw as heading towards a metaphorical cliff: If an autocratic government backed by misappropriated technologies didn’t strip us of our humanity, then an environment destroyed by pollution and overpopulation might end us outright. Surely the growing possibility for a global thermonuclear war was reason enough to act upon the phrase “Stop the insanity!”

The first Angst SF renaissance dropped precipitously with the arrival of Star Wars in 1977. In the blink of an eye, science fiction cinema went from presenting serious social messages to simplistic symbols of good and evil encased in flashy space battles enhanced by technically advanced and increasingly expensive special effects. 

The general public craved what would soon become a new fictional world saga they could immerse themselves in. After all, the cinema has always been at heart a form of escapism from both the banal and harsher aspects of real life, and the film industry naturally gravitates towards whatever trend will make the most money. 

COMMENT 1 of 2: It is most ironic to note that before Star Wars premiered, few in the industry thought the film would be a success in any form. Holders of this sentiment included its very creator, George Lucas (born 1944). Even toy manufacturers were unprepared for what would become one of their biggest and most lucrative markets in history. It seems dumbfounding in long hindsight but take this as a lesson in how different generational perspectives can be, even those separated by the span of just a few decades.

COMMENT 2 of 2: It has been pointed out that Star Wars did contribute to elevating science fiction into the higher public conscience: I thought 2001: A Space Odyssey had accomplished this feat nine years earlier, but then again Kubrick’s creation lacked space battles, the aliens never showed themselves, there were multiple unanswered questions, and he failed to market any related action figures. Film and television studios also bankrolled and greenlighted members of the genre which might have otherwise languished for years or remained shelved indefinitely without the attention path made by that world from “a long time ago… in a galaxy far, far away.” This may be so, but I also feel in certain respects it came at a cost that derailed and cheapened the more meaningful works for decades. 

Although Angst SF films never died out even during the initial heights of this new franchise, their numbers – which were never large to begin with, but stood out as the standard route for science fiction for a while – dwindled to a relative handful but quite memorable keepers of the flame for the next few decades. Blade Runner from 1982 is one of the better-known Angst SF films which pushed aside the Hollywood trend of the era for big space battles and straightforward – read simple – stories.

Even though the Star Wars franchise is still going strong to this day, thanks to being owned by the Walt Disney Company, and the onslaught of superhero films and television series which blend pop science and the supernatural as each entry sees fit (guess who also owns a huge chunk of that market), there has been another surge in Angst SF – Aniara being a prime example. They may not often garner nearly as much in terms of ratings and box office numbers as their far more public-friendly counterparts, but there is a definite resurgence despite the odds.

I have already mentioned several films which fall into this category, such as Interstellar, where you can find a link to my essay on that work. I will also be entreating you with in-depth looks into several other Angst SF offerings, a few which I only realized were members of this subgenre after the fact!

This section provides insights into a selection of chosen works which are most certainly Angst Science Fiction: The majority take place in outer space and definitely have that existentialist factor. These particular films, television series, and novels have something important to say beyond mere entertainment. Even though many have their flaws, they are worthy of being noticed and examined. Science fiction has been wrongly ghettoized and juvenilized by the literati for too long: I intend to do my part to amend this intellectual travesty here and now.

The First Men in the Moon

It recently struck me that the classic work by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), The First Men in the Moon, published in 1901, was an early Angst SF. Here are the key details to expand upon my notion…

• The main characters are Bedford, a pragmatic English businessman, and Cavor, a scientist of the absent-minded trope type. Their purpose is to represent the two prominent reasons why humanity would want to go to the Moon: To gain riches and resources on the one hand (Bedford) and scientific knowledge for the betterment of all (Cavor).
• Cavorite is the fictional substance which allows these two men to become the first human beings to reach Earth’s natural satellite. In true Angst SF form, cavorite can “negate the force of gravity,” yet the author purposely avoids explaining how this is done. The two men build a large spherical vessel with panels made of this anti-gravity material, whose very nature alone whisks them into space – neither rockets nor massive cannons required. In this venue, cavorite is about as scientifically plausible as a magic carpet.
• Once on the Moon, Bedford and Cavor discover a large and advanced native civilization living in vast underground caverns. These beings, called Selenites, have a society structured like terrestrial hive insects such as ants and bees. Each member is part of a caste which specializes in different specific tasks for the benefit of all.
• The men discover that the primary metal the Selenites use is gold. Naturally Bedford wants to exploit this find.
• While the explorers are on the run from the lunar inhabitants and attempting to find their ship to get home, Bedford has an existential crisis from everything that has happened to them so far. I quote his most interesting and relevant ruminations after this list.
• Eventually Bedford escapes the Moon in their cavorite-powered sphere, while Cavor is injured and recaptured by the Selenites. Bedford is able to return to Earth alone and survives a splashdown off the coast of England. Unfortunately, a curious boy wandering the seashore later finds the sphere unattended and accidentally flies off inside it into space. 
• Bedford makes a personal fortune selling some of the lunar gold he was able to bring back with him. The businessman also writes about his adventures, which are subsequently published in a magazine. This publicity captures the attention of a Dutch electrician, who informs Bedford that he has developed an apparatus which has picked up messages being sent from the Moon via wireless telegraphy. 

• These messages have been coming from Cavor, who is alive among the Selenites and learning about their society. The scientist is allowed by his hosts to radio this knowledge to Earth for anyone who can listen. 
• At one point, when Cavor is given an audience with the Selenite leader called the Grand Lunar and describes humanity to him, the physicist reveals our penchant for war. Understandably, this greatly concerns the Grand Lunar and his subjects, who fear such dangerous humans may follow Bedford and Cavor from Earth to the Moon and cause havoc with their society. The Selenites permanently stop Cavor’s transmissions as he attempts to explain how to make cavorite. 
• We never learn what became of Cavor after this. Bedford, who has been narrating this whole adventure, can only be certain that “we shall never… receive another message from the moon.”

As I mentioned in the list above, there are several chapters in Wells’ novel where the narrator Bedford becomes quite reflective upon his most unusual situation, one we may safely say would not normally be encountered by a typical Englishman of the late Nineteenth Century. 

Separated not only from his immediate companion but also the whole of his species and their home world in a truly alien place, Bedford almost instinctively becomes inward-looking and self-reflective, questioning the meaning and purpose of his entire life and those of his culture.

The following first extensive quote comes from Chapter 19: “Mr. Bedford Alone” when Bedford is attempting to find Cavor and their spaceship, both of which the man has been separated from while escaping the Selenites:

“Why had we come to the moon?

“The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me up there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made simply to go about being safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. Almost any man, if you put the thing to him, not in words, but in the shape of opportunities, will show that he knows as much. Against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and go he must. But why? Why? 

“Sitting there in the midst of that useless moon gold, amidst the things of another world, I took count of all my life. Assuming I was to die a castaway upon the moon, I failed altogether to see what purpose I had served. I got no light on that point, but at any rate it was clearer to me than it had ever been in my life before that I was not serving my own purpose, that all my life I had in truth never served the purposes of my private life. Whose purposes, what purposes, was I serving? … I ceased to speculate on why we had come to the moon, and took a wider sweep. Why had I come to the earth? Why had I a private life at all? … I lost myself at last in bottomless speculations….”

In Chapter 20, “Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space”, our narrator is on his way back to Earth. Alone in his sphere in the immense and indifferent void, Bedford has a series of existential crises where he has doubts about who he is and beyond…

“I can’t profess to explain the things that happened in my mind. No doubt they could all be traced directly or indirectly to the curious physical conditions under which I was living. I set them down here just for what they are worth, and without any comment. The most prominent quality of it was a pervading doubt of my own identity… the doubts within me could still argue: ‘It is not you that is reading, it is Bedford—but you are not Bedford, you know. That’s just where the mistake comes in.’ 

“’Confound it!’ I cried, ‘and if I am not Bedford, what am I?’ 

“But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest fancies came drifting into my brain, queer remote suspicions, like shadows seem from away. Do you know I had a sort of idea that really I was something quite outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out of space and time, and that this poor Bedford was just a peephole through which I looked at life?

“Bedford! However I disavowed him, there I was most certainly bound up with him, and I knew that wherever or whatever I might be, I must needs feel the stress of his desires, and sympathise with all his joys and sorrows until his life should end. And with the dying of Bedford – what then?

“Enough of this remarkable phase of my experiences! I tell it here simply to show how one’s isolation and departure from this planet touched not only the functions and feeling of every organ of the body, but indeed also the very fabric of the mind, with strange and unanticipated disturbances. 

“All through the major portion of that vast space journey I hung thinking of such immaterial things as these, hung dissociated and apathetic, a cloudy megalomaniac, as it were, amidst the stars and planets in the void of space; and not only the world to which I was returning, but the blue-lit caverns of the Selenites, their helmet faces, their gigantic and wonderful machines, and the fate of Cavor, dragged helpless into that world, seemed infinitely minute and altogether trivial things to me. 

“Until at last I began to feel the pull of the earth upon my being, drawing me back again to the life that is real for men. And then, indeed, it grew clearer and clearer to me that I was quite certainly Bedford after all, and returning after amazing adventures to this world of ours, and with a life that I was very likely to lose in this return. I set myself to puzzle out the conditions under which I must fall to earth.”

I am happy to report that the 1964 film version of The First Men in the Moon is easily the best of the few other attempts I have been able to witness at transcribing Wells’ writings into other mediums. 

COMMENT: To be fair, there was an even earlier British adaption of Wells’ novel released in 1919 that has since been sadly lost, like many early silent films stored on their fragile medium. It was the first film fully devoted to the story, as opposed to the classic 1902 French science fiction film titled A Trip to the Moon, which combines elements from both Wells’ story and Jules Verne’s novels From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and its sequel Around the Moon (1870).

Only some promotional materials and one still image are known to exist of this film. According to the plot synopsis, this time Bedford is an outright cad, purposely abandoning Cavor on the Moon to steal the formula for cavorite and make himself rich from it. His plans are thwarted when an engineer named Hannibal Hogben picks up radio messages from Cavor, who denounces his former exploring companion for his treacherous actions and announces he has been accepted by the Grand Lunar as a welcome guest of the Selenites. As a final bit of justice, Cavor’s niece, Susan, whom her uncle had originally wished would marry Bedford, rejects the man and marries Hogben instead.

For more information on this pioneering cinematic work, see here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190514160352/http://old.bfi.org.uk/nationalarchive/news/mostwanted/first-men-in-the-moon.html

The changes that were made from the novel for the 1964 film version work without taking too much away from or otherwise derailing the original story. The plot is framed around a contemporary first manned mission to the Moon supported by the United Nations (UN). Perhaps this was a comment by the film on the real-life Cold War version of the era: The United States and the Soviet Union were competing with each other to place the first human on that distant world before the end of the 1960s, rather than work together and become less threatened by the other in the process. 

On the lunar surface, the international team of explorers find a hand-written letter and a small, tattered flag, the Union Jack of Great Britain. To everyone’s astonishment, the first men to walk on the Moon were not these UN-sanctioned astronauts, but rather two English fellows from the year 1899, a time when humans had not yet flown in heavier-than-air craft, let alone via rocketships!

The authorities soon discover that one of the men who made this incredible trip, a fellow named Bedford, is still alive, so they visit him to get the full story. From here on the film plot is framed around Bedford’s flashback to what took place. 

One change from the novel was the addition of a third member of the lunar expedition: Beford’s fiancé, one Katherine Callender. An accidental astronaut, Katherine has to stay inside the sphere when they land on the Moon, as Cavor had only prepared two deep sea diving suits to allow Bedford and himself to walk on the lunar surface (the suits lacked gloves, however!). Katherine is not completely left out of the adventure, though, as the Selenites later capture her while she is still inside the spaceship and bring them both to their underground civilization for further examination.

Rather than Cavor reporting on his findings of the Selenite society and their leader via wireless telegraph after Bedford had returned to Earth, the scientist’s encounter with the Grand Lunar occurs while all three humans are still on the Moon, in a very effectively eerie scene. Bedford and Katherine eventually escape back to their home world, but Cavor is left trapped on the Moon.

Back to the more recent UN lunar expedition, the astronauts further confirm Bedford’s tales when they discover the remains of the Selenites’ world. The subsurface city is completely abandoned and eventually begins to collapse in their presence, forcing the explorers to retreat to the surface. Bedford adds that Cavor had a cold at the time: This virus subsequently infected and wiped out the Selenites, who would have had no natural immunity against even a common terrestrial disease.

COMMENT 1 of 2: Script writer Thomas Nigel Kneale (1922-2006) said he took the idea of an Earthly germ exterminating the Selenites directly from another famous Wells novel, The War of the Worlds (1897), where invading Martians were defeated by native microorganisms which their alien bodies had no defense against. Kneale did this because in a few years real astronauts would land on the Moon and (presumably) prove that our celestial neighbor had no native intelligences. However – alive, dead, or non-existent – the story still left in the physical evidence that the Selenites did exist and not all that long ago from their time perspective.

COMMENT 2 of 2: When the first three sets of Apollo astronauts landed upon and explored the Moon between 1969 and 1971, they were placed into quarantine right after their splashdowns to guard against the chance they accidentally brought with them some lunar microscopic creatures, which terrestrial life would be defenseless against if they turned out to be volatile. Thankfully – unless you were an astrobiologist – none were found in any capacity, neither benign nor malignant. Even more stringent biological quarantine parameters will be required when the first surface samples and astronauts return from the planet Mars, a world with a much higher probability for active life forms.

In an early and classic presentation displaying the differences between hard science fiction and Angst SF, Jules Verne made it publicly known he was displeased with how Wells used a method for space propulsion that went against the laws of known physics, namely antigravity. 

Granted, Verne’s own design for lofting people to the Moon – a giant cannon buried 900 feet (274 meters) deep in Florida soil with 134.4 US tons (122 metric tons) of guncotton for propellant – turned out to be quite the wrong way to go: The occupants of the projectile named Columbiad would have been crushed flat from the extreme forces of liftoff. As further insult to injury, the vehicle they were riding in would have only gotten a few hundred yards into the air, assuming it survived the explosive force at all.

Nevertheless, Verne based his ideas on his best calculations, utilizing the physics and technologies of his day. To be fair, few in his time saw the rocket as a practical means of sending vessels into space, for they were mainly used as short-distance low-yield weapons and creating fireworks displays for celebrations.

The point is, Verne focused on being scientifically accurate as possible in his stories, excusing the parts where dramatic license was called for. Wells, while keeping his stories grounded in the realm of the possible, was more interested in telling stories with sociological themes than explaining in dense technical detail how two men could reach the Moon, or how a time machine might actually place one in another era, or how a flotilla of Martian war machines crossed the interplanetary gulf to Earth. 

INTERESTING SIDE FACT: In the 1936 British science fiction film Things to Come, based on a story by Wells and who was heavily involved in making this classic bit of cinema, the device for launching two humans to the Moon in the year 2036 was a giant cannon, which was referred to in the film as a space gun and built above ground. It is also surmised that the Martian invasion fleet in The War of the Worlds was sent to Earth by a method very similar to Verne’s subterranean cannon.

And thus was born a Two Cultures-style chasm in science fiction, with one side focusing on the science and the concepts spawned from it, while the other half is essentially Angst SF, where the science and technology is there primarily to launch, carry, and sometimes shield the heart of these stories, which is promoting a contemporary social agenda. Of course, the two side can and do intermix, but how well and how often depends on those involved in the stories. 

There is also the category of space fantasy, where the science is so vague that the plots and their envisioned worlds barely qualify as science fiction and any messages are almost literally black and white in their simplicity. Star Wars is among the most popular examples of this type of story, which in turn was inspired by the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon multi-format serials which came to popular prominence in the 1930s.

For those of you who are interested in the details of Verne’s manned lunar venture – many aspects of which became practically prescient one century later in large part because the man did his homework – see this page:

http://www.astronautix.com/j/julesvernemoongun.html

Woman in the Moon

The early Twentieth Century had two standout genre films which also contrast in their approach to space science (I am not including Metropolis here simply because while it is a standout example of Angst SF overall, there is no space travel involved in the story). They are the German Woman in the Moon from 1929 and the British Things to Come, released in 1936.

Woman in the Moon is a fairly realistic tale of a crewed adventure to the Moon, which as you may have guessed included a woman among its passengers. This film is famous for introducing the countdown during the rocket launch, meant to add tension to the scene and adopted for announcing real rocket liftoffs ever since. 

Woman does have its share of technical flaws, such as the explorers being able to walk on the lunar surface without spacesuits because there is apparently enough air on the Moon for humans to breath (they did bring deep sea diving suits, though, just in case). However, many other parts of this story anticipated real aspects of space travel and the film delights in highlighting them. It helped that Woman had a real rocket expert as a technical advisor, Hermann Oberth (1894-1989).

As with Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, the possibility for large quantities of the element gold existing on our neighbor in space was a high motivating factor to construct and send a mission there. The Apollo missions would later determine that the Moon does possess gold, at least in the traces found from the surface samples returned to Earth. Whether there is enough to warrant the expense and extra hazards of mining the element on the Moon is another matter yet to be determined.

There are some parts of Woman that include Angst SF aspects: The commentary on why humans should explore the Moon (for science or exploitation) and the two main characters who decide to stay on the lunar surface to ensure that their surviving comrades make it back home alive

Things to Come

Things to Come does not deal with space travel until the final acts of the film, which takes place in the year 2036 in the future English city of Everytown. It is definitely a member of the Angst SF family, as the science and technology of sending a crewed ship to the Moon is shown but not discussed in any serious detail: At least it and the other sets are all put together in very stylish retro futuristic art deco. 

The characters debate the merits of space exploration and progress overall, with one side declaring that humanity needs a collective rest after all it has been through: The first parts of Things to Come involve a second World War beginning in 1940 that lasts for over twenty years, devastates the planet, and requires decades to recover from at every level. 

Here is some revealing film dialogue from the anti-progress side by a resident artist who is in the middle of creating a large classical-form sculpture:

The Sculptor Theotocopulos: “Is it a better world than it used to be? I rebel against this progress. What has this progress, this world civilization, done for us? Machines and marvels. They built this great city of theirs, yes. They prolonged life, yes. They’ve conquered nature, they say, and made a great white world. Is it any jollier than the world used to be in the good old days? When life was hot and short and merry and the devil took the hindmost?”

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING NOT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Any non-casual fan of the legendary British comedy group Monty Python’s Flying Circus will be reminded by these words from Theotocopulos of the famous scene in their 1979 film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, where the People’s Front of Judea – certainly not to be confused with the Judean People’s Front – ask themselves what good the conquering Roman Empire of the early First Century CE has ever done for their society. 

To quote:

Reg: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

PFJ Member: “Brought peace?”

Reg: “Oh, peace? SHUT UP!”

For the full scene, see here: 

 Continuing our original dialogue…

Lackey: “All the same, what can we do about it?”

The Sculptor Theotocopulos: “Rebel. And rebel now. Now, now is the time.”

Lackey: “Why now in particular?”

Theotocopulos: “Why, because of this space gun business. Because of this project to shoot human beings at the stars. People don’t like it, shooting humans away into the hard frozen darkness. They’re murmuring.”

Lackey: “They’ve murmured before and nothing came of it.”

Theotocopulos: “Because they have no leader. But now, suppose someone cried, ‘Halt! Stop this progress.’ Suppose I shout it to the world: ‘Make an end to this progress.’ I could talk. Talk. Radio is everywhere. This modern world is full of voices. I’m a master craftsman. I have the right to talk.”

Lackey: “Yes, but will they listen to you?”

Theotocopulos: “They’ll listen, trust them. If I shout, ‘Arise, awake, stop this progress before it’s too late!’”

Later, Theotocopulos does form and lead a mob of anti-progress supporters to the space gun to destroy it and halt all this awful progress, which nevertheless made their collective lives far better than those of their ancestors. When they are told by the pro-progress faction defending the space gun and the lunar mission that they “want to make the world safe for men,” the sculptor has this response…

“How can we do that when your science and inventions are perpetually changing life for us – when you are everlastingly rebuilding and contriving strange things about us? When you make what we think great, seem small. When you make what we think strong, seem feeble. We don’t want you in the same world with us. We don’t want this expedition. We don’t want mankind to go out to the Moon and the planets. We shall hate you more if you succeed than if you fail. Destroy the gun!”

COMMENT: At this juncture, I am reminded of a popular phrase modified from a much older quote: “The meek shall inherit the Earth – the rest of us are going to the stars.”

Earlier in the film, when Everytown was still a post-war barbaric mess, there was a small-time dictator running the place, a warlord named Rudolf. Better known to his minions as The Boss or Chief, he blurted out these particular thoughts regarding progress on different occasions: 

“They don’t print books any more. Who wants books to muddle their thoughts and ideas?”

“Why was all this science ever allowed? Why was it ever let begin? Science? It’s an enemy of everything that’s natural in life!”

The other side of the equation in Things to Come says we must progress as an intelligent species or we will stagnate and die, even if we do not destroy ourselves via warfare. The following quotes are taken from a treatment Wells wrote for the film; it nearly matches with the film’s finale scenes, which I do recommend watching, here:

PART XVI

Finale

An observatory at a high point above Everytown. A telescopic mirror of the night sky showing the cylinder as a very small speck against a starry background. [Raymond] Cabal and [Oswald] Passworthy stand before this mirror.

Cabal: “There! There they go! That faint gleam of light.”

Pause.

Passworthy: “I feel – what we have done is – monstrous.”

Cabal: “What they have done is magnificent.”

Passworthy: “Will they return?”

Cabal: “Yes. And go again. And again – until the landing can be made and the moon is conquered. This is only a beginning.”

Passworthy: “And if they don’t return – my son, and your daughter? What of that, Cabal?”

Cabal (with a catch in his voice but resolute): “Then presently – others will go.”

Passworthy: “My God! Is there never to be an age of happiness? Is there never to be rest?”

Cabal: “Rest enough for the individual man. Too much of it and too soon, and we call it death. But for MAN no rest and no ending. He must go on – conquest beyond conquest. This little planet and its winds and ways, and all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time – still he will be beginning.”

Passworthy: “But we are such little creatures. Poor humanity. So fragile – so weak.”

Cabal: “Little animals, eh?”

Passworthy: “Little animals.”

Cabal: “If we are no more than animals – we must snatch at our little scraps of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more – than all the other animals do – or have done.” (He points out at the stars.) “It is that – or this? All the universe – or nothingness…. Which shall it be, Passworthy?”

The two men fade out against the starry background until only the stars remain. The musical finale becomes dominant.

Cabal’s voice is heard repeating through the music: “Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

A louder stronger voice reverberates through the auditorium: “WHICH SHALL IT BE?”

If you want to peruse the full film treatment Wells wrote for Things to Come, please go here: 

http://leonscripts.users5.50megs.com/scripts/THINGSTOCOME.htm

It should be no surprise that Wells is pro-progress in this film. The anti-progress factions seem to be far more interested in resting on their inherited laurels than planning for and protecting the future of the human race. 

As Theotocopulos shouted at Cabal during their confrontation at the space gun, he and his mob are intimidated by what progress has done for civilization: They feel both insecure and inferior in its shadow, while having no issues with reaping its many benefits. This includes the high social status it has brought them, the unbridled access to knowledge, and the freedom to publicly speak their minds. Now that they have what they want to feel safe and comfortable, the needs of future generations can wait so far as they are concerned.

If you would like to watch the full version of Things to Come, seek it here:

Or, if you can live with, or do not otherwise mind a colorized version, look here:

Even his story The War of the Worlds had something to say regarding progress if it lacked an ethical and moral core. The Martians were highly intelligent and technologically superior, with “minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic.…” 

However, the Martians’ drive to survive as their world began to dry up led them to attempt the brutal extermination of humanity to possess Earth. Even when they were ultimately defeated on our world, the Martians of the novel decided upon the conquest and colonization of Venus: They presumed the native life on that planet, if such existed, would be even less evolved than Earth’s organisms and therefore give them relatively little trouble.

For a more in-depth look at Wells’ complex takes on societal and technological progress, see this essay:

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/h-g-wells-and-the-uncertainties-of-progress/

The Risks of Geocentricism

We came from Earth, from Dorisland, the gem in our solar system.

The only orb where life could grow, a land of milk and honey.

Aniara, Canto 79, Harry Martinson

Things to Come showcases one of my higher concerns regarding the motivations of many Angst SF films and stories. While most of these stories seek social justice for all, especially those who have been traditionally repressed and oppressed, and call for a return of humanity to its more natural origins, I have often wondered if they intend for our species and our civilization to ever do anything more, if they even seriously contemplate our future past a certain point? Do they merely hope and assume some distant, ambiguous generation will pick up the gauntlet when humanity is “ready” to move forward – whenever, whatever, and however that may be.

Regarding the film version of Aniara, their solution for humanity is to remain on Earth and clean it up and our selves in the process. A noble goal to be sure, but then what? Do they feel that staying only on the home world will keep us safe? Just ask the dinosaurs how having neither astronomical knowledge nor a space program in their 160-million-year history worked for them on the day when that planetoid eventually crossed paths with them and impacted Earth, in what is now termed the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

COMMENT: Yes, I am well aware of the Star Trek Voyager episode from 1997 titled “Distant Origin”. Until and unless science proves otherwise, the Voth and the premise of dinosaurs having evolved to achieve a highly advanced technological civilization and interstellar spaceflight will remain a work of fiction and speculation. See here for the details of this well-done standalone episode:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Distant_Origin_(episode)

The characters certainly are of the mindset that the rest of the Universe, with its distant myriads of stars against all that ominous and utter blackness, is a frightening and potentially dangerous place: If not from any marauding aliens, then from a majority host of environments that are almost instantly fatal to terrestrial life. 

Even if one can avoid all that, there is still the ever-looming presence of existential horror in the form of a Cosmos vast and ancient beyond mere human comprehension and experience; a reality whose very parameters make one realize how terribly small and insignificant you are in the much, much grander scheme of things. That even the deities one might either imagine or have inherited are no match for the reality discovered oh so recently by science. More terrifying still is the likely possibility that even the revelations of science are but a glimpse of what may be out there. 

Perhaps the hardest things for those of a certain mindset need to grasp is that Earth and all the life upon it are integral parts of that magnificent wider reality: That our world was formed by and in space, that the Cosmos contributed to our being here, that we are neither the physical nor cultural center of it all, but just one of many and varied places. 

Our relatively brief time on a singular planet has not allowed us to comprehend the Universe as part of our biological evolutionary development, but our intellects have made us aware of just how big and how numerous the realms beyond Earth are. The issue is that not everyone has been properly educated enough, or taught to care about, these hard-earned facts. 

Therefore, the makers of Angst SF such as the ones who made Aniara often give Earth as the answer to our salvation and leave the rest up to a vague future at best. These filmmakers also strongly suggest that humanity go back to a simpler lifestyle, but again the details are vague. They also often fail to explain how this can be done while at the same time maintaining the aspects of civilized society that benefit us, such as modern medicine. 

They also tend to skip over the harsh reality that there are many people on Earth who already live in conditions they would consider simple; however, these folks often do so because of poverty and all the negative connotations brought about by being poor. As we saw in Aniara, the particular batch of people being rescued from a catastrophic Earth appeared to be rather well-off: Was this because they could afford to escape into space, or did we just happen not to witness the salvation efforts we should hope and presume were taking place elsewhere across the planet?

As a rule, nothing comes easy without hard work and certain sacrifices along the way. A simpler lifestyle is often idealized by those who are already reaping the benefits of modern technology while having to take its negative aspects at the same time. However, living simply often means more work and less security than modern folks often imagine. 

Note how the anti-progressives in Things to Come want major progress to stop, but do not want to give up their comfortable lifestyles made possible by the very thing they despise and reject. This is a way of thinking and behaving that is often widespread across the board of modern society.

OBSERVATION: I was amused at these lines spoken by Theotocopulos: “Is [modern life in 2036 Everytown] any jollier than the world used to be in the good old days? When life was hot and short and merry and the devil took the hindmost?”

The artist must have been aware, at least through studying history if not personally, of how truly awful and dangerous existence was for humanity just a matter of decades before his time. Theotocopulos has taken a rather idealized view of life in his reality’s version of the post-World War 2 era. 

This is quite similar to the way that certain modern people imagine life in medieval Europe: They tend to focus on the perceived glamor and adventure of the nobility and knights of the era, while conveniently skipping over the more common and mundane realities of medieval culture, such as a lack of indoor plumbing, poor diets, incurable diseases, religious intolerance, and – worst of all – no Internet and not a single cell phone anywhere.

There can and has to be a balance between our technological civilization and the natural world we come from. It is possible: The problem is that we have only relatively recently begun to truly recognize both the damage we have done and how nature responds to our follies. 

COMMENT: One irony is that much of humanity only began to tangibly grasp our situation and place in the Universe when we first flew to the Moon and looked back upon Earth from that distant vantage point in the late 1960s. This was an ability we could not have accomplished without scientific and technological progress.

Even more difficult in our efforts for a better world is the fact that many either do not recognize these issues out of a limiting education or ignore them outright to pursue quick and fleeting gain. It is not the depths of indifferent space that is our problem, it is the need for the ability to conquer our baser selves and to work beyond the tribal mentality. Our intellects know we live on a finite planet in a vast cosmic sea of countless other bodies; now we need to make this part of all our cultural mindsets and act accordingly.

For one possible solution to the above situation, see this book titled The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack (2011, Yale University Press), which you may read my review of here:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2012/07/09/revealing-the-new-universe-and-a-shared-cosmology/

There is also a very informative video of the authors sharing their philosophy in detail, which you may view either here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/the-new-universe-and-the-human-future-how-a-shared-cosmology-could-transform-the-world/

Or here:

 A relevant quote from The New Universe and the Human Future:

“We need to feel in our bones that something much bigger is going on than our petty quarrels and our obsession with getting and spending, and that the role we each play in this very big something is what really defines the meaning and purpose of our lives.”

If the whole Universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: Just as, if there were no light in the Universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. 

– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

When Worlds Collide

Needles in a heavenly haystack. There are more stars in the heavens than there are human beings on Earth. Through telescopes, men of science constantly search the infinitesimal corners of our solar system seeking new discoveries, hoping to better understand the laws of the Universe. Observatories dedicated to the study of astronomy are set in high and remote places, but there is none more remote than Mt. Kenna Observatory in this part of South Africa.

– The opening narration of When Worlds Collide.

Hollywood Producer George Pal (1908-1980) hit cinematic gold with his 1950 film Destination Moon. This work of motion picture art, pioneering and well-crafted as it is, is however not an example of Angst SF: It depicts a manned mission to Earth’s nearest cosmic neighbor in the most scientifically accurate way possible for its time. The astronauts who braved the heavens in this film remained optimistic even in moments of peril. 

Destination Moon also gives a pragmatic answer as to what it sees as the main reason for Americans reaching our lone natural satellite: To counter the United States’ main geopolitical rival (never mentioned by name, but you know it is the Soviet Union and its Iron Curtain allies, this being the Cold War and all) from establishing a military foothold there ahead of them. 

There are of course dramatic moments where the astronauts and their nuclear-powered spaceship are in danger, including the threat of there not being enough fuel to get them back to Earth from the lunar surface. All problems emerging in Destination Moon are solved with real, solid physics – no aliens or supernatural deities ever come to the rescue of our brave heroes. 

While these explorers did not existentially fear the depths of space – well, except maybe for Joe Sweeney, the stereotypical Brooklynite who serves as both the Everyman and the comic relief of the film – they seldom forgot how quickly the indifferent Universe beyond their home planet could turn on them in an instant without constant vigilance.

Although Destination Moon would not be considered an Angst SF story as defined here, for there is little which could be considered truly esoteric or existential about it, the film’s primarily serious and even daring nature did help establish science fiction cinema as a genre to be taken more seriously as well. It also opened the way for other films to be created and expand upon the field, including those works that followed which do fit well into the Angst SF camp such as the focus of this essay section, When Worlds Collide.

Based on the 1933 science fiction novel of the same title and co-written by Edwin Balmer (1883-1959) and Philip Wylie (1902-1971), When Worlds Collide is a tale about the end of Earth and its inhabitants when a rogue star and a single exoplanet accompanying it, which astronomers call Bellus and Zyra, respectively, enter the Sol system. 

Scientists soon discover that these interstellar interlopers will cause first widespread destruction across Earth when Zyra passes close by our world eight months in their future, followed by the outright destruction of our planet just nineteen days later when Bellus directly collides with Earth. 

While no nation or organization of the film’s era (circa 1951) have developed the kind of space program that could save at least some people and other terrestrial life by landing on Zyra – which we and they discover just happens to be close to Earth in both composition and mass, and will even more conveniently go into orbit about our yellow dwarf star in its habitable zone – several institutions across the globe begin building large rocket arks in a desperate attempt to reach the alien world with a small group of humans. 

There are of course moments both large and small where we see the reactions and actions of various people when they realize that the world truly is coming to an end, taking their lives and all they care about in the process. Sometimes it feels authentic, while at other times a modern viewer might be wondering why more of these folks stuck in this dire situation are not panicking en masse (a French term meaning “in a large body”) and attempting to take over the rescue ark – or arks, as the case may be, although the film only focuses on the American one. In fact, such an event does happen, but only towards the very end as the ark is preparing to depart Earth. 

Earlier in When Worlds Collide, there is a dialogue between astronomer Dr. Cole Hendron and business magnate Sydney Stanton where they discuss human nature in times of crisis. As both men hail from very different backgrounds, their perspectives on their fellow humans are equally as opposing…

Sydney Stanton: “What provisions have you made to protect us when the panic starts?”

Dr. Cole Hendron, Astronomer at Cosmos Observatory: “I haven’t thought about it.”

Stanton: “I have. I don’t deal in theories. I deal in realities. Ferris… Ferris!”

Harold Ferris: “Yes, sir.”

Stanton: “Bring in those boxes. I’ve brought enough rifles to stop a small army.”

Dr. Hendron: “There won’t be any panic in this camp.”

Stanton: “Oh, stop theorizing! Once the havoc is over, every mother’s son remaining alive will try to get here and climb aboard our ship!”

Dr. Hendron: “People are more civilized than that. They know only a handful can make the flight.”

Stanton: “You’ve spent too much time in the stars. You don’t know anything about living. The law of the jungle… the human jungle. I do… I’ve spent my life at it! You don’t know what your civilized people will do to cling to life. I do because I know I’d cling if I had to kill to do it. And so will you. We’re the lucky ones… the handful with the chance to reach another world. And we’ll use those guns… YOU’LL use them, Doctor, to keep your only chance to stay alive!”

One character stereotype the cinema has never quite gotten away from is how scientists and science types are portrayed: The usual traits have them completely focused on their work, which is of course some prominent field of science, at the expense of themselves, those around them, and sometimes even all of humanity.

A prime example of this cinematic characterization of scientists may be found in another science fiction film also released in the same year, just seven months before When Worlds Collide, to be more precise: The Thing from Another World. 

In this story, involving yet another standard trope of the genre – the malevolent alien bent on destroying all humans to take over their home world – the lead human scientist is so determined to obtain what he believes is superior knowledge and wisdom from The Thing (this being reached Earth via a starship, after all) that he is willing to risk just about anything, including his own species. 

As a result, this main scientist in The Thing is regarded almost as villainous as the alien by the preordained real hero characters, members of the United States Air Force (USAF), until nearly the end of the film when said scientist makes his own style of rather daring sacrifice.

To read these themes in detail and more on The Thing, please see my essay here:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/05/03/an-intellectual-carrot-the-mind-boggles-dissecting-the-thing-from-another-world/

In comparison, Dr. Hendron can only be accused of an optimistic and even naïve faith in human beings under duress. When Bellus is about to strike Earth and the panicked and desperate mobs do attempt to storm the security gates and get themselves aboard the space ark as Stanton predicted, the astronomer agrees with the businessman that he is a better judge of human nature than himself. Dr. Hendron then heroically gives up his place on the ark, along with an unwilling Stanton, to ensure the vessel will be light enough to make it into space and eventually land on Zyra.

COMMENT 1 of 2: If this situation were happening in our reality, I have to wonder if civilized society would hold together even a fraction as long as it appeared to do so in the film, with chaos ensuing such that an ark could not even be built safely unless extreme measures were taken to protect the ship and crew. Nevertheless, a happy ending, even if only a mere slice of the 2.5 billion humans who existed on Earth in 1951 survive, must be had: Otherwise, the typical mass market audience will feel they just spent 83 minutes of their lives investing their emotions in the characters and story for naught. Of course, based on Swedish reactions to Aniara, this response and demand for upbeat plot endings may be more expected from American audiences.

COMMENT 2 of 2: In my research for this essay, I noticed a similar question brought up by various reviewers regarding the denizens of the Aniara, who kept themselves both relatively civil and civilized despite also facing oblivion and even less hope of survival with each passing year of their unplanned journey. Aside from the fact that having everyone onboard break down into barbarism and wipe themselves out, especially early on, would not make for much of a story – as well as contradict the original epic poem – Aniara does present the human desire to exhibit hope even in the face of certain oblivion. In one sense, hope may simply be a basic survival trait masquerading as nobility; then again, hope may be the key to an intelligent species to move and live beyond mere animalistic survival.

In addition to the prominent existential theme of human mortality in an indifferent Universe – if a roaming alien star and planet randomly targeting Earth for obliteration isn’t an act of a cold Cosmos, then I am not sure what else is – When Worlds Collide also carries much when it comes to the Angst SF trait of vague and even wrong science and physics. 

We are given and shown just enough in the film adaptation to make events appear and sound plausible, but certainly, unlike Destination Moon, these aspects are there primarily to prop up the human stories and elements. 

Even the primary story catalyst contains fundamental holes: The mass of the approaching alien sun alone, relatively small for a star as it is, would have distorted Earth to complete destruction well before the star had gotten near our planet. 

REAL SCIENCE TIME: In the film, the astronomers claim that the rogue star Bellus is “a dozen times the size of Earth.” This means that Bellus would not be massive enough to generate nuclear fusion: This would make Bellus a brown dwarf, a stellar class that was not even theorized until the 1960s and only confirmed to exist three decades later. As such, the views we do see of Bellus do not match the probable appearance of a brown dwarf. In addition, such a dim, cool star would not be capable of supporting life on Zyra, which we see at the end of the film once had sophisticated beings and other multicellular life on its surface.

The site TV Tropes gives some wonderful details on When Worlds Collide, include a number of its nontrivial scientific gaffes:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/WhenWorldsCollide

OIL AND WATER: As a further irony to the above, in the original novel, author Wylie was noted for rigorously checking on the science of the story, while co-author Balmer did not make it as much of a priority. Wylie was said to be quite displeased when his cohort made a number of changes without his prior review. From the sound of it, the pair was the equivalent of matching up Jules Verne with H. G. Wells, respectively.

Producer Pal had sought to make a follow-up film to When Worlds Collide based on the sequel novel titled After Worlds Collide, written by the same authors and published in 1934. However, Pal’s string of cinematic successes ran afoul in 1955 when he produced and released the film Conquest of Space. 

The failure of Conquest of Space at both the box office and with critics kept Pal and any interested audiences from having a cinematic take on what took place after the remnants of humanity settled on their new home planet. However, what did emerge from this tale turned out to be perhaps more interesting and even revolutionary than anyone at the time – or even decades later – quite realized, until now.

Conquest of Space

When I began delving into this essay about Aniara, I made an amazing realization: The previous film I had written about, Conquest of Space, was an early cinematic work of Angst Science Fiction! It was a bit hard to see at first due to its predominantly pedestrian and clunky nature: A B-grade film with A-grade intentions. I also had my doubts that the film’s producer was consciously aiming for a story more in line with Aniara and its brethren. 

Nevertheless, Conquest of Space does contain many of the elements found in Angst SF, especially once our characters are on their way to Mars. I was impressed enough with my findings that I wrote an entire essay section devoted to the film: Cleverly titled Conquest of Aniara, it includes a link to my complete essay on Conquest of Space. 

Conquest of Aniara 

When I wrote my essay on the 1955 film Conquest of Space, produced by the legendary George Pal (1908-1980), I had yet to see Aniara and knew relatively little about that Swedish creation. I also had yet to give a proper name to that subgenre of science fiction I am now calling Angst SF. 

Thinking about Aniara after my initial viewing of that film and its particular genre had me re-examining Conquest of Space. I soon realized that what many considered to be Pal’s rare failure may have in fact been ahead of its time. I wondered whether even the famous producer fully realized what he had accomplished or not: An early if not completely ideal example of Angst SF for the cinema.

As a reminder of what this specific genre is about, here is a refresher quote from what writer-director Michael Kuciak in his 2019 review on Aniara:

“Script-wise, Aniara tangentially fits a sub-sub-sub-genre of sci-fi scripts that might be called the long trip spec. Most of them go a little something like this: The characters are on a ship that’s on a long mission in space. An inciting incident occurs; it’s either an accident (usually something to do with an asteroid), or the ship happens upon an anomaly (usually leading to an alien). In a large percentage of these scripts, one of the characters goes insane and gives everyone a hard time. That character is almost always either the captain, or an android/robot.”

Conquest checks off most of these boxes: The main characters have been posted on a space station in Earth orbit for over one year before going on an even longer voyage to the planet Mars. During their mission, a large (and orange) rogue planetoid almost smashes into their spaceship; its trailing debris strikes and kills one of the astronauts in the process. The interplanetary ship’s commander goes insane and becomes a religious fanatic, believing that humanity does not belong anywhere but on its home world because he thinks God says so via the Bible. The commander attempts to sabotage the vessel several times, which would have resulted in the murder of the entire crew in the process, one of them being his very own son. 

The 1955 film Conquest of Space, an early example of Angst Science Fiction. Here we see an astronaut named Andre Fodor, a victim of cosmic fate and indifference, being buried in space: His body floats off into the seemingly endless void against a brilliant Sol

The 1955 film Conquest of Space, an early example of Angst Science Fiction. Here we see an astronaut named Andre Fodor, a victim of cosmic fate and indifference, being buried in space: His body floats off into the seemingly endless void against a brilliant Sol[/caption]

There are even more elements which place Conquest into the Angst SF category: 

Throughout the film, most of the crew do not want to be in space, especially on a trip to either the Moon or Mars. Outside of a few goofy moments from the film’s resident Comic Relief, the characters are rather serious to the point most of them are outright dour as the story wears on. It is this attitude – and the genre that Conquest doesn’t even quite realize it is in – largely explain why the attempts at humor often seem forced, juvenile, or just fall flat. 

Angst SF is often quite serious, with a few very notable exceptions. After all, these characters are trapped in an existential realm which the field’s most famous proponent, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), once said that “Hell is other people.”

This was so true for Conquest. One character in particular, the Irish stereotype Sergeant Mahoney, was particularly volatile due to a combination of his rough personality and an over-devotion to his friend, Samuel T. Merritt – the man who would command both the space station and later the spacecraft he would attempt to doom on the Red Planet. 

Mahoney antagonized most of the crew for various reasons, all of which led back to his decades-long military life and an unwavering support of Sam Merritt. He became especially hostile to Sam’s son, Barney, when the younger man accidentally killed his father while trying to stop Sam from wrecking the spaceship and stranding the crew to certain death on Mars. Mahoney accused Barney of deliberately murdering his father, never once letting up on his belief and tormenting Barney with it for months, until they were finally able to escape the planet. 

The scenes on Mars and other moments throughout led me to initially never want to see Conquest again after my first serious viewing of the film, much in the same way that certain scenes and other factors in Aniara made me never want to see that cinematic work ever again after my first exposure to it.

In addition to Mahoney’s belligerency towards Barney Merritt, the whole crew had to suffer through their time on Mars while they waited for the planet to align with Earth so they would have enough rocket fuel to reach home. Their limited water supply – thanks to the actions of Sam Merritt, who opened the water tank valves to let most of their precious liquid pour away onto the reddish Martian surface – only exacerbated their grim situation. 

Then there is the scene where the crew attempted to celebrate Christmas as best they could: However, their privations, the endless threat of raw death from a harsh alien world, and their personal hostilities only reminded them (and us, the audience) just how much this ostensibly joyous holiday was a hollow sham for them being so far from Earth and the rest of the human race. These explorers of Mars may not have been stranded indefinitely in deep space as the people on the Aniara were, but there were more than a few tense moments that could have become their fate as well.

Another distinctive parallel between Conquest and Aniara is the depiction of the characters in a future society: Although both sets of characters reside in time decades and centuries ahead of their contemporary audiences, respectively, in virtually every other aspect they are essentially identical to men and women of 1955 and 2018, also respectively.

Among the reasons for this particular lack of futurism is the desire of the filmmakers to make their characters relatable to their initial viewers both for box office appeal and to make any inherent messages acceptable. In Aniara’s case, there is not even an attempt to have the cast wear clothing that would stand out if they were walking the streets of Sweden or just about anywhere else in the Western hemisphere in the early Twenty-First Century – Martian pressure suits aside.

Regarding the science and technology of Conquest, these are aspects that keeps the film in the Angst SF category. This is especially ironic for Conquest, as the film was touted as a realistic vision of then near future space exploration, inspired by a famous book of nearly the same title.   

Conquest did attempt to be realistic throughout, but the film also took some unexpected detours I would normally associate more with B-grade and lower genre films of the day. Among the more outstanding ones was having the spaceship, originally meant to take men to the Moon, suddenly reassigned to go all the way to Mars and to be prepared for this new mission in just a matter of days, as if this were merely hopping from a domestic jetliner flight to an international one. Worse, Sam Merritt, the commanding officer himself, seemed utterly surprised by this, even though he helped build the spaceship – which sports a huge set of wings meant for landing on a world with an appreciable atmosphere.

As for the spaceship itself – rather unimaginatively called Spaceship One – a limited film budget was probably the main culprit which kept this vessel’s interiors from being better designed. 

Not only did the main spacecraft not seem terribly roomy for a ship which had to carry and support five adult men for over two years in deep space, the walls and various control/monitoring stations were ergonomically unappealing. We also never saw where the crew slept, ate, went to the bathroom, or what they had and did for leisure. These are all critical factors in sustaining a group of human beings for several years straight.

Speaking of eating, Conquest dropped another ball they had made quite a big deal about in the first half of its story: As part of their preparations, the deep space mission crew had to consume all their meals in pill form – the leading food style of the retrofuture. Yet once the voyage is underway, we never see these astronauts eating, not even so much as a snack. Even more contradictory, Sergeant Mahoney keeps offering to make coffee and tea in their traditional liquid states for the men, even though we witnessed them having coffee back on the station in pill form, garnished with cream and sugar condiments. 

One could make yet another parallel between the two films regarding food, as the Aniara crew were forced into a restricted diet of processed algae out of necessity. The astronauts in Conquest were confined to meals in pill form, as their mission planners considered this the most efficient way to store enough food for the years-long cruise to Mars and back. Unlike the members of the Aniara, however, the men of Spaceship One had a consistent and wide variety of meals and drinks to choose from, regardless of their packaging.

There are other features of Conquest of Space, however, which do fall more in line with scientific realism and even parallel Aniara’s underlying theme to a degree.

For Conquest, which takes place in the year 1980, Earth’s resources are already beginning to run low, threatening the very technological civilization that is using them up. The authorities look to the planet Mars for salvation. As character Dr. George Fenton declared: “Man’s very survival on Earth depends upon the success of this or some future search for a new source of raw materials.” 

Aniara also looks to the fourth world from Sol for its salvation, by making it a new home for the species that has already ruined their original one. While Conquest is exploring Mars for scientific knowledge – they have a very capable geologist onboard Spaceship One named Sergeant Imoto, who at one point said that “Japan’s yesterday will be the world’s tomorrow. Too many people and too little land. That is why I say… there is urgent need for us to reach Mars: To provide the resources the human race will need if they are to survive” – their ultimate mission goal is no less different or practical than those who are on the Aniara. 

The other item of interest in Conquest is how realistic the planet Mars was depicted for 1955, two years before a single artificial satellite would achieve Earth orbit, let alone another celestial body. 

Most scientists of the 1950s would have told you that while Mars was no longer taken very seriously as an abode for any highly intelligent and civilized beings, such as the ones imagined by astronomer Percival Lowell (1855-1916) over half a century earlier, the odds were good that at least some forms of native organisms could exist there: Plants certainly and maybe even some relatively simple hardy animals. 

Mars was also thought to be covered by a network of canals: Lowell and others believed they were purposefully made by those advanced minds he first envisioned in the late Nineteenth Century, while others considered them to be natural waterways, or perhaps giant cracks or canyons along the surface, created by flowing water, seismic disruptions, and even active volcanoes.

The Mars we find in Conquest comes far closer to matching what we now know about the Red Planet, sometimes even better than we did two decades into the Space Age. 

From orbit, we see this Mars with craters, volcanoes, dry channels, and lake beds. Many astronomers were surprised one decade after Conquest was released into theaters when the American space probe Mariner 4 flew by the Red Planet in July of 1965 and sent back the first close-up images of the surface of that world, if somewhat grainy and limited in number.

Most of Mariner 4’s black-and-white photographs showed numerous impact craters of various dimensions, enough so that scientists began to declare Mars as a much less hospitable place than they had imagined. Just six years later, another robot explorer, the orbiter Mariner 9, would reveal the presence of giant Martian volcanoes, huge canyons, and many long and winding channels across the landscape, with the latter likely carved by flowing liquid water eons ago.

The canals were present in the high-altitude perspectives of Mars in Conquest, but these surface denizens were obviously of natural origin and not in the sharp relief other cinematic versions and even contemporary scientific illustrations displayed them as. 

In the film, the Martian daytime sky, as observed from the ground, was shown as a dark blue green in color due to the thin surface atmosphere, but that standard would remain until the twin Viking landers returned the first color surface images in 1976. There we would discover that the daylight skies of Mars are actually a salmon pink tone due to all the wind-borne dust floating about.

The other fascinating things about Mars as portrayed in Conquest were the planet’s life forms and water – or lack thereof, for neither existed, at least where Spaceship One had touched down. This was in sharp contrast not only to many real astronomers’ views on these subjects during that era, but especially just about every contemporary fictional version of the Red Planet as well, cinematic ones included. After all, don’t our heroes need to interact with some strange alien creatures to spice up the plot? Or was the alienness of Mars enough? 

Not in the case of Conquest of Space. These astronauts find not so much as either a single Martian microbe or a drop of water, let alone any living natives or alien seas. Even the trope of the dead remains of an ancient civilization were left out of this story. 

This was done for two main reasons: To depict Mars in a more realistic fashion than had been done before and to justify this humanity’s right to utilize the planet’s resources and settle there, as it appears the Red Planet has never been occupied until now. The latter feature ties in with the Manifest Destiny attitude Barney displays when he states that “the Universe was put here for Man to conquer.”

Regarding the issue of life on Mars, there is another interesting parallel between Conquest and Aniara: Both involve flowers brought from Earth and transplanted on the Martian surface. In Conquest’s case, Sergeant Imoto introduced some generic flower seeds that bloomed on the planet’s surface with just a little help. In Aniara, MR mentions a kind of small tulip that appears to have been genetically modified to exist in the rather harsh conditions of Mars. 

The flower parallel ends with these plants in terms of their significance: For Conquest, it is a physical sign of hope that the Red Planet can be turned into a new resource and eventually home for humanity. For Aniara, the tulip described by the Mimarobe is meant to indicate that Mars is just barely useable for her species, one that has already wrecked their home world with no guarantees they may not cause it to happen again elsewhere.

COMMENT: I must wonder if the makers of Aniara were trying to slip in a hint of hope despite the outward message, as tulips are considered not only symbols of love, purity, forgiveness, and enlightenment, among other things, but also represent rebirth and new beginnings. Tulips are also perennials, which means they can survive through difficult climate conditions such as winter and come back again and again.

Returning to the story of Conquest, it fascinates me to see how much this film was more like these later forms of drama found in Angst SF than I had initially realized. Had George Pal been allowed to fully produce his film as he wanted, without meddling Hollywood studio interference, would we have witnessed a cinematic work more like Aniara? 

My guess is that the answer would be an overall yes, but only to a certain point. An ending mirroring the one in Aniara would not have been palatable to contemporary audiences, unless the story came from some truly classical and therefore expected source like William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, first published in a quarto version in 1597, where the two main characters die by their own hands at the end of the production. 

I also doubt even Pal would have gone for such a dark lesson: In his 1951 film When Worlds Collide, the utter destruction of Earth and all life upon it was tempered by the self-made rescue of a handful of humans and livestock (and some puppies) who settle upon a hospitable alien planet which conveniently accompanied the rogue star that smashed into their home world.

Pal was also quite religious and infused this theme throughout his films, including Conquest. When things seem to be at a nadir for the crew of Spaceship One, a miracle appears in the form of snow on Mars – and on Christmas Day to boot. The scene is accompanied by the instrumental version of a traditional holiday tune, God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.

The far more cynical Aniara would never have had such a scene, except in the most ironic sense and even then, it would have likely come in the form of yet another false hope for the passengers, as with the Spear/Probe. 

Nevertheless, there were definitely enough elements in Conquest of Space which sidestepped the expected plot points and character actions of its genre and day, enough for me to declare this film one of the first to qualify for being Angst Science Fiction. 

These nouveau cinematic characteristics are probably among the larger reasons why Conquest did not do well both at the box office and with the average fan in its initial run and for several decades after. Only in recent years has this Pal production begun a slow rise in the science fiction cinema pantheon among its much more famous and popular contemporaries. 

To read a full account of Conquest of Space to explore these elements and more in detail, see my essay on the film here: 

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/05/08/set-your-gyros-for-mars-giving-a-second-chance-to-conquest-of-space/

A delayed recognition is among the prices one often must pay when being a pioneer in any field, especially one with inherent flaws. Aniara also falls into this category, although it may have a much longer haul to achieve wider recognition beyond a certain type of cinephile due to its existential elements and source material. 

 On the Beach 

On the Beach, a science fiction film released in 1959 and based on a 1957 novel of the same title by English novelist and aeronautical engineer Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960), while not taking place in space – unless you count Earth being in space – does share some very similar themes and plot points with Aniara.

In the then-future year of 1964, a nuclear war has devastated Earth’s northern hemisphere, releasing huge clouds of deadly radiation that are drifting into the planet’s southern hemisphere. 

One of the last places left on Earth untouched by the war is Australia. We meet the residents of the city of Melbourne, who attempt to go about their lives as they did before the global conflict, despite knowing there is no escape from their ultimate fate. 

Eventually the radioactive fallout finally reaches them: The remaining residents decide to commit suicide in various ways of their choosing, rather than succumb to a slow and painful death by radiation poisoning. The end of the film implies there are no humans left alive on Earth, though a Salvation Army street banner is seen waving in the wind with the words “There is still time.. Brother” – a clear message for the film’s audience.

As with the spaceship passengers and crew in Aniara, most of the citizens in Melbourne try to carry on with their daily routines as they did before the Cold War conflict became deadly hot, signing all their death warrants with no escape. There is a brief hope that the radiation levels from the war might drop to safer levels before reaching Australia, or at least Antarctica; it is soon found, however, that is not the case.

Just as with the probe/spear in Aniara, the detection of random Morse code signals coming from somewhere in California give the citizens hope that if at least some people survived in the northern hemisphere, they may be able to make it in Australia. 

Unfortunately, one of the last operating United States Navy (USN) submarines sent to investigate the mystery discovers that the signals were happening by chance: A combination of a telegraph key snared in the pull cord of a nearby window shade and a tipped half-empty soda bottle on top of it. Ocean breezes coming through the open window moved the shade, which in turn moved the glass bottle and the key.

COMMENT 1 of 2: Interesting that Antarctica is mentioned in On the Beach as a potential refuge. The southernmost continent has often been considered as the closest terrestrial analog to the planet Mars, the original destination of the Aniara. Had the characters in On the Beach decided to go to Antarctica and managed to survive there, they would have had to live in confined artificial conditions just as those who settled on Mars would have.

There is also a brief mention that any intelligent natives on Mars might be watching Earth and eventually come here to take over the planet, once the radiation levels die down enough.

COMMENT 2 of 2: Ever since I first saw On the Beach decades ago, I wondered why the Australians didn’t consider moving at least some of their population under the surface, perhaps in already existing mine shafts or in deep natural caves, where the radiation clouds could not reach them while they had a chance. Even underwater enclaves would work. Perhaps there just was not enough time between the war and the fallout’s arrival to build appropriate survival shelters; or some groups such as the military or survivalists did go underground and we simply were not told about it.

“There is hope. There has to be hope. There’s always hope.” – Mary Holmes, played by Donna Anderson (born 1939).

The Golden Era of Angst SF Cinema

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw some “pure” examples of Angst Science Fiction on the big screen. Some of these films are outstanding and have even attained the status of legendary. They have become even more noteworthy and valuable when one is aware of even a fraction of the virtual sea of lower-grade films of the genre during that era and earlier which cannot match my examples for intelligence, quality, and nuanced themes.

This statement remains true even though these much more limited efforts often contain many of the same elements as the pure Angst SF films, including science that bad to non-existent, messages focused on the threat of nuclear war, the dangers of artificially-induced radiation, and how we all need better understand each other and get along.

I am going to focus on what I consider to be four “pure” examples of Angst SF as I have defined it in this essay from that time. They are, in order of their cinematic release dates:

• Planet of the Apes (1968) – with 2001: A Space Odyssey as its opening act.
• Silent Running (1972)
• Solaris (1972)
• Dark Star (1974)

Not only do these films deserve their own recognition, but they are also the epitomes of how Angst SF serves as far more than just mere forms of entertainment. 

2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes

The year 1968 was a dynamic one for humanity, to put it mildly. In addition to all the political turmoil that took place in that singular span of a solar orbit, our species also made its first in-person movement away from Earth: The three-man crew of Apollo 8 became the first human beings to reach the vicinity of our Moon, circling it ten times in late December before returning home. 

Nineteen sixty-eight was also a landmark for some of the greatest science fiction films ever made. Considered the best of the genre to this day, 2001: A Space Odyssey changed how people thought of science fiction by throwing a curve ball at nearly every expected trope of the genre. 

Although its depiction of science and space technology was well-researched and top notch, with just a few deliberate exceptions for dramatic purposes – such as keeping the pre-Apollo artistic “tradition” of a craggy and rough lunar landscape – 2001 also contains prime examples of Angst SF: A long space mission that no one comes back from (although one astronaut does return to Earth, just not in his original human form), an AI that is considered at least neurotic if not insane and tries to take over the ship and its mission (however, it can be argued that HAL 9000 was only utilizing extreme machine logic; see here:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0095.html), and mysterious alien devices and motives that have been manipulating human evolution since the beginning of our existence as primitive hominids in Africa over four million year ago

COMMENT: Although the characters who ventured into the void in 2001: A Space Odyssey did not display the kind of existential terror continually witnessed in Aniara – with the very notable exception of USS Discovery astronaut Dave Bowman, but only when he plunged into the Stargate via the second much larger Monolith orbiting Jupiter – the “cosmic abyss” was certainly ever present and evident in Kubrick’s masterpiece, as this video delves into.

Released in the same year as 2001 was another American film which would also go on to have a lasting effect on human culture and society: Planet of the Apes, the first of the four pure Angst SF films of the golden era I referred to earlier.

Like any member in good standing of this subgenre, Planet of the Apes and its subsequent franchise films and television series utilized space science and technology only as a means to its end, which was pointed social commentary. 

The relativistic starship that got our human astronauts to what they first think is an exoplanet circling a star in the constellation of Orion the Hunter some 320 light years from Earth left from Cape Kennedy in Florida in the distant future year of… 1972! 

We are never told about the propulsion method of the vessel, nor does it really matter in this context: The ship just had to look plausible enough from certain vantage points to get our protagonists where they needed to be to move the plot along. In fact, we never even see the entire vessel throughout its screen time in the early parts of the film: In particular, the engine section at the ship’s stern. 

At the beginning of the Planet of the Apes, as mission commander George Taylor (played by actor Charlton Heston, 1923-2008) is preparing to join his fellow explorers in suspended animation before their long journey in both space and time, has these existential comments to add to the official mission logs he is recording…

COMMENT: This next dialog is from the shooting script draft dated May 5, 1967, rather than the final released version. It contains more details, along with two examples of someone not caring (or realizing?) enough to do just a little astronomical homework.

“One final thought – nothing scientific, purely personal. Seen from up here, everything looks different… Time bends and space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. He begins to feel like no more than a mote in the eye of eternity. And he is nagged by a question: What if anything, will greet us on the end of man’s first journey to a star?

“Are we to believe that throughout these thousands [!] of galaxies, these millions [!] of stars, only one, that speck of solar dust we call Earth, has been graced – or cursed – by human life? (pause) I have to doubt it.”

After the crew has splashlanded on their new world (their starship unexpectedly comes down in a lake, sinking in it shortly after the three surviving astronauts escape to a nearby shore via a bright yellow life raft), Taylor is accused by his companion John Landon of thinking that “life on Earth was meaningless” and that he “despised people.” Based on these character traits, Landon concludes that Taylor only joined this deep space mission to run away from human society and their home planet.

Taylor corrects his cohort’s interpretation of his actions:

“No, no. It’s not like that, Landon. I’m a seeker too. But my dreams aren’t like yours. I can’t help thinking somewhere in the Universe there has to be something better than man. Has to be.”

These story ingredients and more lead up to one of the most famous plot twists in film history: The lone surviving astronaut, Taylor, eventually discovers to his shock and horror that he has been on Earth the whole time, only several thousand years in the future! 

Not long after they went on their mission in the late Twentieth Century, humanity had the global thermonuclear war Taylor always feared would eventually happen, destroying civilization and turning most of the descendants of the survivors into little better than brute animals. Consequently, other primates such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutangs rose up in both intelligence and dominance and inherited Earth, effectively creating a planet governed by apes.

Taylor does not find the superior alien intelligences he long hoped for. Instead, he only finds other terrestrial primates who are now in charge of the world he came from. To add insult to injury, they retained many of the similar and often negative traits that Taylor did not care for from his fellow humans. 

Even in the first sequel of the original series, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), the intelligent bipeds Taylor (and later another time-traveling Twentieth Century astronaut named Brent) encounters in the underground ruins of New York City (which the apes only know of as the Forbidden Zone) are human-descended mutants with incredible psychic powers but are otherwise disfigured both physically and mentally from their long generations in an irradiated subterranean world.

These mutants worship a nuclear bomb encased in a golden missile, mixing in traditional Roman Catholic rites (their “god” is kept in the remains of St. Patrick’s Cathedral) with their own unique interpretations. A famous line from their religious mass is “Glory be to the Bomb and to the Holy Fallout – As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end. Amen.”

We never learn if any intelligent extraterrestrials exist in the cinematic universe of Planet of the Apes, for we only keep coming back to Earth and its various native residents in an endless cycle. The wider Cosmos offers no clear answers to humanity here.

Silent Running

On this first day of a new century, we humbly beg forgiveness and dedicate these last forests of our once beautiful nation to the hope that they will one day return and grace our foul Earth. Until that day, may God bless these gardens and the brave men who care for them. 

– The opening narration of Silent Running.

In March of 1972, Universal Pictures released the second representative “pure” Angst SF film of the golden era: Silent Running. As required, the science and technology of Silent Running are often way off from reality and the social message is about as subtle as an avalanche. Nevertheless, this film works on multiple levels.

By the start of the Twenty-First Century, modern humanity has mistreated Earth’s ecosystem so badly that all its remaining flora and fauna have been relocated out to the vicinity of the planet Saturn aboard a fleet of converted space cargo freighters inside a collection of transparent biodomes. The plan is to one day be able to return all these surviving plants and animals to Earth and “grace our foul” planet with them before it is too late.

One might think that Earth would be unable to support human life after losing most all of its biosphere, yet apparently that is where most of our species remains located in this reality. According to the film, the planet’s global average temperature is 75 degrees Fahrenheit, or 23.8 degrees Celsius. Deadly diseases have been almost eradicated, along with societal ills such as poverty and unemployment. 

It is little wonder then that, with one very notable exception, the characters we do meet are quite content with life as it is, a society that our not-without-questions hero describes as a place where “everything is the same” and that “all the people are exactly the same.” He also adds that “there is no more beauty, and there’s no more imagination. And there are no frontiers left to conquer. And you know why? Only one reason why… nobody cares.”

Civilization on Earth in Silent Running must, by necessity, be an all-around very artificial one for humans to survive and live there. As an indication, in the film we learn that most of the main characters prefer to consume processed synthetic food provided from a dispensing unit rather than eat something grown in the dirt.

Silent Running focuses on one such spaceship in particular named Valley Forge. Of the four human crewmembers onboard, three are beyond bored with their tending duties out by Saturn and cannot wait until they can return to Earth in six months’ time when their work shifts are up. 

The other member of the crew, one Freeman Lowell (played by actor Bruce Dern), is the polar opposite of his comrades: Lowell is the only one who genuinely grasps what their home world has lost and cares deeply that the surviving organisms they tend (well, he tends, truthfully) are transplanted back on Earth as planned. Lowell is also convinced that his professional knowledge of botany, plus eight years of dedication and devotion to this effort, will make him the logical choice for director of the federal parks and forest system once those in charge reestablish this organization.

Unfortunately for Lowell and the remaining terrestrial ecosystem, the fleet receives orders one morning “to abandon, then nuclear destruct all the forests… and return our ships to commercial service.”

Yes, as an extra layer of heavy symbolism, the biodomes are not just to be ejected into space and destroyed or merely abandoned, they are to be obliterated with nuclear devices. While Lowell’s three companions gleefully go about setting up the demise of the domes, our botanist decides to take drastic action: He kills the three men and takes off in Valley Forge away from the rest of the fleet (who have apparently detonated all their biodomes with no similar incidents of rebellion) with the last remaining dome still attached to the long vessel.

The rest of the film involves Lowell trying to keep his sanity and assuaging his guilt for murdering his coworkers as he plunges deeper into space alone – except for several robot workers called drones he has renamed and reprogrammed to serve as both artificial friends and tenders of the dome life – in a desperate attempt to save the very last forest from Earth. 

Eventually another spaceship from the fleet finds the Valley Forge. Realizing they will destroy the final biodome and arrest him for his perceived crimes, Lowell ejects the dome into interplanetary space with a single drone to maintain the life within it. Then, using the remaining nuclear charges, Lowell blows up Valley Forge and himself. 

In the final scene, the last biodome is shown slowly drifting away from us into the starry darkness. The surviving drone, which Lowell named Dewey, poignantly maintains the surrounding plants and animals of Earth as they head into an unknown future. The scene is accompanied by song lyrics from musician and activist Joan Baez (born 1941): “Tell them/It’s not too late/Cultivate/One by one/Tell them/To harvest/And rejoice/In the sun.”

Is it too late for the human race in the universe depicted by Silent Running? We are left to wonder and hope: Will the flora and fauna of the last biodome survive long enough to be found by future humans? Will these descendants understand and care enough to preserve this ecosystem and reintroduce it to its native world? Will there be anyone left to come across the dome in space ever?

Silent Running’s hard-hitting message was aimed at its contemporary audience, who were just starting to become truly and collectively aware as a society of the environmental problems they and their planet were facing from centuries of mismanagement by industrial civilization. Aniara took a similar approach on the same subject nearly fifty years later, with a space-faring humanity evacuating an Earth devastated by climate change, destined for a very artificial existence on Mars.

When I wrote my second of two essays on Silent Running one decade apart from each other (see the links to them below), I wondered if having the last plants and animals of Earth being preserved in deep space would make audiences more appreciative of space utilization for serving as a final refuge for our ecosystem. Or would it rather merely reinforce certain demographics standard views of space, that it is not “the kind of place to raise your kids” or anything else from Earth, to quote the song “Rocket Man” by Sir Elton Hercules John (born 1942), ironically – but perhaps not surprisingly – released in the same year as Silent Running.

COMMENT: For more on “Rocket Man” and its relation to cultural perceptions of settling the Final Frontier, along with my views on how humanity may need to be prepared to truly survive and thrive out there, see my Centauri Dreams essay titled “In Person or Proxy to Mars and Beyond?” here:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2022/11/04/in-person-or-proxy-to-mars-and-beyond/

I was pleased to discover in my research on the film that its director and producer Douglas Trumbull (1942-2022) wanted the viewers of his work to see space as the hero and savior of Earth, that our planet was neither separate nor cut off from the wider Universe. We need space to survive if we want to make it as a civilization. 

However, I could not avoid a nagging suspicion that these particular concepts did not quite get through to everyone, especially when you have a main protagonist continually berating anything and anyone who wasn’t one hundred percent pro-nature and Back to Earth. Am I just being overly cynical, or was this aspect of Silent Running sadly too subtle for the masses? These concerns mirror my feelings on the messages in Aniara, where certain characters, images, and themes overshadowed the more subtle commentaries. 

As with Lowell sending the last biodome out into the void, hoping that one day it will be found and properly appreciated, perhaps all one can do when sending out a message-ladened creation into the wider sea called human society is to hope that enough of the right people will find and grasp its meanings, then pass it on for the intended edification of others.

For your further edification of Silent Running, here are the links to my two essays on the film:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1337/1

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/02/01/in-wildness-is-the-preservation-of-the-world-silent-running-and-our-choice-of-futures/

As supplements to my essays, here is the novelization of Silent Running in Adobe PDF format, published by Scholastic Books in the same year as the film’s theatrical release. The novel was written by longtime children’s book author Harlan Thompson (1894-1987), who based his work on the screen story and screenplay by Michael Cimino, Deric Washburn, and Steven Bochco. 

https://ia601204.us.archive.org/4/items/movie-novelisations/Silent%20Running%20-%20Harlan%20Thompson.pdf

You may find a link to the original screenplay, dated December 6, 1970, in this detailed essay on the film – which I also note has some sentences and topic structure which happen to very closely match and parallel certain ones from my own essay on Silent Running. Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery? 

https://cinephiliabeyond.org/silent-running/

As is so often the case, both the novelization and the screenplay have many interesting story, character, and background details that did not make it into the final cinematic version. 

To give just one example, I learned that the space freighter Valley Forge was originally called the Apopka. This name is derived from the Seminole word “Ahapopka,” for “potato-eating place.” There is a large lake in Florida and a mid-sized city nearby with the same name. Lake Apopka, just northwest of Orlando, was once a popular tourist attraction until various industries severely polluted it and a major environmental cleanup was required. Perhaps this is why Apopka was first chosen for the premier vessel?

TV Tropes also has some very interesting details on Silent Running:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/SilentRunning

Solaris

“If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.” 

– Snow (Snaut) in the chapter “The Dreams” of Solaris (1961) by Stanislaw Lem.

“Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it.” – Stanislaw Lem

Solaris is a remarkable work, first appearing in print in 1961, written by the great Polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006). In short…

A future humanity that has expanded to the stars with faster-than-light (FTL) interstellar travel capabilities has discovered an immense alien being covering an entire exoworld like a global ocean, which they name Solaris. After over a century of exploring and examining this vast entity, their scientists have gotten little further than documenting and cataloging its various features and behaviors: They are unable to learn how Solaris came to be and why it acts and manifests as it does. 

As often happens when our species is confronted with a grand unknown, an entire industry has built up around theories, hypotheses, speculation, conjecture, and even mythologies about Solaris, with few being definitively backed up by scientific empirical proof. About all the scientists have determined with certainty is that Solaris is alive, sentient, and can somehow shift the orbit of its engulfed planet about a binary star system to keep its world stable as it travels through space.

COMMENT: This last activity was how astronomers first noted the special nature of Solaris, as the planet’s orbit about two large suns should have become naturally unstable otherwise, eventually destroying the globe. 

At one point, the remaining scientists on a science station established on the surface of Solaris decided on their own authority – out of desperation to wrest at the least some deeper secrets from their object of study – to aim an intense beam of X-rays at the alien ocean to force a reaction from their titanic subject. The results of their actions were both unexpected and downright terrifying to the station tenders. 

A psychologist named Kris Kelvin is sent by Earth authorities to Solaris to determine what has become of the station staff, who have been sending back increasingly strange and cryptic messages. 

Kelvin soon learns what has happened at the station, if not exactly why at first: Each scientist has a “visitor” of their personal pasts brought up from deep inside their psyches and made physical by Solaris, who are unable and unwilling to leave the scientists’ presence. Kelvin himself receives such a “guest” not long after arriving at Solaris Station, in the form of his wife, Hari (Rheya), who committed suicide ten years earlier, but is now present and seems as real as the original person she resembles.

Three films based on Solaris have been made of this work since its arrival: The first one was a Soviet teleplay production from 1968. The second came from the legendary filmmaker Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (1932-1986) in 1972. The third and so far most recent version was released in 2002, written and directed by Steven Soderbergh (born 1963). 

The focus here will be primarily on the Tarkovsky version as our third “pure” example of Angst Science Fiction. 

Stanislaw Lem did not care for either of the later cinematic representations of his novel, as he saw them focusing too much on the “love story” between Kelvin and Hari and not the multifaceted meanings of the alien being whose given name is also the title of his work. 

This essay goes into the details about how Lem felt regarding Tarkovsky’s vision of Solaris, despite the author’s collaboration with the film director:

https://culture.pl/en/article/lem-vs-tarkovsky-the-fight-over-solaris

Some interesting quotes from this piece:

Only a few years after its original publication, a Russian translation of Solaris appeared by Dmitry Bruskin. It is still considered to be canonical to this day, despite some deviations from the Polish original. One in particular is that the name of the planet, Solaris, was now a masculine noun as opposed to the original feminine in the Polish, and this somewhat shifts the emphasis in the book: it’s easier for readers to imagine that this mysterious planet-ocean is viviparous if female. A pair of female translators corrected this injustice – in 1976, a more complete translation was released by Galina Gudimova and Vera Perelman, where the original gender of the planet was restored, though in Russian discussions the masculine gender is still used by force of habit.…

Clearly, Tarkovsky was completely uninterested in ‘Solaristics’ and the sentient ocean, both much expanded upon in the original book. Instead he was concerned about the problem of ethical and moral imperatives – and that is what he made his movie about.

Lem didn’t agree with this at all:

And what was absolutely terrible was that Tarkovsky introduced Kelvin’s parents and even some aunt into the movie. But most of all, his mother. […] The mother is Russia, the Motherland, Earth. That just enraged me. […] My Kelvin decides to stay on the planet without the slightest hope, but Tarkovsky painted this sentimental picture of an island with a little house on it. When I hear about the island and this little house, my skin crawls with irritation.

From ‘Tako Rzecze… Lem: Ze Stanisławem Lemem Rozmawia Stanisław Bereś’, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2002, trans. KA & AZ.

Edoardo Rugo wrote an in-depth essay comparing the written and cinematic versions of Solaris for the Italian publication Filosofia (Number 69, 2024-11-01) titled “Solaris for Lem and Tarkovsky. Novel and film between the impossibility of progress and the abyss of the past”:

https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/filosofia/article/view/11182

Abstract

In 1961 the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem realized Solaris, one of his best known and most appreciated works. Describing the encounter with an indecipherable planet-ocean, Lem highlights the impossibility of truly communicating with the Other and brings out the aporias and complexities of positivist thinking. 

Eleven years later, Andrey Tarkovsky adapts Lem’s subject for cinema. In the homonymous movie, though, the Russian director imprints his own peculiar conception of time and history: the Tarkovskian ocean becomes a source of connection with a past seen as the only hold for the present, a crystal in which, however, the actual seems to succumb to the virtual. 

Lem’s peculiar conception of progress is here put in contrast against the personal and humanistic nostalgia of the Russian director. The aim of the text consists in this comparison: two divergent philosophies of time expressed by two authors through their respective work.

On the author’s official Web site, Lem had this to say regarding the relationship of the two main characters as depicted in the Soderbergh film version:

https://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/solaris-soderbergh/147-the-solaris-station

…to my best knowledge, the book was not dedicated to erotic problems of people in outer space… As Solaris’ author I shall allow myself to repeat that I only wanted to create a vision of a human encounter with something that certainly exists, in a mighty manner perhaps, but cannot be reduced to human concepts, ideas or images. This is why the book was entitled “Solaris” and not “Love in Outer Space”.

OBSERVATIONS: That many who view the film versions of Solaris tend to aim their focus on the main relationship between Kris Kelvin and Hari/Rheya over the other much more cosmically significant parts of the plot is not terribly surprising, despite Lem’s understandable and expected frustration with this response to his work: That most of these same folks likely never read his originating novel undoubtedly contributed to this situation. 

This happens for the same reason that cinematic audiences gravitated towards discussing the virginal state of Altira in Forbidden Planet (1956), the three “cute” little service robots named Huey, Duey, and Louie in Silent Running (1972), and the violent sport in Rollerball (1975): These beings and group activities are far more relatable to a typical human’s tribal mindset than the far loftier and sometimes unsettling themes and settings offered in these stories. This situation applies to both the average layperson and even the educated scholar on occasion. 

On the same page, Lem also rightfully compared Solaris to another famous novel, which was far more than just a story about the whaling industry of the Nineteenth Century:

I am also capable of finding analogies to other works, located in high regions of the world literature. Melville’s “Moby Dick” could serve as an example; on the surface the book describes the history of a whaling ship and Capitan Ahab’s pernicious quest for the white whale.  Initially the critics destroyed the novel as meaningless and unsuccessful – after all why care about some whale the captain most likely would have converted into a number of cutlets and barrels full of animal fat? Only after great analytical efforts the critics discovered that the message of “Moby Dick” was neither animal fat nor even harpoons. Since much deeper, symbolic layers were found, in libraries Melville’s work was removed from the “Adventures at Sea” section and placed elsewhere.

YOUR HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT: I always encourage everyone to read this true literary classic by Herman Melville (1819-1891). Here is an annotated version online: http://powermobydick.com/

OBSERVATIONS: I find it interesting on several levels that Lem chose to compare Solaris to Moby Dick. Both novels deal with a small group of humans facing an immense and intelligent being with enigmatic motives dwelling in an even vaster and more mysterious environment: For the white whale it was Earth’s largest ocean, the Pacific, and for Solaris it was the ocean of interstellar space. Both human tribes attempt to tackle their quarry for their own limited purposes, only to find themselves outmatched in every way and threatened with doom from their actions. Finally, both beings are presented and viewed as a god with motives far beyond the thoughts and desires of mere mortals.

In spite of all that has been said, along with the documented fact that Tarkovsky was not a fan of typical science fiction, including and especially 2001: A Space Odyssey – the Soviet director found Kubrick’s work focusing too much on its future technologies and leaving the human characters and their surroundings sterile – both Lem and Tarkovsky may have been more aligned on the main themes of their versions of Solaris than either of them realized, or wanted to admit.

Having finally watched all of the 1972 version of Solaris to completion, I felt that most of Tarkovsky’s film was much closer to Lem’s vision than I was originally led to believe – even though the beginning and especially the ending of Tarkovsky’s work were different from the novel.

In the finale of Lem’s work, after the surviving scientists have figured out a way to permanently remove their “visitors”, Kelvin leaves the science station and flies out to Solaris itself, landing near a part of its gelatinous mass and ruminating thusly…

Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she [Hari] had breathed? … In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation … I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.

In contrast, Tarkovsky’s Solaris creates physical islands among its bulk after the scientists beam an encephalogram of Kelvin’s mind into the ocean entity in an attempt to make the alien understand humanity. Not long after, Kelvin finds himself back at the home of his father we witnessed at the beginning of the film – only for the camera to pull back and reveal that Kelvin is still on Solaris and both the home and his father are part of the creations on one of the islands.

COMMENT: Just to throw in the Soderbergh version of Solaris for good measure, the ending of the 2002 film mirrors Tarkovsky, where Kelvin remains on the alien world – having been physically engulfed with the science station by Solaris – to presumably spend the rest of his life with a version of his wife in happiness and peace. Hollywood has never been a real fan of ambiguity because it usually doesn’t sell as many tickets.

Despite all his protests and languid imagery contrasting beautiful Earth nature with human society’s stark technological civilization, Tarkovsky did not shy away from the bigger questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything that Lem posited throughout his rather short novel.

As one prime example, Dr. Snaut (Snow) gives a truncated version of this speech in the novel about humanity’s true intentions for expanding into the wider reality beyond Earth… 

“We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don’t want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange.

“We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can’t accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don’t like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don’t leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us – that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence – then we don’t like it any more.”

Colder than Space: Comparing Solaris with Aniara 

In Michael Kuciak’s 2019 interview with Pella Kågerman for Final Draft, the co-writer and director of Aniara revealed that their film “was inspired by Kubrick and Tarkovsky.” Although the article does not state which of these directors’ cinematic creations inspired the Aniara team, it takes little effort to conclude she meant 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris, respectively. 

In this interview from 2019 with Kagerman by Thomas H. Sheriff, she confirmed that scenes with the Mima showing memories involving water reeds was an homage from similar scenes in Tarkovsky’s Solaris…

https://flipscreened.com/2019/08/27/interview-its-not-a-warning-its-a-scream-aniara-2018/

To quote:

PK: Yes! It was. I’m so happy that you mention it. One of the editors with this project worked with Tarkovsky on The Sacrifice [1986], and he told us that Tarkovsky was actually very displeased with his shot of seaweed. Because the whole idea had been for him to shoot frogs. So he had brought – not thousands, but plenty of frogs there, and put them into the water, and they were swimming along. Then they put the lights on and they all disappeared. And it’s so funny that something we feel is so iconic, and we want to pay homage to it, is something that he himself saw as a failure; as a shot lacking the frogs.

In another interview that same year for FF2 Media, Pella’s husband and creative partner Hugo Lijia said they “watched all the space films but tried really hard not to imitate any of them.”

When one compares the various nature scenes in Aniara to the nature segments in Solaris, it is hard not to see the influence/inspiration the Tarkovsky film had on the Swedish one. This refers not only to the look and feel of these scenes but also the thinking behind them: Namely, that Earth and its natural habitats are where humanity truly belongs, in addition to being with other members of our species.

For more thoughts on this and Tarkovsky’s take on the importance of art in his work and life overall, see this essay titled “The Natural and Modern Worlds in Solaris” by David Hanley in Offscreen Volume 15, Issue 1 from January 2011:

https://offscreen.com/view/natural_modern_solaris#:~:text=In%20Solaris%20(1972),%20Andrei%20Tarkovsky

All three examples being discussed here – Lem’s Solaris, Tarkovsky’s film, and Aniara in both their poetic and film versions – see art and love as humanity’s salvation against a vast, cold, and indifferent Universe. 

COMMENT 1 of 2: The 1972 cinematic version of Solaris alone contains multiple examples of both art and love, including camera time spent focusing on a copy of the famous painting The Hunters in Snow (1565) by the Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (circa 1525-1530 to 1569) displayed prominently in the wood-paneled library of the Solaris Station:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/as-seen-on-solaris-tarkovsky-bruegel-2453923

There is also this relevant essay for further ponderings on the subject matter…

“Painting in Time: The Role of Painting in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris” by Saleh Ghorbanian:

https://publication.avanca.org/index.php/avancacinema/article/view/383

COMMENT 2 of 2: My interpretation of why Tarkovsky focused on The Hunters in Snow: The painting depicts a group of three hunters and their pack of dogs returning to their village from a largely unsuccessful hunting expedition during the winter season. In their snowy path are the tracks of a rabbit or hare that the hunters either could not catch or missed seeing altogether. These hunters could represent the Solaris scientists who went after the secrets of their alien quarry, the ocean being Solaris, only to return with little of real, useful substance to show for all their efforts. The rabbit which left their footprints in the snow represents the wider truths about Solaris and the Universe itself as hints, which the scientists and humanity overall have yet to find. The village represents the planet Earth, where the hunters and their species are best suited for and where sustenance in the form of a pig carcass – a domesticated (read the known) farm animal as opposed to a creature of the wilderness (read the unknown) – being prepared for consumption at a nearby inn is visible to the left of the hunters. In Western literature and art, the leftward direction often symbolizes home and the safety of the familiar.

Tarkovsky’s Solaris is a response to the modern technological world we have created, which includes our scientific awareness of just how big, ancient, and populated our Cosmos is, compared to what most people thought of and about the Universe in earlier eras and why it all exists. In the Soviet artist’s view, modern humanity can barely handle contemporary technological civilization, let alone the wider realities of the Universe.

One big difference between the various Solaris sides and Aniara is that Solaris stills see hope in and for humanity by its capacity for art and love. The poet and poem of Aniara see redemption only in the presumed afterlife of Judeo-Christian thinking, while the film version only sees salvation for us in staying on Earth and caring for the planet. Everywhere else is either empty or too far away to do any good and even then, the hypothetical latter possibilities offer no guarantees of safety and redemption.

Yes, even Lem’s take on things is more hopeful than those in Aniara. Lem simply states that current humanity is not truly prepared for the realities of the Universe beyond their home world. This does not automatically mean we are doomed; instead, we need to evolve – biologically, intellectually, morally – to become more aware and wiser of existence beyond Earth before we can make a real go at it. Kelvin’s acceptance of whatever fate awaits him on Solaris at the end of the novel is a positive step in that direction. 

In contrast, the message from Aniara to humanity says Stay on Earth, take care of the home planet, and wait for the next life for meaning and happiness. Even then, this last part is primarily from the 1956 poem regarding the afterlife as redemption. 

At the end of the 2018 film, we only see a very dead and derelict spaceship drifting through the Milky Way galaxy: Its crew and passengers have long ago turned to dust. Their various attempts to escape their fate were all ultimately unsuccessful. There are also no signs whatsoever of what became of the humans who remained in the Sol system: Did they die out with the loss of Mother Earth on the sands of Mars, or did they purposefully expand into the rest of the Universe? We are never told.

COMMENT: The makers of cinematic Aniara wanted their viewers to walk away from their work with a sense of hope, in spite of the fact that everyone in the story expires in the end and all that is left millions of years later is a non-functioning vessel drifting with neither purpose nor goal throughout the void of space. I honestly must wonder how much success they had with that belief, for the inherent nihilism of their creation is overwhelming. I will discuss this theme of hope further later in my essay.

In Andrei Tarkovsky Interviews, edited by John Gianvito (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), the Soviet artist said the controlling idea of Solaris is that “human beings have to remain human beings, even if they find themselves in inhumane conditions.”

This quote applies even more so to Aniara, where thousands of people find themselves on a spaceship hurtling out of control while each potential hope for rescue (and redemption) fails, along with their essential supplies necessary for survival. Many of these trapped souls ultimately fail at remaining dignified human beings long before the failure of the ship’s systems, which is what Tarkovsky is implying in his quote regarding the characters of Solaris. 

Or, perhaps more accurately, those onboard the Aniara who cannot hold on to their dignity and sanity – two hallmarks of what is considered civilized behavior – have become rather all too human in the more biological sense, reverting to their baser selves with only a veneer of social graces (in the poem, many of the passengers of the Aniara revert to levels of barbarism and outright insanity far more extensively than in the film). 

Even MR, the Mimarobe, who maintained her composure and optimism far longer than most of her fellow passengers and worked tirelessly to uplift their spirits through education and especially art with her beam screen that projected beautiful scenes of terrestrial nature into nearby space, ultimately lost her social composure with the loss of her partner and their son in the sixth year of their involuntary voyage. 

Although MR eventually becomes one of the longest survivors on the Aniara, well before that time we witness the Mimarobe literally going through but the most basic of social behaviors, doing only what she must do to maintain herself and little more.

It is often rather easy for those not undergoing terrible circumstances to tell others to “remain human beings, even if they find themselves in inhumane conditions.” Yet at the same time, it is people just like Tarkovsky who demand that humanity return to nature and a simpler version of themselves, such as they imagine life was like before the advent of civilization. 

The request has its nobility and healthier aspects, yet little is done to further instruct the intended audiences on how one goes about doing this without sinking into poverty or even worse conditions – especially if the rest of technological society with all its rules and regulations carries on around you, offering little support in return. 

Once again, Aniara is even more complicit in this “lesson”: While the people of the Aniara are part of the species that has brought such climactic devastation to this future Earth, for them it is far too late to reverse the damages already done or wait long enough for our planet’s biosphere to heal itself as it has done during previous global catastrophes. 

Things are even worse in the poem: Over thirty nuclear conflicts have turned Earth into a lifeless radioactive slagheap! They are subsequently punished with the karma of being imprisoned by their own technology and left to die slowly in existential horror. 

Of course, what is inflicted upon the denizens of the Aniara is really meant as a warning to the audiences of the film and poem. Yet the viewer is given little guidance by the makers of this art as to how they can go about saving Earth and then living sustainably within it. 

Perhaps the warnings are enough: After all these works of art are neither documentaries nor instructional manuals. However, left to their own devices and combined with the emotional devastation that Aniara creates with its viewers/readers, the audience may find itself trapped by feelings of helplessness against a problem they feel is too big to tackle on their own, or even in groups. 

I hope to be wrong here, however. Sometimes all it takes is the right person to be suitably motivated to change the course of history. After all, we are neither stuck on an uncontrollable spaceship nor has Earth’s ecosystem reached an irreversible breaking point. 

To bring this back to Solaris, we also have done little more than dip our collective toe into the cosmic waters: We are at least aware of how much we do not know about the rest of the Universe, which may provide us with enough armor and other defenses to be sufficiently successful when we do seriously enter the Final Frontier.

Although there is so much more to talk about Solaris, at this juncture I will leave you with these references and specific quotes for your further enjoyment of Solaris…

This next relevant quote by Tarkovsky himself comes from here:

Sculpting in Time Reflections on the Cinema, Andrey Tarkovsky. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1986.

https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~bjackson/bfs/solaris2020.pdf#:~:text=Screenplay%20by%20Fridrikh%20Gorenshtein%20and

It would perhaps be superfluous to mention that in one form or another all my films have made the point that people are not alone and abandoned in an empty universe, but are linked by countless threads with the past and the future; that as each person lives his life he forges a bond with the whole world, indeed with the whole history of mankind…. But the hope that each separate life and every human action has intrinsic meaning makes the responsibility of the individual for the overall course of human life incalculably greater.

In a world where there is a real threat of war capable of annihilating mankind; where social ills exist on a staggering scale; where human suffering cries out to heaven – the way must be found to reach another. Such is the sacred duty of each individual. 

An author’s poetic principle emerges from the effect made upon him by the surrounding reality, and it can rise above that reality, question it, engage in bitter conflict; and, moreover, not only with the reality that lies outside him, but also with the one that is within him. 

Lem and Tarkovsky’s takes on the film Solaris:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181207103021/http://english.lem.pl/arround-lem/adaptations/qsolarisq-by-tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Breakdown of the Director’s Filmmaking in Film, June 18, 2020

https://www.openculture.com/2020/06/andrei-tarkovskys-solaris-shot-by-shot-a-22-minute-breakdown-of-the-directors-filmmaking.html#:~:text=Solaris%20opens%20with%20a%20shot%20of%20water

To quote from the above essay:

Indeed, Tarkovsky seemed to deliberately half-ass the generic elements of film. He used leisurely shots of tunnels and highways of 1971 Tokyo to depict the city of the future. He devoted only a couple minutes of the film’s nearly three-hour running time to things like spaceships. And you have to love the fact that the space station in Solaris has such distinctly unfuturistic design elements as a chandelier and a wood-paneled library.

Tarkovsky, of course, isn’t interested in science. He’s interested in art and its way to evoke the divine. And his primary way of doing this is with long takes; epic shots that resonate profoundly even if the meaning of those images remains elusive. Solaris opens with a shot of water flowing in a brook and then, later in the scene, there is a sudden downpour. The camera presses into a shot of a teacup filling with rain. It’s a beautiful, memorable, evocative shot. Maybe the image means something. Maybe its beauty is, in and of itself, its meaning. Either way, Tarkovsky forces you to surrender to his deliberate cinematic rhythm and his pantheistic view of the world.

Solaris, Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky – Psychological and Philosophical Aspects, by Nicolae Sfetcu, MultiMedia Publishing (ed.), January 5, 2019:

https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/solarisen/Nicolae_Sfetcu-Solaris_directed_by_Andrei_Tarkovsky-Psychological_and_philosophical_aspects-C.pdf

Some relevant quotes from the above essay:

Solaris deeply disturbs this society because it invalidates the laws and fixed rules the society is used to. The ocean has a noetic behavior allowing dreams to create, from its own biological material, temporary geometric structures on its surface, as well as some disproportionately independent versions of the human form of people who have approached it, from the  footprints of scientist’s memories. (Weissert 1992) The ocean is thus endowed with a “symmetrical” logic that helps it overcome formal communication barriers.

According to Godel’s  incompleteness theorem is a fundamental theorem in mathematical logi, which establishes a correspondance between the sematic truth and the syntactic probability in the first- order logic. If you want to know more about this famous theorem, seek here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/

3 Philosophical aspects

Jonathon Rosenbaum notes that Tarkovsky’s Solaris, (Andrei Tarkovsky 1972) unlike Lem’s novel, (Lem 2012) is rather anti-science fiction than science fiction. (Rosenbaum 1990, 60)

Rosenbaum suggests that while the film is denying our archetypal space travel, the main   concern is the psychological investigation of Kris Kelvin, while trying to rediscover a lost humanity in the face of technology and science. (Duffy 2003) As Tarkovsky noted: 

“l am interested above all in the character who is capable of sacrificing himself and his way of life – regardless of whether that sacrifice is made in the name of spiritual values, or for the sake of someone else, or of his own salvation, or of all these things together.” (Andrey Tarkovsky 1996, 217.)

Can only Hari be considered an alien amorphous structure, or should its behavior be considered? Her emotional development and suffering, her epistemological journey toward self-knowledge, and especially her intense relationship with Kelvin, make the film an autonomous and deeply philosophical work of art: (Tumanov 2016) 

“The major deviation Tarkovsky undertakes in his film consists of a principal shift in the overall intention of the narrative prompted by the firm belief that love and human emotion have a primary meaning in the universe…” (Deltcheva and Vlasov 1997, 533)…

Tarkovsky noted that “Man’s unending quest for knowledge, given him gratuitously, is a source of great tension, for it brings with it constant anxiety, hardship, grief and disappointment.” (Andrey Tarkovsky 1996, 198)…

The problem is that, as Duffy says, (Duffy 2003) humanity has lost touch with itself, with its own spirituality and many elements that bind it. His conclusion is that although Solaris expands many of these elements, he is ultimately unable to reconcile Kris Kelvin’s rediscovery of individual humanity into the film, suggesting that Solaris is not responding to this optimism. 

Solaris is a movie that begins as a search for answers and comes to provide these answers along with a whole range of different questions.

The film suggests that fiction is as strong as “reality” and that imagination is the only foundation on which “reality” is based. Life is trying to connect to another life. Man’s attempts to classify and preserve this form of interaction will always be condemned to failure and will reflect a major mistake in the panoptic world we live in. 

Heterotopia is a place where such categories, classifications and restrictions do not apply. In such spaces we can identify that existence is best understood as a field of unsubstantiated imagination, where possibilities are endless, and restrictive boundaries are reduced inefficiently. (Duffy 2003) 

Through his exploits in the heterotopic space, Kelvin had the chance to return to some of the past mistakes of his life, and thus re-discovers his own humanity and confirms his place as a free individual subject to make his own choices. Certainly, this experience must be viewed with at least one optimism.

“’We are only seeking Man’”: Gender, Psychoanalysis, and Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, Elyce Rae Helford, Science Fiction Studies #57, Volume 19, Part 2, July 1992.

https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/57/helford57art.htm

“Humanism and Pessimism in Space: How Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Turns an Unnerving Premise into an Intimate Film”, The Gemsbok.

By Daniel Podgorski

June 16, 2016

https://thegemsbok.com/art-reviews-and-articles/thursday-theater-solaris-andrei-tarkovsky/

To quote from the above link, which includes a video:

Solaris and Disagreements with Kubrick and Lem:

Personally I have more affinity for the perspective in Kubrick’s 2001, which holds to the realistic – or perhaps optimistic – notion that technology may result in unfathomably beneficial progress or profoundly deep tragedy, depending on its application and context. But the overriding pessimism of Tarkovsky’s production can boast two things to its credit, which are lacking from Kubrick’s film: a deep examination of the nature of human connection, and a respect for the natural world which many people would be sure to support.

While Kubrick deeply appreciated Solaris, Tarkovsky found 2001 to be “phony” and “fake.” Certainly one can see why Tarkovsky, so deeply allied to his vision of what sort of emotional experiences humans need and ought to seek, would have rejected 2001‘s bold integration of futuristic technology into both everyday life and humanity’s ostensible path of progress.

Conclusion:

What fascinates me about the movie Solaris is that Tarkovsky accomplishes all at once a number of things attempted in a slew of other movies before and since, and does so with finesse and talent. Consider Christopher Nolan’s recent blockbuster space thriller Interstellar, which nails a stunning visual presentation of the universe, nails the momentum of a great action movie, and yet becomes exceedingly shallow when it nears topics of philosophical importance to the film, such as love and selfishness.

Book and Movie Review: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and Steven Soderbergh

By Nina Munteanu

August 22, 2021 

https://ninamunteanu.me/2021/08/22/solaris-by-stanislaw-lem-and-steven-soderbergh-book-and-film-review/

Two quotes from the above essay on the Soderbergh film version of Solaris:

Soderbergh’s Solaris is a poem to Lem’s prose. Both explore the universe around us and the universe within. Not particularly palatable to North America’s multiplex crowd, eager for easily accessed answers, Solaris will appeal more to those with a more esoteric appreciation for art.

In the final analysis, both book and movie are incredibly valuable but for different reasons. Soderbergh paints an impressionistic poem, using Kafkaesque brushstrokes on a simpler canvas, to Lem’s complex tapestry of multi-level prose. Lem challenges us far more by refusing to impose his personal views, where Soderbergh lets us glimpse his hopeful vision. 

I think that both, though, come to the same conclusion about the ethereal, mysterious and eternal nature of love. On the one hand, love may connect us within a fractal autopoietic network to the infinity of the inner and outer universe, uniting us with God and His purpose in a collaboration of faith. 

On the other hand, love may empower us to accept our place in a vast unknowable and amoral universe to form an island of hope in a purposeless sea of indifference. Whether love mends our souls to the fabric of our destiny; enslaves us on an impossible journey of desperate yearning; or seizes us in a strangling embrace of unspeakable terror at what lurks within – surely, then, love is God, in all its possible manifestations. This is unquestionably the message that unifies book and movie. And it is one worth proclaiming.

Although this next essay deals with a different Lem science fiction novel, His Master’s Voice (1968), there is more than enough material here to be relatable to Solaris and the themes of this section. Both stories deal with humanity encountering an alien intelligence with motives and actions so inscrutable that it limits their abilities to understand what they receive, as an analogy for the entire Universe.

“The Two Cultures Revisited. Stanislaw Lem’s His Master’s Voice”

Interlitteraria 2019

By Dominika Oramus

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338613129_The_Two_Cultures_Revisited_Stanislaw_Lem%27s_His_Master%27s_Voice

Abstract. I would like to take, as my starting point, the famous 1959 lecture of C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures, where science fiction is by and large ignored, and see how the consecutive points Snow is making are also discussed in the following decades of the 20th century by other philosophers of science, among them Stanislaw Lem, Steven Weinberg, and Jonathan Gottschall. 

In 1959 Snow postulated re-uniting the two cultures through the reform of education. In the 1960s and 1970s Lem did not believe in any reform, but prophesied that science left alone would procure the final war and, probably, the self-inflicted technological death of the West. I am then going to juxtapose Snow’s argument with a science fiction novel concerned with the same civilizational crisis: Stanislaw Lem’s His Master’s Voice. 

This is the audiobook version of Solaris with the much-improved translation from Polish to English, released by Audible Frontiers in 2011 and narrated by Alessandro Juliani:

To quote from the above, complete with original multiple syntax issues:

Lem voiced disappointment of Kilmartin and Cox English translations. Indeed those translations came from a previous French translation. Lem’ s wife and son received with favorable feeling Professor Bill Johnston 2011 direct translation from Polak, acknowledging that this version capture successfully the spirit of the original. For legals issues this version is only available by audiobook or kindle digital edition. There were not printed version. In other side, with respect to the movies: “Lem himself observed that none of the film versions depict much of the extraordinary physical and psychological ‘alienness’ of the Solaris ocean.”

Two more relevant links: 

Solaris: The Definitive Edition

By Stanislaw Lem; Translated by Bill Johnston; Read by Alessandro Juliani.

https://www.sffaudio.com/new-releases-solaris-by-stanislaw-lem/

https://hdaudiobooks.com/stanislaw-by-solaris-lem-audiobook-free/

In the summer of 2007, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released a radio play version of Solaris on their Radio 4 as a Classic Serial, in two hour-long episodes:

Here is the full Tarkovsky film version online for free:

I am not certain which is better in terms of managing shipboard morale, or if this was an improvement on the poem. This does speak to me as further evidence that this is one concept the filmmakers may have been in over the heads when recreating Martinson’s work for the cinema.

One of Aniara’s overriding messages is for humanity to stop trashing their planet before it is too late, be it through war or pollution or the mismanagement of natural resources. The consequences for failing to heed this warning are the loss of humanity’s only home and the extinction of our species.

The future Aniara gives its audiences is either a limited and potentially stagnant existence on harsh alien worlds, or a slow death trapped in the indifferent void of space among its own technology and artificial environments. The filmmakers may have hoped that their stark story would stir up audiences to keep this future from happening, but they provided little in the way of concrete and practical steps for the average person to accomplish this.

In yet another interview from 2019, a person listed only as Sarah from Caution Spoilers interviewed the two film makers and unearthed these revealing thoughts they had on the messages they were hoping to convey – and how they might do it both differently and better next time…

https://www.cautionspoilers.com/interviews/aniara-directors-pella-kagerman-hugo-lilja/

Sarah: When people see the film, do you worry you’re preaching to the converted in a sense? I mean, it’s a warning for what we’re doing. Are we talking to the same people all the time who already know?

Pella: I know we do.

Hugo: Yes, and that’s a problem. Sci-fi could be a vessel for reaching a larger audience. I’m not sure we do that with this film.

Pella: But we are living in such turbulent times that I think we should continue screaming.

Sarah: And eventually hopefully it gets through to them.

Pella: But I think we maybe have to be smarter, in that there’s a big responsibility on us to not be passengers but to try to act. And I think we’re both thinking about how to reach a bigger audience in the future.

Maybe we don’t need those super dark stories now. Maybe we have stories where we show that change is possible, that you can actually change society completely and you will be fine and it will even be better, you know? That those are the stories needed today. Because with the climate crisis, it’s so abstract, it’s hard to grasp everything and you need those stories that make it just simpler to act.

I am reminded of the infamous US government effort in the 1980s to stop its citizens from using illegal narcotics with the slogan “Don’t do drugs.” The message was both brief and obvious, but what next? And how could an individual stop the powerful and dangerous organized crime groups that were providing these drugs on a massive scale when even the federal agencies assigned to combat them were having a difficult time?

You can remind your audience that there is only one home planet and the need to stop trashing it. However, if the greater community and those in authority are not following suit and continue to pollute and wreck nature far beyond an individual’s ability to dissuade or stop them, then one is going to feel even more hopeless and turn negative, only adding to the problem.

To give a personal example…

In the summer of 2015, my family and I spent a few days at a rented lake house not far from our home during the Fourth of July holiday. At the lake, all I saw were people treating this body of water like their private playground, driving their various boats about with little regard that this lake had been around on Earth long before any humans ever showed up. And while I did not witness any such actions directly, I am sure it was used as both a trash dumpster and a toilet, especially by the more intoxicated revelers. 

I was fully aware of what was going on with these “celebrations”, but could I really do anything about this? No. Had I tried to intervene, having no recognized authority other than personal indignation and a sense of history and ethics, I easily imagined the partyers’ responses ranging from ignoring me, to rude gestures, to informal debates about what right did I have to interrupt their perceived harmless fun and “letting off steam,” perhaps even to the point of threats on my well-being. 

In short: I felt hopeless. This condition was magnified even more so by my awareness and the inability to really change anything. I could have felt some sense of hope that some day the authorities might enforce more strongly the better respect and care of nature. However, there was also the possibility that these same people in power could push even more stringent rules that would interfere with the legitimate human rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This could create a dangerous backlash.

I could also hope that people on their own would one day wake up from their irresponsibilities and be respectful without being forced to do so. Certain aspects of society have changed in the last few generations with noticeable gains, such as slavery and smoking.

Aniara does present the human desire to exhibit hope even in the face of certain oblivion. In one sense, hope may simply be a basic survival trait masquerading as nobility. Hope may also be the key to an intelligent species to move and live beyond mere animalistic survival. In Greek mythology, when Pandora, the first human woman created by the gods, released all the evils and miseries into the world, she kept the gift of hope and placed it in her heart.

Sometimes humans desire hope for salvation so strongly that they let rationality and discrimination drop by the wayside in the process. We saw this in Aniara with the radical cults which formed over time. 

I even witnessed this in certain reviews of the film, such as this one written in 2020, where the author found personalized hope in misunderstanding where the transport ship ended up nearly six million years in the future:

https://www.amindonfire.com/aniara-science-fiction-five-million-years-in-the-making/

The relevant quote:

If there is a happy ending it’s knowing that the Aniara made it to the Lyra Constellation and successfully used the gravitational force to turn around. More than five million years later the ship returns to a green, blue earth with clear skies. Five million years without people was all the earth needed to heal itself.

In the end our only hope for instigating change may be these blatant, obvious messages to the public. I have said before that the masses get much of their extracurricular education from film and television. If one does not possess the power to physically or socially make significant change in this world, perhaps a cry – or scream – into the wilderness is our one true hope.

“I don’t have any faith, but I have a lot of hope, and I have a lot of dreams of what we could do with our intelligence if we had the will and the leadership and the understanding of how we could take all of our intelligence and our resources and create a world for our kids that is hopeful.” 

– Ann Druyan (born June 13, 1949), The Skeptical Inquirer, 2003

Delivered from the Stars’ Embittered Stings: Martinson and Hope in Aniara

It is important to inquire about and reexamine author Harry Martinson’s take on hope in his epic poem Aniara. 

As we have seen in our examination of the cinematic version of the poem, there is no real hope in the end for everyone onboard the vessel begging for a release from their existence other than death. If there is any sort of redemption either in this world or an afterlife, the only thing the denizens of the Aniara can do is hope for it to come.

As stated in this analysis from the Generation Spaceship Project section titled “Notes for Martinson’s ‘Aniara’”:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240920023005/https://gsproject.edublogs.org/notes-on-gs-texts/notes-for-gs-poetry-texts/notes-for-martinsons-aniara/

Poems [Cantos] 101 and 102 are short, of two stanzas and three. The narrator [MR] says that as they approach death the individual’s sense of self broke down and disappeared but their soul’s will or essence became clearer. In a strong confession the narrator says he tried to make people happy through the Mima and, in the end, there is compassion and love, even though the four thousand travellers are killed by the scientific fact and ultimate truth of their journey through seemingly endless void.

In Poem 103 the narrator turns down the last, remaining lamp and waits for peace. Predicting the future of the Aniara he says the spacecraft travelled on for fifteen thousand years to Constellation Lyra, “like a museum filled with things and bones / and desiccated plants from Dorisgrove” (Poem 103). There is a glass-clear silence in the cosmic night as their sarcophagus ship travels on.” 

He ends with a clear image of the dead around the Mima’s grave, “sprawled in rings, / fallen and to guiltless ashes changed, / delivered from the stars’ embittered stings,” but he adds a line of hope and transcendence for although they are all dead and turned to dust in the vast and empty ship, them all of their human souls a constant current ranged of Nirvana, a state of release from mortal bonds and cares, a state of perfect freedom.

Martinson likely saw death as a release from life, considering how harsh most of his existence was. He committed suicide in early 1978, in part due to accusations that he and a fellow Swedish author won their Noble Prize in Literature in 1974 because they were members of that academy. That his young life consisted of being abandoned by his parents – his abusive father died of tuberculosis in 1910, and his mother moved to Oregon one year later, relinquishing Harry and his siblings into Sweden’s foster care system, where they ended up in virtual servitude – contributed to his feelings of hopelessness and the eventual suicide.

As Tom Lee wrote in his blog’s review essay of Aniara, published on October 11, 2022:

https://tomlee.wtf/2022/10/11/aniara/

It is not difficult to imagine the sensitive and elderly Martinson, abruptly exiled from artistic communion – the one thing he believed to be true and significant even in the face of immedicable yearning. What bulwarks do we have to protect meaning against infinity? And what will happen if we fail to preserve them?

This piece from The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, written by David Titelman and published in 2021, takes a very in-depth look at Martinson’s life, in particular how and why he ended it…

“’On Nomadic Shores Inward’: Harry Martinson’s Journey to Late-Life Suicide”

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00332828.2021.1882257

The abstract:

The aim of this study was to explore the unconscious dimensions of suicide as conveyed by the Swedish writer Harry Martinson, who took his life in 1978, four years after having received the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

A psychoanalytically informed “listening” to Martinson comprised a close reading of his writings, reflection on my total response to the material, the application of psychoanalytic hypotheses on severe depression and suicide-nearness, and the study of biographical sources. 

The dramatic fluctuations of Martinson’s self-regard were noted, as was the juxtaposition of opposites in his poetry: darkness that seeps through observations of the beauty of nature and man or the reverse, a gleam of love that defuses the cruelty of the world. 

Martinson’s drive to communicate with himself and others by talking and writing, to find auxiliary objects compensating for the traumatic losses of his childhood, and to realize mature love in adulthood was understood as a counterforce to self-destructiveness and threatening narcissistic disintegration. 

Pressured by negative reactions to the Nobel, which overlay decades of envy and political critique from colleagues, whose support he coveted, Martinson’s aggressivity – reflecting the near soul murder of his early life – exploded in his suicide.

PSA COMMENT: Some may consider that suicide is a release from pain and suffering; instead, it is far more of a drastic reaction to suffering by those who feel there is no other way out of their current lives. Suicide also causes great emotional harm to those close to the person who kill themselves, which the sufferer may not be fully cognizant of due to their personal pain. Thankfully there are institutions and agencies which can help people who feel so utterly depressed and pained about life. These same folks should also never underestimate the support and power of true friends and family.

If we are honest, we do not really know what, if anything, lies beyond this life beyond the words of self-appointed authority figures often dating back thousands of years in many cases. We also have no empirical evidence that there is a long cycle of lives lived over and over, ala reincarnation. 

At best we can only hope they exist – assuming one wants to carry on in a metaphysical form into a new realm of existence after death – and then we must further hope they are no less pleasant than the reality we dwell in now. We know with certainty only that there is this one life and we should make the most of it while we are alive. Simplistic, yes, but that is also the point of my message here.

The Only Way Out is Through

Regarding suffering and hope, I have wondered if the only way to get past the themes and images one must endure in viewing the cinematic Aniara is going through them – multiple times if necessary. 

For myself, it was certainly not fun in the conventional sense to watch this film, especially the first time around. I didn’t think I would ever watch Aniara again after that initial experience, let alone end up writing this whole essay about it. 

However, by being more intrigued with than frightened by Aniara and then viewing it multiple times, I found redeeming qualities in this work which also helped me deal with this film and certain aspects of life it brought up in the process. This is not something I can say about many other products of the entertainment industry. For me, the least acceptable kind of film is the one that doesn’t move you at all, rather than you dislike or even hate it. I was certainly not indifferent to Aniara, if nothing else.

Perhaps this is a way to approach painful issues in real life and Aniara helped me in that regard. There are multiple paths to Nirvana, after all. The film does make you confront certain issues about existence and how one might approach them, or not approach them in certain other cases. Aniara is primarily warning us about not falling into those societal and personal pitfalls which humans have done for ages – because this time, our mistakes may be permanent due to the complexities and wide reaches of modern technological civilization.

Then how do we evolve to be better? And what is better for an intelligent, tool-using species, exactly? Aniara does not directly answer this, although it is apparent that the makers wanted humanity to fix the neglect and damages we have done to Earth – and then stay home and live in harmony. 

As you have undoubtedly seen by now, this is only the beginning of the answer to our salvation, so far as I am concerned. We need to spread into space, for we are part of the cosmic whole, not a special entity separate from it. To continue thinking in that antiquated way will only spell our doom. Just ask the dinosaurs what happened because they had no way to monitor the many pieces of natural debris roaming our Sol system – and these are not the only ways that nature, both terrestrial and cosmic, can upend and destroy a species that attempts to stay put in its nest.

“The heaven that rolls around cries aloud to you while it displays its eternal harmony, and yet your eyes are fixed upon the earth alone.” 

– Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)

Who Wears It Best?

In that dramatic – and some have even called it traumatic – scene at the very end of Aniara, we watch as the long silent and depowered spaceship sails past an unnamed Earthlike exoplanet circling a star in the Lyra constellation in the year 5,981,407, with what is left of any remaining crewmembers having turned to dust generations ago.

While the mechanical systems of the Aniara were most certainly no longer operating when it reached that new world and the interiors we view had seen better days, the ship itself is still largely intact after almost six million years in the void – quite remarkable for a vessel designed only for round-trip travels between Earth and Mars. 

On the other hand, all eight thousand humans onboard died off a mere fraction of the Aniara’s unplanned voyage into deep space, with only the algae seeming to have survived all this time.

Even had the Aniara been designed to function and sustain thousands of cooperative humans and other terrestrial flora and fauna over many centuries on a generational mission to a relatively nearby star system… would it have succeeded?

As we have seen in multiple examples of generation ships from fiction, the human societies tend to break down long before the designated star is reached. When the vessels themselves have technical failures, it is often due to freak accidents or deliberate sabotage by members of the crew. The ship is still robust and redundant enough to carry on regardless, managing to keep the people it contains alive, if in a poorer state than they or their ancestors began with.

As we have yet to place real permanent human settlements on other worlds or in deep space, unless you count the various space stations we have lofted into low Earth orbit since 1971, we do not know in reality what might become of people who have to spend their entire lives in a confined artificial environment – especially if their primary purpose for existing is to maintain the vessel and produce the next generation who will one day in turn give birth to those who will settle a new star system.

We do have examples on Earth of people living in remote places for months at a time and more, such as bases on Antarctica, where conditions are closer to the surfaces of alien worlds such as Mars compared to other locations on our home planet. If we look upon Earth as a very large generation ship, we then have multiple examples of how long civilized societies last and the reasons for their demise. 

All the same, however, existing on or near Earth is not like being in a large, yet still comparatively small, vessel slowly moving through interstellar space, far from any world in time and space. It is not merely for dramatic purposes that science fiction authors have their generation ship characters degenerate or otherwise fall apart: Human beings are notorious for their ability to wreck even the best of habitats, having never quite left the small tribal mentalities of their savannah, tree, and cave-dwelling ancestors. 

Their one good fortune is that the “ship” they live on is a whole planet almost eight thousand miles (almost thirteen thousand kilometers) across with an amazing (but not entirely unlimited) amount of resources and places to go. On such a world, even if your entire society is burned to the ground, you still have the chance of moving elsewhere on the same “vessel” to start a new life. You also will not require any major environmental support systems or physiological changes in your new home, so long as you remain on Earth’s surface.

Not so with the generation ships or planetary settlements we have conceived of so far. The allowances for mistakes, disasters, and deliberate sabotage are much smaller. Space is unforgiving and rescue may be very far away, if it exists at all. 

Outside of the need to have a conventional story, it is often remarkable how any of those fictional generation ships which undergo crises manage to keep functioning at all: This includes Aniara, where its vessel somehow managed to physically sustain varying numbers of human passengers for over two decades despite being prepped for only a three-week cruise to Mars. In turn, most of these human occupants managed to keep from going fully barbaric and suicidal once they finally realized they were trapped on this ship virtually forever.

Humans evolved in a particular environment, namely Earth. While they can adapt to varying degrees of heat, cold, and atmospheric pressure, their bodies are still quite restricted to where they can live. Living in the terrestrial seas or near space is impossible without a complex and expensive infrastructure to maintain such dwellers: They have to bring their ecospheres with them.

Psychological and social factors are also not to be ignored, for even a paradise can become not enough to someone with heavy emotional needs and issues. Just surviving can bring down an entire community of truly conscious beings in one fashion or another.

Now compare existing in space to the Voyager probes. Yes, they are fully artificial and thus have fewer needs to remain functional than most organic species. Yes, their computer brains are anything but conscious and quite limited compared to modern computing machines. They contain no organic occupants and therefore are not required to tend such beings.  

Launched from Earth in the summer of 1977, the nominal missions of Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were to last long enough to explore the Jupiter and Saturn systems two to four years in their futures. After that, anything else was a bonus. 

Instead, the Voyager probes are still functioning almost five decades after being sent into the void – even longer if you count the fact that their design layouts were “frozen” by NASA in 1972 – and could keep signaling home through 2030, thanks to their nuclear power source, the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs.

They are now farther than any other human-made vessels sent into deep space: Voyager 1 is currently over fifteen billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth and Voyager 2 – having had to flyby four outer planetary systems – is almost thirteen billion miles (21 billion kilometers) away. Both probes were also the first vessels to pass beyond the Sol system’s heliosphere into the interstellar medium, in 2012 and 2018, respectively. 

The Voyagers have had their technical issues, but many were due to age, having functioned far longer than expected. Amazingly, most of these types of problems have been repaired and resolved remotely by a small staff of engineers on Earth. Scientific instruments have been slowly shut down to conserve power for the remaining equipment, which are still returning priceless scientific data about places no human has ever been before.

Psychological issues have naturally never been a factor: No Voyager or other deep space probe has ever broken down due to having an existential crisis upon realizing it will be roaming the galaxy forever, likely never to encounter another star system or vessel – at least so far as we know.

Structurally, the Voyagers are estimated to have incredible life spans measuring several billion years as a conservative minimum of time. Interstellar space is actually cleaner than the kinds of vacuum environments we can create on Earth, so far as we know. Thus, the probes will erode far more slowly than anything similar on this planet or even in the confines of the Sol system. 

This is good news for the odds that one day they may be found, either by starfaring ETI or our descendants in search of artifacts from the very earliest days of the human Space Age.

That the Aniara still existed (will exist?) almost six million years in the future is of course remarkable compared to how long it probably would have lasted if the Aniara had spent its days hauling people and cargo between Earth and Mars. However, knowing now how long the Voyagers are expected to last in the same realm, the Aniara is just getting started on its journey in comparison on a cosmic scale.

This vessel is also much bigger – sixteen thousand feet (4.8 kilometers, or 3.03 miles) long and three thousand feet (914 meters) wide – than the twin Voyager probes, whose bulk are roughly equivalent to a small school bus. Thus, the Aniara should be able to structurally endure for far longer, even though it will also be a relatively wider target for space debris impacts. 

COMMENT: I want to remind readers at this juncture that the Aniara also harbors that mysterious probe which proved invulnerable to the investigation team who desperately wanted to know what it held inside. Among my speculations about the probe’s purpose, as I discuss at length in the essay section Meaningless or Meaningful? The Multilevel Nature of the Probe/Spear, I considered the long, smooth cylindrical object to be some kind of time capsule, preserving important objects and information from either fellow humans who understandably feared the end of their species in that reality, or from an advanced alien intelligence with their own reasons. I further stated that the bulk of the transport ship will serve to provide extra layers of protection for this probe if that is its true purpose, thus ensuring a longer existence and increasing the odds of its being discovered one day.

The transport also did something the real automated explorers (and their final rocket booster stages in most cases) we have sent into the galaxy may never encounter: The Aniara flew through another planetary system, which we know from multiple real examples contains vast numbers of dust, meteoroids, planetoids, and comets – all or most of which will make their contributions to wearing on the ship’s hull, or perhaps even wreck it outright if the Aniara becomes unlucky enough to have a run-in with a random chunk of larger natural debris.

One will just have to assume the Aniara’s encounter with the Kepler-62 system and its very close shave with the fifth planet was a rare chance event that may never happen again, just as the Voyagers will probably never get closer to another star system than a few light years throughout their existence.

Where is all this leading, you may be asking? That the ones who successfully expand into the Milky Way galaxy via the Sol system and likely many other systems in the past, present, and future will be either artificial or bioengineered organics specifically designed to survive in all conceivable outer space environments.

I have already discussed this topic in more detail in the essay sections on generation ships, so I will only add here that while I think some baseline (unmodified) humans will still head out into the Final Frontier regardless of other factors, the real explorers of the void will be made of much firmer stuff. 

They may offer less fuel for a dramatic story of a ship taking thousands of years to cross the stars with a band of humans, but then again no one ever willingly puts together a real space mission, no matter how small or large, and wants to see it fail. 

Aniara had the good fortune, if those words may be used for such a difficult story, not to be a conventional generation ship. As a result, the drama and existentialism came from somewhat less artificially constructed areas of the plot, if you gather my meaning. The problems and terror were real in the sense that the characters were mostly just regular people trying to escape a doomed Earth, but ended up finding themselves trapped indefinitely in places of their own making that were technological, social, and psychological.

Machines, on the other hand, would not be phased in the same way, if at all, when it comes to finding oneself on a long journey into the void. They would (or should) also require far fewer resources and other infrastructures compared to the needs of even a handful of humans. 

While I anticipate that such future spacefaring Artilects will have some form of consciousness and awareness, they may be able to deal with these states of mind to avoid our existential and psychological problems due to their being inorganic as well as structured and evolved in ways unlike us.

This is why I contend that the most famous of fictional Artilects, HAL 9000 from the film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels, behaved as he did largely due to the need for drama by the entertainment medium’s human creators and audiences and not, as both Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick contended, due to becoming neurotic and paranoid over having to lie to his human companions aboard the USS Discovery.

There are even those who state that HAL was anything but neurotic or insane. Instead, the article linked next declares “that HAL acted rationally and logically, indeed with cold, calculating precision befitting a machine of his intelligence.”

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0095.html

This is the transcript of the 1972 film version shown above. Note the lack of character names regarding who is saying what or any stage directions, as per usual:

https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=solyaris#:~:text=Solyaris%20(1972)%20Movie%20Script.%20Read%20the

This is the 1968 Soviet television play of Solaris, the first such adaptation of Lem’s 1961 novel.

Dark Star

Dark Star began its existence as a student film project produced between 1970 and 1972. The film was eventually reworked and released into theaters in 1974 in an expanded format to match the length of a typical mainstream cinematic presentation. 

Dark Star has it all in terms of angst science fiction: A wonderfully low budget that proves overly expensive special effects are no replacement for an intelligent and entertaining film, a high degree of existentialism – its co-creator John Carpenter (born 1948) called his film “Waiting for Godot in outer space” – purposefully random science and astronomy references that sound legitimate but often aren’t, and a crew stuck on a starship on a seemingly endless mission who are forced to deal with their reality to the degrees their upbringing allow them to. 

At its center, Dark Star is a parody of all those science fiction stories of earlier eras which made voyaging through deep space an exciting and ultimately rewarding adventure, including and especially 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film also takes pot shots at similar promotional verbiage and attitudes about the real Space Age, which by the early 1970s felt like it belonged to an earlier era and was going into a decline after the grand Apollo years of sending human astronauts to the Moon and back.

In the year 2150, humanity is expanding into the Milky Way galaxy, settling new worlds. Some of these exoplanets, however, are not celestially stable, posing a threat and a roadblock to the cosmic Manifest Destiny plans of our species.

Apparently, there are enough of these unstable globes throughout the star systems that a task force called the Advance Exploration Corps (AEC) has been established to deal with these uncooperative alien planets. Utilizing crewed starships with faster-than-light (FTL) propulsion, the AEC carries out its primary task with bombs powerful enough to obliterate the entirety of these worlds in one shot. 

Oh, and did I mention these “Exponential Thermostellar Devices” are also equipped with Artificial Intelligence (AI), presumably meant to expedite the critical missions of this “special breed of man who has dedicated his life to blazing the trail through the most distant, unexplored galaxies [!], opening up the farthest frontiers of space.”  

To further add:

“The task they face is one of unbelievable isolation and loneliness. So far from home that Earth is no longer even a point of light in the sky, they must comb the universe for those unstable planets whose existence poses a threat to the peaceful colonists that follow. They must find these rogue planets – and destroy them. Among these commandos are the men of the scoutship Dark Star.”

We are introduced to the crew of this particular AEC vessel, who are in the middle of conducting their latest bomb run twenty (relative) years into their mission. We soon learn that not everything about the Dark Star and its crew are as wonderful and glorious as the authorities back home would have the public think…

The space vessel is slowly falling apart due to age, wear, and accidents, with the government claiming they cannot help due to federal budget cuts. To give just one example, via the ship’s mission log: “Storage Area 9 self-destructed last week and destroyed the ship’s entire supply of toilet paper.”

The men of Dark Star are responding in their own individual ways not only to the “unbelievable isolation and loneliness” of their jobs deep in the interstellar void, but also in reaction to the recent unfortunate death of their previous commander, a fellow named Powell. 

Their current leader, Dolittle, would like nothing more than to go home to California and surf the waves at Malibu. Dolittle is so focused on completing his mission that he reprimands one crewman named Boiler when the fellow announces a high probability of intelligent extraterrestrial life “in the Horsehead Nebula sector.”

“Don’t give me that kind of bull!” Dolittle shoots back. “Damn wild goose chase is what it is! Remember when Commander Powell found that 99-plus probability of intelligent life in the Magellanic Cloud? Remember what we found? A damn mindless vegetable, looked like a limp balloon. Fourteen light years for a vegetable that went squawk and let out a fart when you touch it. Remember that? Don’t give me any of that intelligent life stuff. Find me something I can blow up!”

Another crewmember, Talby, escapes this purgatory by staring out of the ship’s transparent dome at the stars and waiting for what he calls the Phoenix Asteroids, a cluster of planetoids “that circle the universe… once every 12.3 trillion years.” Talby also tells Doolittle that these mysterious objects “glow… glow with all the colors of the rainbow. Nobody knows why. They just glow as they drift around the universe.”

As our story progresses, conditions between the men and their machines only deteriorate, until one particular technological failure leaves Bomb Number 20 still attached to the ship, where it states that “detonation will occur at the programmed time” regardless of the fact that it will not drop on the designated target exoplanet.

In a wonderfully surreal scene, Dolittle leaves the Dark Star at the suggestion of Commander Powell – who isn’t quite as dead as the audience was initially led to believe, but has been kept on literal ice in the Cryogenic Freezer Compartment of the ship’s Freezer Room at “absolute zero” – to meet with Bomb 20 hanging just out of the bomb bay to teach the AI about phenomenology, a field of study which involves the conscious mind and how it relates to the world around it through direct experience. 

In summation, Dolittle tries to convince Bomb 20 that nothing really exists outside of itself so that this Exponential Thermostellar Device will not explode. At first, we are led to believe that Bomb 20 buys Dolittle’s explanation as the cuboid-shaped machine rumbles back into the Dark Star. 

However, we soon learn that Bomb 20’s computer brain has decided that since “the only thing which exists is myself,” it is going to recreate existence: With a biblical flourish (“In the beginning there was darkness, and the darkness was without form and void…. And in addition to the darkness there was also me. And I moved upon the face of the darkness. And I saw that I was alone.”) and the words “let there be light,” Bomb 20 detonates, vaporizing the Dark Star and everyone in it except for Dolittle and Talby, who were outside and far enough away to survive the explosion.

COMMENT: Commander Powell also manages to survive the destruction of the spaceship, tumbling off into the void still encased in a block of ice. As Dolittle and Talby watch their former captain drift away, Dolittle notes that “the skipper always was lucky.”

In the end, Dolittle and Talby drift away from each other: By an amazing coincidence, Talby encounters the Phoenix Asteroids on their 12.3 trillion-year journey around the Universe and floats away with them. Dolittle grabs a long, flat piece of metal debris from the remains of the Dark Star and uses it as a surfboard to surf into the atmosphere of the unstable alien planet they failed to destroy, ending his existence as a “falling star.”

Script to Screen provides both the transcript and the video of Doolittle talking to Bomb 20, along with the ending of Dark Star here:

https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/script-to-screen-dark-star-60255aff2ad4

For an in-depth look at Dark Star, please enjoy this essay I wrote on the film here:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2017/11/19/dark-star-and-staring-into-the-cosmic-abyss/

Sleeper

While the 1973 film Sleeper does not quite fit into the Angst SF category as defined in this essay – there is a quick background scene of a real astronomical observatory on struts, a brief mention of a Space Shuttle and the need for a hydrovac suit to fly in it, the main character sarcastically refers to himself as Flash Gordon, and later makes a crass remark about eating food that looks like “interstellar space cookies” – it does fit the bill of the standard counter cultural attitudes towards humanity’s future and science in general during the Golden Era of modern science fiction.

Directed and co-written by Woody Allen (born 1935), Sleeper Is about a man named Miles Monroe who is admitted into a New York City hospital in 1973 for a minor ulcer operation. Complications ensue and Miles is placed in cryogenic suspension to preserve his life and to wait for a time when medicine had advanced enough to repair him. 

More complications occur and Miles is not reawakened until the year 2173, where he finds himself in a future America controlled by a police state. The rest of the plot involves Miles encountering and commenting upon the various factions that are either trying to change the status quo of their society or are more than happy to take advantage of its benefits for themselves.

It is the last scenes of dialogue in Sleeper between Miles and artist turned revolutionary Luna Schlosser (played by Diane Keaton, born 1946) that pull together what Allen and many others were feeling about the earlier promises of the institutions they were raised in during the earlier half of the Twentieth Century:

Miles Monroe: “Hey, that’s science. I don’t believe in science. You know, science is an intellectual dead end. You know, it’s a lot of guys in tweed suits cutting up frogs… on foundation grants and –.” 

Luna Schlosser: “Oh, I see. You don’t believe in science. And you also don’t believe that the political systems work. And you don’t believe in God, huh?” 

Miles: “Right.”

Luna: “So then, what do you believe in?”

Miles: “Sex and death. Two things that come once in my lifetime. But at least after death you’re not nauseous.”

Of course, this is a very simplistic and one-sided message. Even for politics, if everything about it was corrupt, society and even our species would have collapsed a long time ago. Nothing is ever perfect, but neither are these institutions so far gone that they can be dismissed with a few words. 

I point back to my commentary on the 1936 film Things to Come where the artists and their factions who are against further technological progress, namely sending humans to the Moon, hypocritically never once consider abandoning the comforts and privileges they already enjoy thanks to the efforts and sacrifices made by past generations to secure their present and future. Quite frankly, they and we cannot have it both ways and still expect a productive technological society to take care of us.

The Black Hole

One place you might not expect a lot of Angst SF cinema is from the Walt Disney Company. In their long history, Disney has made their share of science fiction films and were also involved with other productions such as Forbidden Planet. However, in the decades before Disney acquired major franchises and studios, most of their efforts were relatively light affairs and certainly lacking in real angst as defined in this essay.

When Star Wars came along in May of 1977 and turned into a phenomenal hit that surprised contemporary Hollywood, Disney wanted to get in on this cinematic gold mine.

After the death of its founder, Walt Disney, in December of 1966, the company he founded began a decline in output quality and popularity that would last until the late 1980s. In the midst of their downward turn, Disney saw an opportunity with the franchise that promised exciting adventures – and lots of potential box office cash – in “a galaxy far, far away.”

The company decided to go with a script that had been floating around since the early 1970s: Originally called Space Probe One, they renamed it The Black Hole and eventually released it into theaters in December of 1979.

Disney tried to have it all with The Black Hole: A film for adults that would also appeal to kids, in particular the kind flocking to see Star Wars and its many growing copycats. Among the cute (and not so cute) robots and requisite laser battles, there were also some rather dark themes and scenes – and no, this is not a black hole joke. Disney even tried to invoke 2001: A Space Odyssey towards the end, with mixed results. 

Keep in mind that The Black Hole was first formed during the Golden Age of science fiction. This is reflected in other films which emerged shortly after (and often due to) Star Wars but had been developed before that franchise began. The year 1979 was a bumper crop for these works: Alien and Star Trek: The Motion Picture are the two best known of these kinds of films. You may read more about them in detail in my essay located here: 

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/09/13/the-human-adventure-is-just-beginning-alien-and-star-trek-the-motion-picture-at-40/

The cylindrical star vessel USS Palomino is on a mission to find “habitable life” (their words) in the Milky Way galaxy when they encounter the largest black hole ever found. Even more amazing, this ultimate cosmic gravity well has a huge and mysterious starship somehow hovering dangerously near the collapsed star and yet not being pulled in.

Going through a holographic database of known Terran space vehicles, the Palomino crew soon determine this vessel is the long-lost USS Cygnus – named after the first celestial object identified as a black hole, designated Cygnus X-1 – which had been on a mission similar to theirs but never returned to Earth when the authorities ordered its crew home twenty years earlier. 

Naturally the much smaller craft investigates the Cygnus, which they discover is not completely abandoned: An armada of service and security robots are found all over the huge ship under the command of one Dr. Hans Reinhardt, the lead scientist of the original expedition. 

Of course, not all is as it seems: Incensed and refusing to obey the order to return to Earth, Reinhardt took control of the ship’s many robots and had the rest of the human Cygnus crew either killed or turned into mindless worker drones – all so he could complete his ultimate quest: To fly into, through, and beyond the black hole!

The Palomino crew attempt to stop Reinhardt and his drastic plan, but after multiple battles and several losses, the remaining crew are trapped and left no choice but to take Reinhardt’s journey into the collapsed star.

After going through what can only be called a voyage at least partially inspired by the famous Stargate scene in 2001, the former Palomino astronauts emerge unscathed in either another part of the galaxy or another universe altogether as their rescue vessel heads toward an unknown planet. Roll credits.

There is a good story in The Black Hole: Unfortunately, it became muddled along the way as various company folks tried to make the film something for everyone, in particular the Star Wars crowd. That Disney was still trying to find its new footing at the time and was yet to become more experienced with adult-themed films did not help the situation.

Despite all this, The Black Hole is an example of Angst SF: There is plenty of bad science to go around, a heaping helpful of technobabble-level future technology, characters who either just want to go home or make science and space exploration look bad, and an ending that left the audience hanging as to the ultimate fate of the survivors.

In spite of everything you have just read here and perhaps elsewhere about this production, The Black Hole is still an enjoyable watch with perhaps one of the most intricate and exotically designed fictional starships in cinematic history (the USS Cygnus), some excellent practical special effects, an excellent soundtrack produced by composer John Barry (1933-2011), and moments when you can see the better plot peering out from behind the Star Wars excess – even if much of it is derived from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, in particular the 1954 Disney film version of the French author’s epic novel from 1870.   

This 2019 article from The Hollywood Reporter is a very good summary of how The Black Hole came about on its fortieth anniversary, complete with interviews with some of the main cast members and those who made the film possible:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/we-never-had-an-ending-why-disneys-black-hole-lost-star-wars-1262526/

Aniara Lite: WALL-E

Although deep and socially relevant cinematic science fiction took a detour with the arrival of Star Wars in 1977, this particular niche thankfully never fully disappeared. 

I want to focus on one film in this post-Force world that has definite parallels with Aniara, the Pixar Animation Studios film WALL-E, released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures in June of 2008. One will also note the comparisons with Silent Running.

By the Twenty-Second Century, human overconsumption, mismanagement, and pollution have made Earth’s environment so toxic to almost all terrestrial life that the entire population is evacuated into interstellar space aboard massive starliners provided by a megacorporation – which was ironically the primary source for the planet’s problems in the first place.

As humanity settles into a lifestyle that is basically an endless cruise vacation, fleets of automated machines called Waste Allocation Load Lifters: Earth-class, or WALL-E, are left to clean up the global mess. Once these robotic trash haulers have removed the waste in what is assumed to be just five years, the star vessels will return to Earth and humanity can safely repopulate their home world.

Over seven centuries later, however, humanity is still cruising the galaxy aboard all those starliners: Earth’s ecological devastation was too much to resolve and nearly all the WALL-E units have long since ceased to function. As we witness aboard one representative vessel named the Axiom, every human has become almost exclusively dependent on the various robots, computers, and other mechanized devices that serve their basic needs. 

NOTE: According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word axiom means “a statement or principle that is generally accepted to be true, but need not be so.”

The current generation of passengers have become so used to an endless daily lifestyle of eating, lounging, perusing social media, and playing recreational sports like golf that they no longer know of any other way to exist. Even the stars they dwell among contain no interest for them, if they ever did. This indefinite vacation has turned the bulk of humanity dangerously overweight, lazy, and apathetic.

The Aniara was also a type of cruise ship in space, providing its thousands of passengers with various material luxuries and entertainment as they spent what was intended to be a three-week journey from Earth to Mars. Just like the folks on the Axiom, they too were refugees escaping an ecologically devastated home planet ruined by their own species.

COMMENT: According to the Pixar Wiki, the Axiom carried 600,000 human passengers and 500,000 robots. At the time of Earth’s evacuation, there were 200 billion people on the planet! The logistics of moving every human off the homeworld and into what had to be thousands of similar starships, to say nothing of the difficulties encountered by those who undoubtedly refused to leave Earth regardless of the poisonous environment, must have been mind-boggling.

Here is an interesting video made by The Templin Institute on the history and design of the Axiom. The video includes a discussion on how the current generation of passengers came to be in the state they are in 700 years after their ancestors left Earth. The implication here for maintaining a generation ship society is to simply keep fulfilling the passengers’ basic wants and needs so that they do not desire or even realize there are other ways to be and live:   

What is interesting to wonder – and this leads to important questions and concerns regarding the concept of multigenerational starships – is if the Aniara could have been as well stocked with provisions and maintained as the Axiom was, might there have been less existential trauma and other issues among its travelers? After all, even the destination of the Aniara, the planet Mars, was no ecological paradise compared to Earth of earlier eras and the settlers would have to spend their lives dwelling in restrictive artificial environments. 

The first generation of passengers on the Axiom (and all those other spaceliners sent into the void) were told they would likely be spending no more than five years cruising among the stars. At some point it must have become evident that they were not returning to Earth at the originally promised date. 

Although we do not know how they reacted initially to this news, it is obvious that, unlike the Aniara’s compliment, the Axiom passengers had a longer time to settle into their new and frankly comfortable lifestyles when the change did arrive. They were probably placated with promises that it would take just a bit more than originally planned before Earth was ready for their return. By the time the people might have begun to question if and when they were ever going to return to their home world, they may have been on the starliner long enough that it was no longer a priority. Thus began the passengers’ long physical and mental decline.

COMMENT: In WALL-E, it is revealed via a classified video that in the year 2110, the head of the megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL) sent a secret message to all the starliners’ AI autopilots (named AUTO but sounds like Otto) that their plan to clean up Earth had failed and to just keep the ships and their passengers in deep space indefinitely. AUTO stuck to this plan even when it was determined centuries later that Earth was starting to sustain life again.

The examples we see of human social behavior in both WALL-E and Aniara bring up vital questions if generational starships are one of the ways we migrate to other star systems, or use them to cruise the galaxy indefinitely, stopping at exoworlds just long enough to resupply their vessel, sight-see, and so forth.

Will people willingly want to spend their lives on the equivalent of a vast cruise liner? Even if life on such a ship is better than being on an ecologically ruined Earth, all their needs are met, and a dictatorial regime of rulership never emerges, will such passengers eventually become bored and unsatisfied to dangerous levels? Will they turn violent and cruel just to relieve the monotony? Will they instead turn to virtual worlds where they can live out any kind of lives they want? Will they become lethargic and physiologically unhealthy as predicted in WALL-E? 

WALL-E and Aniara are doing what science fiction does best: Examining various “what-if” scenarios and showing their possible results. WALL-E may be a rather simplistic vision of one possible human future where Earth is an unlivable wreck and the humans who escaped into space fared little better in the end, but it does get out the message and implant the thought in the general public how best to take care of our home and live in harmony with each other. 

After all, collectively we are just waking up to the fact that we do live on a very large but not infinite ship in space that has been going in circles about a yellow dwarf star for billions of years. As our population expands and our civilization demands more resources and room, we will need to address these concerns before they overwhelm our resources and we find ourselves unable to escape. If we do and/or must leave our planetary home, we need to look at and test all the options carefully and with as much knowledge as possible before we fling our descendants into the void.

All Style and No Substance: Ad Astra

As with Interstellar from 2014, the film Ad Astra, released in 2019, is a good example of someone (or a group of someones) who does not truly grasp (or actually care about) science fiction, angsty or otherwise. Instead, as the section title above sums it up, they go for style over substance and assume/hope that their audiences will mistake it for deep meanings.

Ad Astra is such an all-around subpar yet expensive-looking film that I do not wish to waste time going into any real detail on it, except to emphasize that not only was its story and science absurd, but that it could not even land one of the key aspects of Angst SF: Ad Astra had a potentially happy future for humanity!

Our hero flies all the way out to Neptune to find his father, who is running a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) effort named the Lima Project on a space station circling the ice giant world. Turns out this one project has somehow determined that there is no other intelligent life in the Milky way galaxy; however, the project did collect enough data on exoworlds and alien star systems that the information could be used for both science expeditions and humanity settling the galaxy. 

No, no Ad Astra: You were supposed to declare that no life exists beyond Earth, there are no good places for humanity to expand to among the stars, and that only our planetary home can save us. 

I am not trying to be cleverly facetious and therefore secretly supportive of this film, please note. Ad Astra is poor cinema on multiple levels; that it has seemingly fooled many viewers by displaying only the trappings of an art house-style work is a sad testament to the otherwise educated members of society these days. As I warned near the beginning of this essay, this film shares many of the same traits as Interstellar in terms of its style, substance, and the public reactions to it.

Gravity – The Movie, Not the Fundamental Force of Nature

Another big-budget science fiction film that can be considered Angst SF but also contains major gaps in logic and physics, along with a strong undercurrent of anti-space messages, is the 2013 film Gravity.

Gravity starts off with an opening monologue card warning the audience that space is a dangerous, unpleasant, and all-around unlivable place…

At 600 km above planet Earth the temperature fluctuates between +258 and -148 degrees Fahrenheit. There is nothing to carry sound. No air pressure. No oxygen. Life in space is impossible.

We then spend the rest of the time watching a character doing her darndest to escape being in the Final Frontier (low Earth orbit, to be exact) due to one increasingly absurd disaster after another and return home to the planet below. 

The film’s message is clear. Gravity is Angst SF even though the main character has a potentially happy ending so far as she is concerned, but despite looking shiny and cool, winning accolades, box office receipts, and multiple Academy Award nominations, Gravity is still a flawed work under its glittery surface that reinforces its makers’ belief that humanity will only do best if it stays home.

Elysium

The year 2013 was home to yet another angsty style SF film that put space utilization and settlement in a bad light and showcased yet another future Earth with a humanity cursed with extreme levels of poverty, disease, and a wrecked environment: Elysium.

Named after the elitist ancient Greek mythological afterlife where only the greatest heroes (read warriors) and those who had connections with the gods could go when they die, Elysium is also the designation of a huge space station circling Earth inhabited by only the rich and powerful, who of course have everything, including really great health care technology right out of Star Trek. 

The Elysium authorities also literally take out any illegal immigrants who dare to cross the border of space attempting to find a better life on the station, which resembles the free-floating space settlement plans studied by NASA in the 1970s.

Most of the plot in Elysium is bogged down in a standard initially amoral guy turns reluctant hero and fights some truly villainous villains to help save humanity and level the social class playing field. The film also goes for the Hollywood happy ending where everyone on Earth is given the chance for a better life in one dramatic turn of events.

I recognize that there is always some value in a popular-level film that makes an attempt to showcase the value of people regardless of their circumstances and enlighten the public on the need for the better ecological management of our planet. 

What bothers me is that Elysium uses space and those who utilize it as the villains rather than the salvation of human civilization that it could be if we do it right. We and Earth are not separate from the rest of the Cosmos: This misguided perception is what we have seen multiple times in both the examples I have presented in this essay and elsewhere. Space itself can free our species from the limitations and problems that come from remaining on a singular world as we continue to expand our numbers, occupy more of Earth’s surface, and consume greater amounts of its resources, many of which are not renewable.

Arrival

The 2016 film Arrival is an interesting case study for defining Angst SF. On its surface the film certainly comes across as serious and hard science fiction: Twelve giant alien spaceships resembling black concave lenses suddenly appear at seemingly random places across Earth. The vessel hovering just off the ground in remote Montana is investigated by a contact team which includes a male physicist named Ian Donnelly and a female linguist named Dr. Louise Banks. 

In multiple meetings with the visitors, who are labeled heptapods and resemble giant gray squids with seven tentacles they use interchangeably as legs and arms, Dr. Banks is slowly able to decipher their strange language, which they make not with sounds but as ink-like circles in the air from the end of one of their “tentacles” with complex patterns.

Eventually the linguist learns that the heptapod language actually shapes one’s perception of time so that future events can be seen. The aliens have given humanity their language as a gift, as they will need our help with some undisclosed matter three thousand years from now. Their presence also brought our species to work together and live in peace after initial suspicions and tensions about their motives.

The Angst SF angle comes into play with Arrival thusly:

• The technologies of the heptapod spaceships, which remind one of the black slab Monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey in both their appearance and enigmatic nature, are never explained in the film. That there is some fundamental physics behind their features and functions is not relevant to the plot. They are meant to seem and feel almost divine in nature to give humanity both in the film and the audience the impression that gods have arrived from the heavens to either uplift or punish us. 
• The effects of the heptapod language are based on the real concept that learning a new language can reshape the human brain. However, the film takes this idea and goes well beyond it: Those who learn this alien “speech” are given the ability to see their future as it transcends our linear view of time. 
• The Two Cultures is on prominent display here: The physicist and linguist clash over the best ways to approach the alien visitors to learn as much as they can about them, especially why they have come to Earth. You know well in advance who is going to “win” this battle, even though in a real encounter with ETI, humanity would need every available tool at its disposal to have a serious chance at communicating with and understanding such aliens.
• Despite the story spanning interstellar levels and millennia, the real focus is on one woman and her relationship with her daughter, which has a tragic end depending upon how you look at it.

In essence, Arrival attempts to have its cake and eat it too, as it were. The film’s saving grace is that it is well made and thought-provoking. The angst elements do detract from the science in terms of how a real alien encounter would go: The fantastical effects of the unusual language aside, I was displeased with how the physicist and what fields he represents were downplayed in favor of the linguistic field by implying that only the “heart” or intuition can truly understand the Cosmos. 

Once again, humanity makes itself the measure of all things. Even the heptapods will need us in thirty centuries time, despite already being far superior on multiple levels. Exactly what they need from us is knowingly left unsaid. In the short story upon which Arrival is based, the aliens eventually leave without giving us any reasons as to why they arrived at Earth in the first place. Now that is existential.

Here is an article which resonates on my complaint about the treatment of physicist Ian Donnelly and the hard sciences in general in Arrival:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2016/11/21/the-physics-that-got-left-out-of-arrival/

Some cases in point, quoted from the article:

The way this plays out in the movie, the fact that Ian is a physicist has basically no relevance to anything. He’s important because of the emotional role he plays in Louise’s future life, but he could be a medical doctor, a CIA agent, or even a soldier assigned to her as a bodyguard without fundamentally changing the plot.

In the original story, it’s critically important that Gary Donnelly is a physicist, because he makes discoveries about heptapod physics that illuminate and inspire the discoveries that Louise makes about their language. And those discoveries provide the in-story justification for the shift to Louise’s sense of time that makes the whole thing work. Removing that physics aspect not only leaves Jeremy Renner with very little to do in the movie, it shifts the story in the direction of woo-woo “mystical aliens are mystical” in a way that I don’t really care for.

The film doesn’t contradict the original story, though, so if you know the physics basis, you can mentally put it back in and fix the major problem. And if you don’t know the physics basis, well, that’s what I’m here for…

Here is a fascinating piece by computer scientist and physicist Stephen Wolfram (born 1959) discussing his involvement with Arrival as a science consultant. To give you an idea how little effort was put into the method of travel for the heptapod starship, Wolfram was basically given just one day by the film producers to come up with an advanced interstellar propulsion system that at least sounded plausible:

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might-the-alien-spacecraft-work/

There is also this quote from the article that sums up the issues with trying to get good (read accurate) science in a Hollywood production and why it is important:

There are, I think, several reasons Hollywood movies often don’t get as much science input as they should. The first is that movie-makers usually just aren’t sensitive to the “science texture” of their movies. They can tell if things are out of whack at a human level, but they typically can’t tell if something is scientifically off. Sometimes they’ll get as far as calling a local university for help, but too often they’re sent to a hyper-specialized academic who’ll not-very-usefully tell them their whole story is wrong. Of course, to be fair, science content usually doesn’t make or break movies. But I think having good science content – like, say, good set design – can help elevate a good movie to greatness.

Here is the work that Arrival spawned from, “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang (born 1967), in PDF format:

https://fyp.uoregon.edu/sites/default/files/chiang_story_of_your_life.pdf

Televised Angst

Most television series aim towards a happy and/or positive ending of some form and seldom deviate from particular formats going back to the earliest days of the medium. There has also been a segment of memorable and not so memorable programs that focus on the theme of a group of people who are lost in remote and mysterious places, either by their own making or by forces beyond their control, and have to deal with their situation while desperately trying to get back home.

These next sections will focus on a selection of series that have elements in common with Aniara, some of which may surprise you and one that is more than just coincidentally similar!

Lost in Space

You might think the most obvious first choice for a television series relevant to Aniara is one about a retrofuture yet still nuclear family leaving an overpopulated Earth in 1997 to settle a new world in the Alpha Centauri system, only to have their starship thrown off course via a stowaway saboteur, leaving them to wander the Milky Way galaxy while trying each week to either reach their intended mission home or get back to Earth. 

You would, however, be mistaken in this case.

Lost in Space, which spent three seasons on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network from 1965 to 1968, had begun as a relatively serious science fiction series in its first season. 

Then the phenomenon known as Batman arrived on a rival network (the American Broadcasting Company, or ABC) in 1966. Based on the superhero character and his world from DC Comics, the Batman television series put a very campy and over-the-top spin on its main heroes, their wild assortment of villains, and the plots they are wrapped up in, to enormous popular success.

Wanting to cash in on the Batman train, the makers of Lost in Space lightened the tone and themes of their weekly stories and most of the characters in a similar vein, to mixed results, depending upon whom you seek out for a review. There was certainly no real sense of existential angst as displayed in Aniara, even as the characters ended up forever lost in space when the series was abruptly cancelled in 1968.

A Three-Hour Tour… 

How little did I know, when I used to watch a certain American television series from the 1960s in syndication as a kid in the early 1970s, that I would one day be comparing this seemingly light-hearted and even innocuous comedy program with a heavy avant-garde Swedish science fiction film based on an equally mordant poem. 

The television series? Gilligan’s Island. Yes, that television series. 

Allow me to elucidate…

Originally aired by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network from 1964 to 1967, Gilligan’s Island presented the weekly adventures of seven people who became stuck together on an “uncharted desert isle” somewhere in the vast South Pacific Ocean after their chartered tour boat was shipwrecked by a powerful storm at sea. 

As this was a comedy, nothing seriously bad ever happened to the “seven stranded castaways” on Gilligan’s Island. If anything, the group often lived and did rather well despite having “no phone, no lights, no motor car. Not a single luxury,” as the memorable theme song declared in the series back story.

The characters were never able to leave the island during the original run of the series (being cancelled unexpectedly by the network before they could have a fourth season did not help their predicament, either), despite a very strong desire to return to civilization dominating the plot of nearly every episode. 

As a child, Gilligan’s Island gave me an early case of existential angst, as I found the castaways’ endless inability to escape their fates as frustrating as they did. This feeling was only heightened by the fact that this supposedly uncharted island was constantly being visited by all sorts of people, creatures, and even machines who often possessed the ability to get them home yet managed to fail at this task in one form or another. Many older viewers had a different take on the characters’ situation: They wondered why any of them would want to trade a tropical paradise for the stress and strife of crowded modern society.

UPDATE: The castaways would eventually make it off the island in some of the later iterations of the franchise. At one point they even became stranded again, this time on another entire planet in a distant star system, in a short-lived animated series in the early 1980s titled, shockingly, Gilligan’s Planet. This later program was a Saturday morning rehash of the original live action series, only this time they focused on space themes and tropes.    

What compelled me to compare two franchises that seem so diametrically opposite to each other in just about every way on the surface? It began when I recalled one of the more famous parts of Gilligan’s Island’s equally famous theme song, which was also my inspiration for the title of this essay section…

A small charter boat christened the S.S. Minnow, with a crew of two and five passengers, set sail one fateful day to cruise the waters around some of the island state of Hawaii “for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour.” When I saw Aniara for the first time where they mention that the transportation vessel would take three weeks to travel from Earth to Mars with its eight thousand passengers, the similar number (if not length of time) led me to see other similarities between them:

• Both ships are taking their passengers on relatively brief cruises with provided amenities such as meals.
• Both ships are knocked off their original courses and destinations and lose directional control of their vessels due to unforeseen circumstances and subsequent loss of their engines: With the Aniara, it was being struck by natural cosmic debris in the poem and artificial space junk in the film which diverted them from Mars. For Gilligan’s Island, a fierce and unexpected tropical storm blew the “tiny ship” far away from Hawaii.
• Both crews lose their shipboard abilities to communicate with home, further hampering their attempts at rescue. The castaways on Gilligan’s Island do have a commercial radio for staying in touch with the mainland, but they can only receive radio signals with it, not transmit. In the poem version of Aniara, the ship is able to receive news about Earth for a while.
• In both cases, the respective vessels were saved from fatal disasters by “the courage of [their] fearless crew[s].”
• The passengers and crew develop an overriding focus to be rescued and get back home once they realize they are trapped in their current situations.
• The command structures of the crews with their authority over the passengers remain on both ships after their respective accidents. The status structure is stronger on the Aniara since the crew is much larger, but in Gilligan’s Island, the captain of the S.S. Minnow is continually looked up to as the de facto leader of the castaways during their island stay.
• The social class structure which the passengers belonged to before they went on their fateful trips remains largely intact afterwards. This social status is particularly noticeable in Gilligan’s Island, as highlighted by the wealthy couple, the Howells, who maintain their rich lifestyles and attitudes despite no longer having direct access to the bulk of their monetary and material wealth.
• There is not a lot of ethnic diversity on either ship. 

• In the case of Gilligan’s Island, this was due in part to the series arriving around the same time as the Civil Rights movement in the United States; television programs and films were just starting to portray more non-white characters. 
• In fact, as Gilligan’s Island was still airing on CBS, the first Star Trek series debuted in late 1966 on a rival network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). This science fiction adventure series, set several centuries in the future with an interstellar level civilization, was soon noted for having one of the first truly diverse casts of main characters on American television. 
• In contrast, the focus on the seven stranded castaways was their social diversity, which as you will see later in this section was no story accident.
• With Aniara, this film came from Sweden, which has a current demographic of 91 percent white citizens. This does not excuse everything, of course; however, the sky lift that brought up passengers to the transport ship came from Europe: One gets the strong impression that those who could make it off the environmentally traumatized Earth and relocate to relatively safer Mars were the ones who could afford to be rescued. In this respect, the demographics aboard the Aniara deliberately speak volumes about society.
• Both series have characters whose names are primarily known and called by their respective professions:

• For Aniara, among the most prominent examples are MR the Mimarobe, The Astronomer, and The Intendent. The Astronomer’s real name, Roberta Twelander, is seen just once during the recorded video broadcast welcoming passengers on the Aniara and never spoken on screen.
• For Gilligan’s Island, all the characters do have known full names (yes, even Gilligan, whose first name is Willy), but they were very seldom stated in the series. Most of the castaways are referred to each other by only one of their names, while the ship’s captain is usually called Skipper (an alternate word for captain) and Roy Hinkley is far better known simply as the Professor. It is also interesting to note that the Professor is portrayed as the smartest and most level-headed person in the group; he also brought a large collection of research books with him on the trip. All these traits parallel those of The Astronomer in Aniara.
• Both groups had encounters with outside elements which led them to believe they would soon be traveling home. In every case, the hoped-for rescue would fall through.
• Both groups made continual efforts to recreate for themselves what they miss from their respective homes with the resources available to them.
• Storms occasionally played havoc with the lives of the castaways.

It is also worth noting that in both stories, certain amenities which should have soon fallen into very short supply due to their respective situations, remain constant and available:

• For the Aniara, the spaceship continued to provide power from its backup systems for several decades, even after the emergency ejection of the nuclear fuel rods from its propulsion system. They also managed to keep thousands of people alive and relatively content on a diet of processed algae. The ship’s supplies of alcohol also somehow stayed available for years: Either the Aniara came very well-stocked with libations to begin with, or someone along the journey figured out how to distill algae into alcohol.
• The folks on Gilligan’s Island were also comparatively well supplied as each episode called for, despite being on a small and remote desert island somewhere in the Pacific, which the theme song drummed home each week was “primitive as can be.” It was later revealed that the series writers were going to explain this continual selective abundance by having the castaways find an abandoned yet stocked cargo freighter just off the island from which they could retrieve supplies. The creative staff later decided it would be more amusing to simply not explain how the castaways got the items they needed when they needed them and dropped this concept.

COMMENT: Another related running joke that viewers and fans of the series have long pointed out is that the castaways, in particular the Howells, took a lot of luggage for what was supposed to be a three-hour tour. I am sure a number of in-universe excuses could explain this, but in the end that would only take away from the ironic humor of the series, as was shown with the freighter concept.

It was these parallels I listed that made me wonder if somehow the filmmakers of Aniara were influenced to one degree or another by Gilligan’s Island? American culture is certainly pervasive throughout global human society, for good and bad; that cultural saturation includes decades-old light comedies which even those who have never seen one episode of the series are at least aware of. 

I was even influenced in this thought process during the scene of Isagel giving birth to her and MR’s child: The male midwife assisting them, a middle-aged man in appearance, greets their son upon his arrival into the world with “Welcome, little buddy!” The term “little buddy” is what the Skipper is well known for calling his first mate Gilligan as a term of friendly affection. To add, Gilligan was also the most childlike and innocent character among the all-adult castaways.

I know part of this is probably just me trying to justify my much younger self’s taste in television programs. It is more than likely that the Swedish producers knew nothing about Gilligan’s Island (hey, I was unaware of Aniara until quite recently, and that work is considered to be one of Sweden’s national treasures) and would not have seriously considered it as an influence if they did, nor would they have admitted to such a thing if they wanted to be taken seriously.

Thankfully for you, dear readers, I have no such hinderances, for I revel in making these wonderful and enlightening comparisons wherever they may come from. Being an intellectual snob only makes one miss out on discoveries and deeper meanings that exist in the most unexpected of places. Plus, it is just plain fun!

Perhaps the primary reason why I can make so many comparisons between Aniara and Gilligan’s Island is that the characters undergo similar if not exact situations, which lead to human beings responding and behaving in certain predictable ways. As just one of many examples, compare even a handful of science fiction films that deal with a post-apocalypse world and strong similarities will arise between them. This is due, more often than not, to the expected and predictable reactions of human beings thrust into parallel situations, rather than just straight up plagiarism or lazy writing. 

Although I have referred to Gilligan’s Island as a lightweight comedy more than once in this essay, there was more underlying depth to the series than one might imagine, and this is not due only to any interpretation. Perhaps in its own cultural way, Gilligan’s Island is the American version of Aniara, for it too is very well known, iconic, and even beloved by many of its citizens.

The creator of the series, producer and screenwriter Sherwood Schwartz (1916-2011), once said he wanted viewers to take away from Gilligan’s Island the idea that everyone needs to get along with each other to survive, despite our differences, for we are all together on a single point traveling indefinitely through space. 

Looking at Schwartz’s filmography, a fair number of his television series share the prevailing “we are all in this together” theme with Gilligan’s Island. The following list gives you a flavor of their similarities, in order of their broadcast dates:

• My Favorite Martian – Aired from 1963 to 1966, this CBS series focused on an advanced being from Mars who crash lands on Earth and must adapt to his new world by dealing and working with humans while attempting to repair his spaceship so he can return home – which he never did, despite being able to invent all sorts of devices, including a time machine.
• It’s About Time – Aired for just one season on CBS, from 1966 to 1967, we meet two American astronauts in a Gemini-style spacecraft orbiting Earth which somehow travels “faster than the speed of light.” As a result, they flew through “the barrier of time” and end up in a prehistoric era, where they have to deal with the primitive natives while trying to repair their ship to get home. In this case, the astronauts do get back to the late Twentieth Century and take a cave-dwelling family with them, where comedic hijinks ensue. As with Gilligan’s Island, this short-lived series also has a catchy theme which explains the premise each week. See and hear here:  https://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/itsabouttimelyrics.html
• Dusty’s Trail – This syndicated series lasted less than one year, airing from September of 1973 to March of 1974. Set in the American West of the 1880s, it is a reworking of Schwartz’s Gilligan’s Island, complete with having actor Bob Denver (1935-2005), who played Gilligan, now playing the lead character named Dusty. The rest of the cast mirrored the castaways, although they were played by different actors. The premise is that a wagon and stagecoach consisting of two coachmen and five passengers get separated from their wagon train that is taking settlers to California. The group spend their time trying to find and reconnect with their larger cadre while having adventures in very similar fashion to the denizens of Gilligan’s Island, only in Old West fashion. In addition, just like their far more popular predecessors, the lost wagoners are cancelled before they can reconnect with their wagon train and resume their journey.
• Together We Stand – Although this series surprisingly does not involve a group of people who are stranded together and trying to get home, Schwartz’s theme of humanity working as a unit despite our differences to survive and thrive may be found with this short-lived spinoff of his most famous series, The Brady Bunch (1969 to 1974). Aired on CBS from 1986 to 1987, the series focused on a white couple who adopted two children of different ethnicities. The episodes focused on how the blended family learned to understand each other and get along.

For those of you who want to read and hear the complete lyrics to the opening and closing scenes of Gilligan’s Island, here you go: https://lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/gilligansislandlyrics.html

Star Trek Voyager

The Star Trek franchise, which began as a television series in 1966 on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), cannot be seen as a true parallel to Aniara, despite the shared focal elements involving crewed ships in deep space set several centuries in the future. 

In general, except for the episodes involving temporary strandings for dramatic effect, the Star Trek universe is densely populated with intelligent species who deliberately venture into deep space for exploration and settling “strange new worlds.” They conduct these adventures thanks to the utilization of advanced interstellar vessels with FTL propulsion systems known as warp drives. 

The closest parallel might be the series Star Trek Voyager, first aired on the now-defunct United Paramount Network (UPN) from 1995 to 2001. The crew of the United Federation of Planets (UFP) starship USS Voyager find themselves involuntarily brought across the Milky Way galaxy over seventy thousand light years from where the UFP resides in the Alpha Quadrant of our vast stellar island. 

Although the trip back home from the Delta Quadrant is initially estimated to take 75 years, the crew of Voyager still have their warp drive propulsion system and the means to continually replicate their food and drink supplies, among other beneficial high technologies that the passengers and crew of the Aniara could have only fantasized about. 

Eventually, Voyager reestablishes contact with Starfleet, their quasi-military branch of the UFP in the Alpha Quadrant, and finally returns to Earth far ahead of the original schedule, largely intact and even improved in several areas, thanks to their near-constant encounters with other technological species and alien worlds.

For the World is Hollow…

I want to highlight two episodes from the Star Trek franchise that dealt specifically with generation ships and the issues they stirred up that reflect on some of the more serious concerns encountered by those have made real dives into conceiving such interstellar missions.

The first one is the third season episode from the original series titled “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”. It premiered on NBC Television on November 8, 1968.

A race of humanoid beings called the Fabrini constructed and launched a generation ship inside a large planetoid two hundred miles (320 kilometers) across and powered by atomic energy. The Fabrini did this to save select members of their species before their sun went nova about ten thousand years ago. 

As the centuries passed, the people of Yonada came to think they were living on an actual planet. This viewpoint was helped along by the design of the planetoid’s interior, which had both a “surface” and a “sky”, with the latter having an artificial sun, a day/night cycle, and stars. 

The Yonadans’ lack of awareness was also enforced by the Oracle of the People, the advanced AI that oversaw all aspects of their daily lives. The Oracle functioned as a virtual deity and was worshipped as such, along with the Fabrini ancestors who made this journey possible. 

Enforcement of this belief system was conducted by the Oracle using a small device labeled the Instrument of Obedience implanted in the right temples of all the Fabrini descendants. The device could inflict physical pain up to the point of death, depending on how severe the Oracle considered the individual’s crime. 

As we saw in this episode which contributed to the long show title, one elderly Yonada male was killed by the Oracle via his implanted instrument for revealing out loud that he once climbed a mountain, which was against the law, and discovered that his world’s sky – and thus all of Yonada – was an artificial construct. 

QUESTION: If the Oracle could – and did – kill the elderly Yonadan for confessing his forbidden act, why didn’t the AI (or the original Fabrini designers) have methods to prevent people from accessing those mountains to avoid such a problem in the first place? Or why didn’t it punish the man for climbing at the time when he did so in his youth? It was quite apparent that the Oracle could monitor the thoughts and actions of every person who had the Instrument of Obedience in their heads.

Certain aspects of the plans for this particular generation ship were left vague, either to add to the mystery of the Yonada or perhaps simply due to imperfections in the script. Sadly, many third season episodes of the original Star Trek series were often hit-and-miss when it came to production quality. Having to wrap up an entire story in under one hour is another factor in leaving unanswered questions in the worldbuilding process.

One item not fully addressed was the ignorance of the Yonada people about their world: Was it planned by the Fabrini designers as an emotional cushion to help them survive the ten-thousand-year journey across the stars? Or did the knowledge of Yonada being an artificial vessel and their goal of reaching a new place that was “rich, green, lovely to the eyes, and of a goodness that will fill the hearts of the people with tears of joy,” as the High Priestess Natira described their intended destination from what she had been taught, simply fade over the generations as these people came to know of only one world?

The impression one is given is that the Fabrini deliberately set up their generation ship’s society to believe only certain things about their world, to have these worldviews perpetually reinforced by an AI who was also treated as a god, and to only have the true purpose of their existence revealed once Yonada arrived at their new home planet one hundred centuries later.

If this is the case, when did the Fabrini bring about this radical action? Certainly, those who built Yonada and the first generation to occupy it knew the vessel’s real makeup and purpose. Or were these original passengers somehow led to believe something else from the start? 

How did the makers morally justify the use of an AI that not only kept every occupant in the dark about their reality and monitored every thought and action, but also physically punished and terrorized anyone who went outside a rather narrow set of views? We even witnessed one Yonadan essentially punished to death via severe pain for the transgression of discovering his world was artificial. 

This combination of oppressive fear and selected ignorance might keep a society in check over a long period of time, but what consequences will it have when the final generation reaches their new world and they learn the truth about their existence? Will the shock of being deliberately deceived for millennia be too much for them and lead to open rebellion, suicide, and genocide? 

Did the Fabrini plan for such a contingency, or did they simply assume the Yonadans will be delighted with their new home and the fact that the Universe is far larger and more complex than they ever imagined? The episode certainly leaves one with the impression that these people will be just fine with the latter supposition.

Another issue brought up in this episode is that Yonada suffered some major technical problems that would have caused it to collide with the destination planet named Daran V, destroying both the generation ship and wiping out Daran V’s native population of three billion inhabitants.

The Oracle seemed oblivious about these guidance problems and failed to inform any of the inhabitants of Yonada about them. The AI also actively fought the USS Enterprise officers who tried to access the vessel’s main control room to resolve the issue. Whether by Fabrini programming or taking on the role enroute via some form of learning algorithm, the Oracle gave one the impression it was not putting on an act when it behaved just like an arrogant and overly strict deity.

We do not know if any of the Yonadans would have been educated enough to fix the more serious technical issues on their ship even if they were given access to them. It also appears doubtful that there were any other AI onboard to serve as backups to the Oracle or deal with other ship systems. 

This lack of redundancy and having a crew that is deliberately left unable to grasp the technical parameters of their world are flaws that one hopes would never be duplicated in a real generation ship.

On a relatively more positive side, Yonada did possess a supply of nuclear missiles which one assumes were designed to remove both encroaching natural celestial bodies and deliberate threats from hostile or otherwise dangerous vessels. Since the residents of Yonada were made unaware of their surrounding reality, this defense system had to be automated. 

The downside to this setup is that benevolent and benign vessels such as the starship Enterprise were targeted by the Yonada defense system. Thankfully, the Federation ship could handle this comparatively primitive technology (the Fabrini used chemical rockets) with their superior defense capabilities. The attack also inadvertently alerted the Enterprise crew to the presence of Yonada and its eventually true nature as a generation ship, along with its potential impact with an inhabited planet – which of course Captain James T. Kirk and company resolved just in time.

Three decades later, Star Trek Voyager introduced another alien generation ship in their fifth season episode “The Disease”, first aired on February 24, 1999. Built by a humanoid species calling themselves the Varro living in the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way galaxy, this ship began its existence as a deep space exploration vessel. Over time more modules were added to it and a generation ship came to fruition.

When the USS Voyager encounters the Varro generation ship, they have been traveling through space for over four centuries. These ETI are quite xenophobic due to the many hostile encounters they have had with other intelligences over time (the Star Trek universe is quite the dangerous place, judging by how many scrapes the main characters in each franchise encountered every week). However, they do enlist the aid of the Voyager crew to help with worrying structural issues they are having with the vessel.

Although the focus of this episode is more about a romance between two characters and threatening diseases – ironically, the original series Star Trek episode about the Yonada generation ship also involved an interspecies romance and a deadly illness as plot points – “The Disease” does bring up an important issue about generation ship societies: What if some of the denizens no longer want to be part of that long journey and instead wish to leave the ship and head off in their own direction?

The Varro dissenters take action by introducing engineered parasites designed to eat away at their ship’s structure. This forces the individual pods that compose the generation vessel to break away from each other without harming the overall ship itself or its inhabitants. In the end, most of the Varro decide to stick together in their separate living sections while the dissenters head off to explore a binary star system. 

One interesting aspect of the Varro generation ship is that it is equipped with warp drive. In effect these travelers could venture to many star systems in relatively short periods of time. This contrasts with the design and purpose of most other generation starship plans, which assume slower-than-light propulsion methods and very long voyages through interstellar space.

As noted, the Varro are mistrustful of other intelligent species (a rather wise precaution in this reality) and prefer to live aboard their ship rather than settle another planet. This is yet another contrast with most generation ship plans: That the goal of such a mission is to reach a suitable world to start a new life upon for the arriving descendants of the original crew.

There is a certain level of safety and practicality to a generation ship that remains in space rather than striving for one particular target. Planets have their own sets of hazards, even seemingly benign places such as Earth. Staying in space and only stopping at other worlds to explore and replenish supplies would give the passengers a higher chance of survival. 

It is interesting to think that while we still conduct most of our SETI efforts towards Earthlike exoworlds to find other intelligent beings, many of the more advanced societies may be roaming the galaxy in an expanded version of a maritime cruise ship that stops at different islands, but the crew and passengers keep their vessel as home base. 

Thankfully, modern SETI has finally begun to look for what are labeled technosignatures produced by the interplanetary and interstellar activities of sophisticated alien societies and not just electromagnetic signals sent in our direction. It will be interesting to see if some of these “signatures” are from species who prefer the nomadic life from the comforts of massive spacecraft, venturing throughout the Milky Way galaxy as they please.

The Starlost 

In the fall of 1973, Canada produced and released a science fiction series devoted to the adventures of human descendants on a vast generation ship. Titled The Starlost, it was created and written by science fiction author Harlan Ellison (1934-2018), with fellow author Ben Bova (1932-2020) as science advisor. 

Ellison became disillusioned and highly disappointed with the low-quality production values of the series and eventually disavowed it. Nevertheless, The Starlost was the first science fiction television series devoted to the theme of a generation ship as its setting. 

Only sixteen episodes were released before The Starlost was permanently cancelled in early 1974. The background story is one quite similar to most generation vessel plots:

In the Twenty-Third Century, the planet Earth is facing some unspecified doom. Whatever is going wrong, it is bad enough – yet not quite so sudden – that the authorities are compelled and able to construct a giant interstellar vessel they call Earthship Ark.

At over two hundred miles (320 kilometers) long and fifty miles (80 kilometers) wide, this Ark has a long rectangular center which serves as the control and command hub of the ship. The center includes the propulsion system, a Bussard ramjet that scoops hydrogen from deep space and converts it into fusion power. The series calls it a CTR drive, for Controlled Thermonuclear Reactor, pushing the Ark along at nearly the speed of light.

Connected to this elongated hub are 37 domed biospheres each twenty square miles (fifty square kilometers) size. Each living area contains people of different cultures chosen especially for this mission. All of this is aimed at another star system for the descendants of the surviving human race to one day settle.

One hundred years into the journey, an unspecified accident happens that wrecks the control center and kills most of the crew. The biodomes are automatically secured from each other and the ship continues onward uncontrolled. As the centuries pass, the various communities begin to forget they are on a vast ship and the original reasons why they were placed there. 

One man from an Amish-type community named Devon eventually discovers the truth about his world. He comes across the Ark’s library computer, which functions just well enough to tell him about the true nature of things and that the ship is on a collision course with a Sol-type star! 

With two companions, Devon attempts to find the auxiliary bridge located on the far side of the Ark, steer the ship away from the approaching star, and eventually reconnect all the biodome societies to help find and settle a new world humanity could call home. Of course this task will not be easy, as it calls for weekly drama and danger along the way.

The Starlost “Bible” is not just an informative look at the plans for the series by its creators to guide episode script writers, it is also an enjoyable examination into how one group of people in the latter half of the Twentieth Century imagined the reasons and plans for designing a generation ship. Thankfully, it may be found and read online here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230319184920/http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Misc_Bibles/The_Starlost_Bible.pdf

For example, here is how the authors imagined the reactions by our species when it was learned that Earth was doomed and who decided among them not to take their fates lying down:

When the end was seen to be inevitable, the reactions of all of Earth population were polarized. Bizarrely. The majority of the “average” people went mad in proscribed ways: catatonia, libertinism, utter apathy, psychotic behaviour, violence, self-pity, hopelessness. 

But there was a sizable Minority who reconciled themselves to the death of the planet and who resolved to keep the seed of humanity alive. They were artists and physicians and technicians and philosophers who realized the only thing left to them was saving a segment of the Earth’s population that could viably be sent into space to settle on other worlds.

To this end, they began to build the Ark.

This Bible segment describes where the Earthship Ark was constructed in space, along with who, what, and how many were included on this journey… 

In the dark spaces between the Earth and the Moon, they began to build the Ark. Two hundred miles long, built to hold 500,000 people, designed by space engineers and estheticians to carry the genetically-preferred and carefully-selected cream of the human crop to other island universes, other galaxies [!], other suns, other planets… Earthlike planets where they could sow the seed of the Earth and permit the races to flourish.

All of this happened three hundred years from today. The Ark was built, staffed, and stocked with a supercargo of half a million men, women and children of all races ages and beliefs. Animals were put aboard, hydroponics gardens, whole cultures were built and put aboard, out there between the Earth and the Moon.

And then, the Ark left.

And the Earth was destroyed.

We also learn about the background of the main characters and their world, the biodome called Cypress Corners. Designed to keep the population under its artificial sky both healthy and stable, the society has unfortunately also become both rigid and oppressive – a genuine concern for real generation ship cultures when it comes to managing them over the centuries. 

Just as Devon and his friends break away from their society and subvert its enforced norms, it is unrealistic to assume that at least some individuals in generation vessels won’t think and feel a need to move beyond the rules of their cultures for any number of reasons. Will stomping out individual thoughts and acts be a necessary part of protecting the group order, or will it only lead to stagnation and extinction?

Sadly, The Starlost never got very far in its exploration of these themes and its encompassing worlds. Hopefully the series did and even will inspire those who one day want to build such vessels in reality and bring awareness to the needs and issues of spaceships and their inhabitants who must maintain themselves for centuries and millennia.

As its name suggests, TV Tropes examines all the often-typical aspects of the series with some good insights into what would and would not work in reality:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/TheStarlost

All the Tropes has a bit cheekier take on The Starlost, but still makes valuable and insightful points on the series:

https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_Starlost

If Aniara and Star Trek Made a Baby Together… Space: 1999

In 1975, a new science fiction television series emerged from Great Britain titled Space: 1999. 

Showcasing perhaps some of the best practical special effects of its era developed for television, Space: 1999 told the story of a collection of several hundred people living and working on a sprawling international lunar base located in the northern hemisphere crater Plato designated Moonbase Alpha.

One day – September 13, 1999, to be exact – the denizens of Alpha found themselves and the Moon violently hurtling away from Earth and out of the Sol system into the wider reaches of the galaxy at a high velocity. The culprit: The sudden explosion of the vast stores of nuclear waste brought from Earth and buried on the lunar farside, ostensibly to protect humanity from the lethal levels of radiation contained in this refuse. 

The men and women of Moonbase Alpha soon became involuntary explorers of interstellar space, riding a spaceship 3,476 kilometers (2,160 miles) across made of ancient rock. Each week for two years they would encounter strange new worlds and exotic life forms as they hoped to either find a way back to Earth or settle upon a compatible new planet to call home.

As was often the case on television in those days, Space: 1999 ended rather abruptly after only two seasons. The Alphans who had survived their journey across the stars were left with fates unknown. 

UPDATE: A seven-minute-long fan-made film titled Message from Moonbase Alpha premiered at a Space: 1999 Breakaway convention in Culver City, California, on September 13, 1999 – the exact date when the Moon was forcibly removed from our Sol system in the series. 

Utilizing one of the actors from the original series as the representative spokesperson, a final transmission is sent from the base to Earth, informing whoever detects and decodes it that the Alpha systems are beginning to fail 24 years after they involuntarily left Earth’s orbit. The residents plan to abandon the Moon for a new terrestrial-type world they have encountered and hope to make it their new home. The Alphans even predict that the Moon’s passage by this exoplanet will make it slingshot back to them a quarter century from their time.

An interesting and relevant quote: “And to state our belief, though our Moon’s progress was random, our odyssey does have a purpose, one still in the act of revealing itself….”

For all the details of this short film, considered worthy enough to be called the forty-ninth episode by the fandom, see here:

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/epguide/txmfma.html

There may have been some issues with certain details on how the Aniara ended up damaged and drifting through space, but these are mere quibbles compared to how Earth’s natural satellite was flung into the void in Space: 1999.

The introduction to this Moonbase Alpha Operational Guide page titled “The Science of Breakaway” by Marcus Lindroos shows why the mere detonation of a collection of nuclear waste would never budge the Moon…

The main problem is that the Moon is way too big and massive for the basic premise of the first Space: 1999 episode to work. Even if the current global stockpile of 30,000 nuclear warheads were brought from the Earth to the Moon and then simultaneously detonated there, it would merely create another crater.

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/pguide/xrsfb.html

COMMENT: The most recent report of global nuclear weapons places the estimated number at just over twelve thousand. So now there is even less of a chance of sending our Moon on a cruise around the galaxy. For those who want the details on current nuclear weapon numbers, see here:

https://fas.org/initiative/status-world-nuclear-forces/

If you read further on in “The Science of Breakaway” you will find just how much energy it would take to move the Moon out of its orbit about Earth and then exit the Sol system. The short answer is: So much that our celestial neighbor, along with everyone and everything on it, would be vaporized into lunar dust. 

Although we never witnessed the breakdown of society with the residents of Moonbase Alpha, there were numerous instances of personal downfalls and volatile reactions to being trapped on a runaway world. 

With regular resupplies from Earth a thing of the past, the Alphans had to depend on their own resources. Unlike in Star Trek, food had to be grown and tended on the lunar station. 

According to this video, there are hydroponic farms on the base. In the first season episode “Mission of the Darians”, one character mentions how certain “components [are] use[d] to provide our food on Alpha. They’re processed and recycled of course to make them palatable.” Yet aside from various moments of food being shown and mentioned, including a “French restaurant at the end of block D level 9”, the series never went into any real detail on how the base kept over three hundred personnel fed daily. 

These sections of the Moonbase Alpha Operational Guide do go into some detail on how the lunar base gets and maintains its food, water, and oxygen supplies. Interestingly enough, algae play an important role in the Alphans’ survival: “Most food is processed from the protein rich algae which are grown in the three Recycling Plants, which have the capacity to feed the entire base.”

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/maog/maog6.html#p58

The Aniara ran out of their main food stores just two months after the accident, forcing everyone on board to rely on processed algae for the rest of their lives – though they somehow managed to keep plenty of alcohol on hand for years after (did someone build a still?). Never once did the film indicate if the Aniara residents tried making gardens or if any of the cargo being carried in the ship’s holds had food supplies, which would only make sense since they were heading to Mars and its settlements.

It is fortuitous that the video mentions the Space: 1999 episode “Mission of the Darians” as the story focuses on a huge generation starship made by humanoid beings who were fleeing their old world for a new one on a journey that would take one thousand years to complete. 

Many of the tropes about generation vessels are present in this episode: A severe accident with their nuclear power plants wipes out most of the inhabitants one century into their journey. The survivors fall into two camps: A very small group of healthy elites and the rest who are affected by the radiation that still lingers throughout the ship. The elite control the masses by pretending to be gods who require worship and obedience in order to use the majority of the populace as both sources of food and for organ transplants to extend the lives of the elites, who can no longer naturally reproduce.

You may watch the complete episode here, thanks to YouTube:

The remarkable Generation Spaceship Project, which utilizes numerous science fiction stories and novels about crewed vessels taking centuries and millennia to cross the vast gulfs of space between Earth and other star systems as an educational tool, includes the epic poem Aniara in its curriculum. 

This is somewhat atypical in that the Aniara was technically not a generation ship, certainly not by the choice of its crew and passengers, but in all common respects the vessel and its journey do qualify as such. In any event, we should all be grateful they included Aniara for everyone’s edification and incorporated it with such wonderful notes and other extras.

Released just before the Swedish film adaptation, the GS Project has the complete poem in English, along with a helpful, if brief, glossary of terms. 

Martinson, H. (1998) Aniara: An Epic Science Fiction Poem. Translated from the Swedish by Klass, S. and Sjoberg, L. USA: Story Line Press.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240920023005/https://gsproject.edublogs.org/notes-on-gs-texts/notes-for-gs-poetry-texts/notes-for-martinsons-aniara/

The site also includes an extensive section of notes on the poem, whose parts include an overview of Martinson’s Aniara as a major GS text, comments and descriptions of each canto of the poem, links to the GS Project’s focus questions for students, and a resource list:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240920023005/https://gsproject.edublogs.org/notes-on-gs-texts/notes-for-gs-poetry-texts/notes-for-martinsons-aniara/

The 1999 English Version of Aniara Online

This is the second effort to translate Martinson’s 1956 epic poem into English from the original Swedish by Stephen Klass and Leif Sjöberg. This rendition has a valuable introduction by the translators. It is available for free in various formats here:

https://archive.org/details/aniara

A Look at the History of the 1963 English Translation of Aniara

On the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Aniara in 2016, the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, produced on its library blog a fascinating illustrated history from its poet Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978) collection of materials how he and Elspeth Harley Schubert (1907-1999) came to translate the epic poem from Swedish to English. 

Their efforts were published in 1963 as Aniara, A Review of Man in Time and Space.

https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/edinburghuniversityarchives/tag/aniara/

To quote from the blog piece on how some critics viewed the results:

In the national Swedish daily – Dagens Nyheter – on 6 May 1963, the English poet and critic Alfred Alvarez (1929-2019) wrote a rather critical piece about the MacDiarmid and Schubert translation. Olof Lagercrantz (1911-2002) Swedish writer, critic, literary scholar and publicist provided a commentary to the Alvarez piece in the same paper. Alvarez writes that MacDiarmid, ‘the most talented Scottish poet after Burns, […] has achieved a kind of Harris Tweed version of the poem… simple, unpretentious and serviceable’. Alvarez is ‘under the impression that Martinson’s poem may have lost a lot in translation’. Following up on the Alvarez piece, Lagercrantz comments that, as far as Swedish readers of the translation are concerned, it is ‘perhaps especially remarkable to hear Martinson characterised as grimly devoid of humour. Such an astounding opinion has to have its roots in the translation’.

This reviewer, who searches “for word-for-word memorable poetry…” was also less than enthusiastic about the 1963 translation of Aniara from Swedish to English:

https://formalverse.com/2020/02/29/review-aniara-by-harry-martinson/

The same reviewer also links to this page regarding the poem’s translation:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/977347525

To quote:

The existentialism of the situation – living lives of no destination in an inescapable vessel – is in practical terms no different from our own endless circling of the Sun… The issues of whether this feels different, and whether it should feel different, are never addressed but resonated with me nevertheless.

…

The book is divided into 103 ‘songs’ of half a page to seven pages in length – only 102 in the English translation by Hugh MacDiarmid and Elspeth Harley Schubert, as they and the author agreed that Song 42 is untranslatable.

COMMENT: Canto 42 looks into the mind of Libidel, the same woman who led the blame of MR for the loss of the Mima and later founded her own hedonistic cult that claimed to be “worshipping” the Artilect. In this canto, Libidel says the coldness of the Universe outside their ship can be countered by sharing human “warmth”.

…

The MacDiarmid/Schubert translation is not great, as shown in this excerpt. Not only is there a general lack of rhyme, but the second-to-last line would translate correctly as “I traveled all around but forgot about danger”. The only justification for changing the meaning is to make the (very weak) rhyme of “farther” with “Aniara”.

But then again, translating poetry into a different language’s poetry is at least as difficult as translating a written story into a film… so, as for this translation: I’ll give it five (out of ten, for the try). But the original? From what I can see and guess, ten out of ten!

Reviewing the Second English Translation

This article from The Bedlam Files is a review of the second published effort to put Aniara into English:

https://thebedlamfiles.com/fiction/aniara/

To quote:

Obviously any number of metaphors can be read into this account, although its depiction of space travel was apparently based on a deep seated fascination held by Martinson, who according to a first-hand quote (included in the introduction) experienced “the illusion of being located on a space ship. At first this feeling was chaotic and full of anxiety, but gradually the visions began to clarify themselves inside him…” 

The detail of the author’s descriptions of life aboard the Aniara, whose inhabitants are careful to observe the demarcation of morning, noon and night despite the fact that those things don’t exist in space, are worthy of a more conventionally drafted science fiction epic.

That last point brings up the question of whether ANIARA’s poetic overlay is absolutely necessary, or merely a gimmick to bolster a conventional story. To be sure, the idea of people attempting to subside aboard a massive spaceship isn’t particularly novel, and there’s not much in the way of plot twists to be found here. But Harry Martinson’s underlying concerns are more emotional and expressionistic, with longing and isolation being the book’s driving agents. Poetry, then, is an entirely appropriate format.

Yes, Aniara Has a Sequel

In 1980, a sequel of sorts to the poem Aniara written by Harry Martinson in the last years of his life was released in Swedish. Titled Doriderna (The Dorides), a complete English translation – with an illuminating preface by Martinson biographer Dr. Tord Hall (1910-1987) – was published online here in 2023 by someone named Imaginary-Zebra-3589…

https://www.reddit.com/r/aniara/comments/13uxi1f/complete_english_translation_of_the_aniara_sequel/?rdt=37805

Selected Published Reviews

The Complete Review of the 1999 English translation of the epic poem Aniara by Harry Martinson…

https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/sverige/martinsonh.htm

To quote:

Our Assessment: B: Odd piece of work, but has its moments.

…

Such journeys have often been the subjects of poetry, and Martinson’s leap into the endlessness of the universe is, ultimately, no more radical of fantastical than, say, poetic journeys to heaven or hell. A bit of science-terminology – mostly invented – gives it a slightly different feel, but ultimately this is spiritual poetry, the voyage of the individual and of humanity, and what has been left behind, a world ruined by mankind, leaving the survivors adrift in space “where no god heard us in the endless void”. As Martinson writes:

We now suspect that what we say is space

and glassy-clear around Aniara’s hull

is spirit, everlasting and impalpable,

that we are lost in spiritual seas.

…

Aniara is also a product of its times, but even as aspects may no longer seems as current, it holds up well in its bleak vision. Current expectations of man’s self-destruction perhaps focus more on climate-change than nuclear destruction, but many of the fundamentals remain depressingly the same. – M. A. Orthofer, 13 October 2018

“Aniara – The Space Dystopia That Generated a Nobel Prize” by Asmund Frost for Predict in their April 11, 2022 issue.

I first read about Aniara some fifteen years ago, in a brilliant essay collection about the Universe. The collection itself is worth a whole article, but the section about Aniara caught me off-guard and made me go look for the original work.

https://medium.com/predict/aniara-the-space-dystopia-that-led-to-a-nobel-prize-5a155ac9ebed

Some more of the better online reviews that do not merely rehash the plot:

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/feature-articles/voyage-to-the-end-of-the-universe-aniara-2018/

A select quote from the above link:

Shot entirely using artificial light, Aniara betrays no memory of what sunlight might ever have looked like. These people have been on board so long that the artificial has become real. In the mall-like centre of the ship, the action never stops. Since there is no light in space, the ship itself is always illuminated. The shops, malls, bars, and casinos operate on a 24/7 basis. Anything the passengers want is at their immediate disposal. They just must have the money to pay for it. But when the supplies run out, their money is worthless. This is the literal end of a consumerist society, the ultimate accelerationist accomplishment.

https://www.lily.fi/blogit/out-office/aniara/

To quote:

We left the film for an unreal world. It was bright outside. Little birds were singing. I felt a slight breeze on my face. I felt like crying. Why do we take everything for granted? Why is it so hard to be grateful for the little things? Why is nothing ever enough?

“Man. The king of ashes. The cruelty of space does not surpass that of man.” – Harry Martinson

https://vocal.media/geeks/the-accidental-allegory-of-aniara

To quote:

The first time I heard of Aniara was through a highly curiosity-piquing Instagram post/review of the film by author Mark Z. Danielewski [born 1966], wherein he wrote:

“Hands down the scariest sci-fi film I’ve ever seen. Aniara surpasses even 2001 in its understanding of what distances the stars describe. There are no fairy tales in space. Devouring aliens would be a comfort. Forget transcendence, apotheosis, revelation. Behold where we live. We are no match.”

So hey, when the man who penned the epic existential horror mind-f*ck of a novel that was House of Leaves proclaims that something is the scariest anything to him, you better believe I’m going to sit up and pay attention.

“Because destruction, like creation, is a choice”

This is an important and meaningful review by New Zealand native Octavia Cade writing for Strange Horizons, published on October 28, 2019. Cade compares the film and poem, with her preference for some items from the latter…

http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/reviews/aniara/

To quote:

That is a shared experience, a shared responsibility, which must be genuinely crippling to any sense of subsequent social responsibility. Yet it’s papered over, and I find that unfortunate.

What it has done, however, is to allow the film to focus entirely on the emotional response of a community to hopelessness. It’s not just the immediate loss that’s affecting these people – the disbelieving response of the mother who had promised to be on Mars by her small son’s birthday, and now faces the certainty of never seeing him again – it’s the aimlessness, the loss of purpose, that this eternal journey brings with it.

There’s just no prospect, no realistic prospect, of this journey ever ending. The Aniara’s captain does his best to string people along with hopes of rescue and recovery, but he’s lying to himself as well as his passengers and quickly crumbles under the weight of knowledge and responsibility. Neither is there the prospect of the journey ending in a generation, or even two. People can have hope for their children when they have none for themselves, but it’s difficult to live for descendants tens of thousands of years in the future, if at all. (Look at how difficult it is for most of us to take steps to leave a habitable world for those born a hundred years from now.) That far-distant possibility is not enough to hang a functioning society on. No wonder they all crumble to insanity under all that endless bleakness.

Oh, there are efforts to get a school going, to find sufficient work and leisure for everyone aboard so that they have structure and purpose to their days, but the loss of the Mima removes the main source of respite and comfort (in the film) and respite and responsibility (in the poem). If there’s nothing to keep alive for, what’s even the point?

…

Look, this isn’t a happy film. There is no happy ending. There’s not even a happy beginning, because Aniara, in any medium, is not a story about happiness. It’s a story about crumbling in the total absence of hope; a story where a population becomes so degraded it not only destroys its original home, but any possibility of subsequent ones. But it is relentlessly thoughtful, beautifully filmed, and the performances of the actors are fantastic. Emelie Jonsson as the Mimarobe, Bianca Cruzeiro as Isagel, Arvin Kananian as the increasingly unstable and authoritarian captain, and Anneli Martini as the drunken, cynical astronomer are genuinely outstanding. 

Go and see it, if you can. But once you have, go back out into the world and make sure that you choose to keep it… because destruction, like creation, is a choice.

Good not to be always mindful/ Of our torpid transmigration

James Davis Nicoll of James Nicoll Reviews had this to say about the poem Aniara, published on February 11, 2015…

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/good-not-to-be-always-mindful-of-our-torpid-transmigration

Nicoll states in his review that Aniara takes place in the Twenty-Fourth Century. The century I found in the poem was the Twenty-Third and to me it seemed to be referring to that stretch of one hundred years as an earlier era, not the one that is their present. I know the film version never mentions a date, although as already noted the characters dress and act like Europeans from the early Twenty-First Century

Nicoll complains that Martinson refers to the planet Jupiter as a star. No, the Jovian gas giant is not a star – it is 81 times less massive than it needs to be to become a sun, many Monoliths from the 1984 film 2010: The Year We Make Contact aside – but as Martinson was savvier about astronomy and other sciences than Nicoll may have realized, I think the author was taking literal poetic license here. Besides, mislabeling Jupiter’s species is the least among Martinson’s other takes on science and technology in his poem.

Interesting quotes from Nicoll’s review: 

The 1999 edition begins with a lengthy essay about Martinson and his work, an essay I found informative but orthogonal to my purposes. For no reason I can explain or justify, if you arrange words in stanzas they become opaque to me (unless they are then set to music). I wanted to see if I could find my own way through the text without help. I didn’t actually want to have the information Klass was presenting until after I read the poem. For this reason, I suggest leaving the essay until last, which is what I did.

…

I think the moment when I began to suspect this wasn’t going to end well was somewhere around World-war Thirty-three or four, when humanity manages to do to Mima what eldritch horrors do to Lovecraft’s fragile protagonists; Mima’s godlike omniscience is a poisoned gift, given that it must share its universe with the ecocidal, genocidal humans. I felt sorry for the dancers and libertines desperately trying to forget the horror of their circumstances, but it is Mima who is the real victim. The hedonists are of the same species as the bomb-wielding leaders committing ecocide and the frequency of war argues it is an inherent characteristic of the species; Mima, in contrast, is an innocent bystander. Poor Mima.

I did a little research before I started reading the book (context!) and discovered that Poul Anderson had read Aniara. Given that Anderson’s Tau Zero turns upon a similar mishap [4], I was expecting to be reminded of Anderson’s work. As it turns out, the author that came to mind was not Anderson but Norman Spinrad. His 1974 novella Riding the Torch is in many ways a lot closer to Aniara than is Tau Zero; Anderson’s characters leave a peaceful, semi-utopian Earth that has fallen under the boot of the dread Swede. Spinrad’s Earth is burned clean of life, as it is in Martinson’s poem, Anderson primly acknowledges the game of musical beds his characters play, Spinrad, in contrast, seems to gleefully embrace his characters’ sweaty, Disco-Era hedonism.

…

4: Although neither the initial set-up nor its conclusion are as tragic as they are in Martinson’s poem, despite which — for reasons I cannot articulate — Martinson strikes me as less intrinsically glum than Anderson. That is interesting, because the poet led a much more challenging life than Anderson did. Martinson was orphaned and placed in a foster family that treated him as slave labor, He ran away, went to sea, and found himself a homeless vagrant when he returned to Sweden. There’s more; it’s sad; trigger warning.

I freely admit that having reasons that cannot be articulated are pretty much the same thing as having no reasons at all.

This page contains the episode details, including a full transcript: 

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/epguide/t22motd.html

Going Green

Although I do not recall the exact episode this following scene from Space: 1999 was in, I do remember that the leaders of the Alpha base attempted to help the staff get over their homesickness for Earth by having them watch scenes of terrestrial flora for long periods of time. 

The plan was that the Alphans would eventually get sick of seeing green Earth trees and grassy fields and not mind so much the unrelenting gray of the lifeless lunar regolith, to say nothing of the standard beige and other muted colors of their uniforms and décor courtesy of 1970s retro-future fashion sense.

The plan apparently worked for the denizens of this lunar base, but would it work in reality? In the next decade or so we will see real crewed bases on the Moon, which hopefully will not disappear into the void due to any nuclear accident. 

Will having images of Earth help the residents of the Moon, Mars, and other worlds we intend to explore and settle one day, or will they only cause deeper homesickness and other issues? What about after a few generations of permanent residency in space? Will such scenes even matter to those who have never set foot on Earth?

Recall that MR attempted to soothe the longing and emotional pain of the Aniara passengers after the loss of Mima with her beam screen projecting into space images of a lush Earth as it once was. This effort also seemed to work for those folks, so far as we could tell, at least for a while.

In 2012, NASA released a book on the current state of progress (and lack as well) in studying human physiology in long-term space missions for astronauts and cosmonauts. One behavior noted from the book, which I quote in my linked review essay on the work, is what these space explorers did with their free time while spending six months to one year at a time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit…

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2012/09/11/the-psychology-of-space-exploration-a-review/

Regarding this view of the shrinking Earth from deep space, the multiple authors of Chapter 4 noted that ISS astronauts took 84.5 percent of the photographs during the mission inspired by their motivation and choices. Most of these images were of our planet moving over 200 miles below their feet. The authors noted how much of an emotional uplift it was for the astronauts to image Earth in their own time and in their own way.

The chapter authors also had this to say about what an expedition to Mars might encounter:

As we begin to plan for interplanetary missions, it is important to consider what types of activities could be substituted. Perhaps the crewmembers best suited to a Mars transit are those individuals who can get a boost to psychological well-being from scientific observations and astronomical imaging. Replacements for the challenge of mastering 800-millimeter photography could also be identified. As humans head beyond low-Earth orbit, crewmembers looking at Earth will only see a pale-blue dot, and then, someday in the far future, they will be too far away to view Earth at all.

Red Dwarf – The Series, Not the Star Type

Between 1988 and 1999, then again from 2009 to 2020, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) produced one of the more successful niche series on television: The science fiction comedy known as Red Dwarf. The series is also a solid member of the Angst SF family despite being played for sitcom-style laughs, as we shall see.

Named after the most common type of stars in the Universe (also one of the most long-lived), Red Dwarf starts off in the late Twenty-First Century, where we come upon a space mining vessel of the same name and its primarily blue-collar workers. One of them, third-class technician Dave Lister, has been placed in suspended animation by his superiors for illegally bringing a cat onboard the vessel – and a pregnant one at that. 

This turns out to be a “lucky” move for Lister as shortly thereafter a radiation leak inside the Red Dwarf kills the entire crew except for the cat Lister smuggled in, as she was being kept safely in the cargo hold.

Lister remains in statis for three million years until the ship’s AI, named Holly, determines the radiation has decayed to safe enough levels for Lister to reemerge into the Red Dwarf. While Lister has survived the disaster, he finds himself in the nearly intolerable state of possibly being the only human left in existence. Holly tries to keep Lister sane by recreating a hologram of his old immediate superior, Arnold Rimmer, for Lister to interact with. 

In addition to the existential horror Lister finds himself in, trapped in both space and time, Red Dwarf’s Angst SF elements include the fact that there are no aliens in this universe. In one early episode, titled “Waiting for God”, they come upon a small spaceship which Rimmer believes is an alien vessel with the bodies of dormant extraterrestrial beings. 

Rimmer convinces himself that these beings will be able to give him a real body to replace his holographic one once they are awakened. It turns out, however, that the ship is just one of the Red Dwarf garbage pods that had been ejected into space long ago and its “occupants” are the remains of chickens and other detritus from the crew’s meals. 

Many episodes of Red Dwarf deal with the characters attempting to either find Earth or seek help from others they come across in their journey – most of whom are either evolved descendants or creations from Sol 3 or alternate universe versions of themselves. As per the rules of both comedy and drama, nothing ever goes quite as hoped for or planned.

As we have witnessed elsewhere, including in the Aniara poem with the “arch-comic” clown Sandon, sometimes all one can do when confronting the vast and indifferent Cosmos is laugh at our circumstances, even if these actions too are ultimately futile. One might as well enjoy the trip one didn’t ask to be on in the first place.

Here is a short piece titled “Red Dwarf and the Meaning of Life” which examines the existentialism of the series, which the author considers it to be “one of the finest examples” of such comedy they have ever seen:

https://consciousnessthoughts.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/red-dwarf-and-the-meaning-of-life/

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” – The character of Second Mate Stubbs in Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby-Dick (1851)

Ascension

Four decades after Canada unleashed The Starlost upon the world, however briefly and awkwardly, the nation brought forth yet another television miniseries about a generation ship and those who live aboard it titled Ascension, after the name of the vessel. 

The premise is that in 1963, United States President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) and his administration feared that the Cold War was escalating to the point that humanity might destroy itself in a nuclear holocaust: The Cuban Missile Crisis that occurred in October of 1962 undoubtedly played a large role in their concerns.

To save at least some of the human species, a generation ship named the USS Ascension was built to house six hundred men, women, and children on a century-long journey to settle the Proxima Centauri system, the nearest star to Sol at 4.2 light years away. 

The Ascension was powered by an Orion nuclear pulse engine, which was being worked on in that era and showed great promise as a means to shuttle humans around the Sol system in record times (from Earth to Pluto in just one year, to give an example) and even the nearer stars in under two centuries. See this essay for the details on what could have been if we had not abandoned the effort:

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2016/09/16/project-orion-a-nuclear-bomb-and-rocket-all-in-one/

The big plot twist in Ascension is that the crew never left Earth: They were manipulated into believing they were on a spaceship traveling to Proxima Centauri to see if anyone would evolve at an accelerated pace in this isolated environment to enhance humanity faster than nature. Apparently the plan worked, as we witness one character at the end of the miniseries standing on an alien world with two suns in the sky, having transported himself there without the need for a starship.

Although Ascension was mostly a “whodunit” space opera, the series did provide a look at how humans might behave and what cultures would emerge over time far away from any further influences of the home planet once they left. It is also interesting to speculate if some people might actually evolve new biological traits under such circumstances and what this would mean for the entire crew and their mission.

Aniara… the Comedy Series

Recently, I discovered something else that the films Conquest of Space and Aniara have in common: A science fiction television series inspired by them. 

In Conquest’s case, it was a pilot called Destination Space. An effort by Paramount Pictures Corporation for a television series on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network released in 1959 which did not come to fruition, Destination Space was a mature and serious look at America’s space program which utilized both scenes and special effects from Conquest, presumably to save production costs (Paramount owned Conquest as it was the film’s production company, so that certainly helped). These very admirable traits are ironically what likely cost Destination a chance to be one of the first science fiction series aimed at adult audiences on network television. 

You may read more about Destination Space, including a link to the actual pilot, in my Conquest of Space essay section titled “Conquest of Space… the Television Series” here:  

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2024/05/08/set-your-gyros-for-mars-giving-a-second-chance-to-conquest-of-space/

In January of 2020, a new series premiered on the Home Box Office (HBO) pay television network titled Avenue 5. Development on the series started in 2017 under the direction of Scottish “satirist, writer, director, producer, performer, and panelist” Armando Giovanni Iannucci, who was born just six days after United States President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. 

COMMENT: No, there is no connection of any substance between the Kennedy assassination and Iannucci’s birth date that I am aware of. I just found it to be an interesting coincidence in space and time. Plus, Iannucci seems to have an ironic and even dark sense of humor, so he might find this fact bemusing.

Here is the premise of Avenue 5 as relayed on its representative Wikipedia page. You tell me if this description sounds familiar:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_5

Avenue 5 has been described as “set in the future, mostly in space.” On board the interplanetary cruise ship, the Avenue 5, a momentary loss of artificial gravity and accidental death of its chief engineer sends the titular vessel 0.21 degrees off course. It’s estimated it will take the ship three years to return to Earth, and with only enough supplies to sustain her many passengers for the intended eight-week long cruise, the crew of the Avenue 5 must struggle to maintain order and return the craft safely.

Regarding the Wikipedia plot description era of “set in the future,” it has been stated in multiple canon sources that Avenue 5 takes place forty years from the series premiere, so that would make for its events happening in the year 2060. 

Most ironically, this is the same date which the famous English scientist, mathematician, and alchemist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) calculated around the year 1705 that the world he knew would end, based on his intensive studies of perceived hidden prophecies in the Judeo-Christian Bible. 

I have found no documented evidence that the Avenue 5 writers and producers deliberately placed their story in 2060 to make a subtle point about the possibilities for impending catastrophes for both humanity and our environment based on what Newton wrote about it over three centuries ago.

However, I find it wryly amusing and hardly implausible that they could have, considering the elements of the fictional world we are about to explore and how the early interpretations of Newton’s prediction by most news sources when presented to a wider public light in early 2003 influenced the general population’s perceived knowledge of this bit of history: Namely, that one of the most brilliant men in history was also a Biblical scholar who discovered that humanity and the rest of existence would come to a literal end just after the middle of the Twenty-First Century.

COMMENT: The real story behind Newton, the Bible, and the year 2060 is a fascinating one in its own right. As with most such stories, the details are far more complex and nuanced than what the general media initially had to say about them. To quote an expert on the subject, the Canadian scholar and historian Stephen D. Snobelen, Newton’s referral to 2060 “would be more [akin to] a new beginning. It would be the end of an old age, and the beginning of a new era,” rather than some form of apocalyptic doom for all things.

For the in-depth yet accessible particulars on this history, see this page on Professor Snobelen’s Web site about Sir Isaac:

https://isaac-newton.org/statement-on-the-date-2060/

As for the interplanetary cruise ship described in the Wikipedia entry, the Avenue 5, it is not guaranteed that we will have real luxury spaceships cruising the Sol system for pleasure by then. However, since this would be a money-making space effort and space tourism is a real business with plenty of physical room to expand, it should be safe to say that robust extraterrestrial tourism will happen before the age of autonomous interstellar probes.

Coincidence? I Think Not…

The first time I watched Aniara, one thing I guarantee you I was not thinking in the initial days and weeks of reflection after my experience was that this nihilistic Swedish film would make a great satirical television series! Both the Martinson poem and the film felt far too heavy and ultimately depressing to be either mocked or made into a comedic form of entertainment, except in a rather cruel sense. 

In hindsight, I should have known better.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that someone had indeed done what I had once considered to be highly improbable, and just a few years after the release of the film version of Aniara. I soon commenced to watching both seasons of Avenue 5 to see just how much this series paralleled the film which preceded it.

COMMENT: Avenue 5 was cancelled in 2022 at the conclusion of its second season, with no sign of renewal. While the ultimate fate of the denizens of the vessel Avenue 5 was left in limbo, the funding for a rescue mission had finally been greenlighted in the final episode. It is fairly safe to assume, however, that even with this positive news, the characters would not have been out of the proverbial woods right away had a third season commenced. As Avenue 5 is also a comedy, albeit sometimes a darkly humored one, we may assume and hope that the remaining passengers and crew would eventually return to Earth, even if it continued to take longer than initially predicted.

As I went through each episode in order, I conducted multiple Internet searches to either validate or derail what others in that medium were similarly speculating upon about Aniara and Avenue 5. None of my investigations, nor the relevant written comments I read by others, produced any definitive references that producer Iannucci had borrowed the main elements of Aniara and turned them into Avenue 5. 

I did find this mention from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) page on Avenue 5 located in its Trivia section – and I quote:

Based on Swedish Nobel laureate Harry Martinson’s 1956 epic sci-fi poem “Aniara.” This is a more comedic take on his dark tale. The 2018 film “Aniara” is likely what prompted this series.

The one big downside to this quote is that there is no reference to where this bit of information originated from or by whom. It may well be just another speculation like all the others.

Recognizing the Lion by Its Claws

Despite the lack of confirming verbiage from either Iannucci or anyone else on his production team, the parallels between Aniara and Avenue 5 are both apparent and numerous, right down to the general atmosphere of the television series. 

Let us begin…