Aniara

The poem is a masterpiece of esoteric science-fiction literature; and this is an unexpectedly impressive adaptation with a chilling dénouement

We ride in our sarcophagus in silence,

no longer offering the planet violence

or spreading deathly quiet on our kind.

Here we can question freely, true

while the vessel Aniara_, gone askew_

in bleak tracts of space, leaves vile time behind.

• Harry Martinson; Aniara: en revy om människan i tid och rum [trans. Aniara: fragments of time and space] (1956); Canto 25

How tremendous outer space is,

h__ow huge its mystery,

how small a part I play.

• Harry Martinson; Aniara: en revy om människan i tid och rum; Canto 82

_In our immens...

With Earth now just about uninhabitable, the Aniara - a vast liner-like spacecraft - is heading to Mars when it suffers a technical malfunction at the hands of some space junk. It can only survive if it jettisons all its fuel and so is now rendered incapable of propulsion. The captain Chefone (Arvin Kananian) has to announce to the passengers that instead of three weeks, it might take them at least two years to get there and that will only be if they can slingshot around something and gain momentum. Initially the travellers are happy enough with their twenty-one restaurants, swimming pools and tanning salons but as weeks become months become years, their behaviour reverts to something altogether more rudimentary. Conscious of this problem, ...