Line #40 Literature/Aniara


1	[[quoteright:341:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/aniara_martinson.png]]
2	''Aniara'' is the title of an epic poem, written by Harry Martinsson and published in 1956. ''Aniara'' details the voyage of the [[ColonyShip goldonder]] ''Aniara'', which transports colonists from the [[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt polluted and irradiated Earth]] to new settlements on Mars. During the journey, ''Aniara'' is knocked off course and sets a new, irreversible course towards the constellation Lyra, and the colonists, knowing they will never leave ''Aniara'', attempt to deal with their impending, inevitable doom and realizations of mortality in various more or less insane ways. The book consists of 103 poems, ''canto''s, of which the shortest are one stanza long and longest fill several pages.
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4	''Aniara'' was acclaimed both by critics and the general public, and is generally considered to be the key factor in Martinsson receiving the Nobel Literature Prize in 1974.
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6	The poem has been adapted for stage several times, most notably as an opera in 1959. In 2018, the movie Film/{{Aniara}} premiered at Toronto Film Festival.
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10	!!''Aniara'' provides examples of the following tropes:
11	* AIIsACrapshoot: DoubleSubverted. It is the humans' requests of recalling the fate of Dorisburg which causes mima to self-destruct.
12	* AllForNothing: Everyone dies in the end.
13	** The "spear", an unidentified metal object found floating through space, serves to give the residents and crew of the ''Aniara'' a semblance of hope after its discovery. [[spoiler:After 14 months of preparation and training to capture it, the crew are completely unable to identify, open, or use it in any way, and the engineers are all killed by the cheffone or by misfortune shortly after, making it a complete dead-end for the ship.]]
14	* BenevolentAi: The mima. It's a machine that allows people to re-live their memories and dreams, providing the only semblance of escapism aboard the ship, which can also communicate and is considered by some to have free will. Shortly after the ship is knocked off course, the greatly increased workload and lack of downtime, combined with the abject despair of the customers, burns the machine out, culminating in its "suicide".
15	* BurialInSpace: The chief engineer.
16	* CargoCult: Most notably the cult that springs up around the mima, but several others pop up as well.
17	* ColonyShip: The goldonders, miles-long ships designed to provide a luxury travel experience for a few thousand people for the three-week journey to Mars.
18	* ConLang: Martinsson plays with this. For example many of the titles take their roots from a variety of languages. TheCaptain of ''Aniara'' bears the title "chefone", combining the French word for "boss" with the Italian augmentative suffix (in essence the captain is called "big boss") and the narrator is called "mimarob" after "mima", Martinsson's name for ''Aniara'''s MasterComputer, and the Slavic word "rob" meaning serf or slave.
19	* DeadlyDistantFinale: The end of the 2018 film cuts ahead to year 5,981,407, almost ''six million years'' after ''Aniara'' began her voyage, and shows the ship finally reaching a planet orbiting GM-54, a (fictional) star in the Lyra constellation. Of course, the ''Aniara'' is now derelict and frozen, and everyone on board is long dead.
20	* DespairEventHorizon: An important theme of the story is what happens when a group of humans are stranded on a spaceship in the vastness of space for the rest of their lives. It’s not pretty.
21	** In the movie, Isagel [[MaternallyChallenged laments having to bring a child]] onto the doomed ship, openly stating that he's been born into a prison with no escape. During her birth, her screams of pain are almost matched by her sorrow.
22	* DeusEstMachina: The mima is an arguably sentient, feeling machine that provides comfort to those under its care. It's a warm, inviting golden light emanating from the ceiling, requiring specialized technicians to communicate with and maintain it. After its self-initiated destruction, a fertility cult forms in its name, with mass orgies held in the room where the mima once stood.
23	* DownerEnding: The 2018 movie adaptation ends with the Aniara finally arriving at a celestial body after a whopping 5,981,407 years. The planet is lush and green and looks livable for humans to settle on, but the ship has become derelict, and everyone has died and turned to dust.
24	* DrivenToSuicide: Exceedingly common after the Aniara is knocked off course, especially after the [[LotusEaterMachine mima]] breaks down.
25	* DwindlingParty: The ship’s population gradually dies out over the years and by the end, the ''Aniara'' is abandoned. The last scene with living humans, in the movie, is less than ten people telling stories around the last remaining lamp.
26	* EarthThatWas: ''Aniara'' left Earth when it was still technically habitable, but on the way out due to radioactive fallout and pollution. however, during the tale, ''Aniara'' intercepts a message form Earth, indicating that what was left is now completely destroyed.
27	* EverybodyDiesEnding: It's stated outright from the start this ending will happen, and there is no DeusExMachina to make things right.
28	* EverybodysDeadDave: The last canto.
29	* FutureSlang: Daisy the dancer speaks a slang which the narrator finds both a comforting reminder of Earth and completely incomprehensible.
30	* GaiasLament: The Earth has become ravaged to the point of uninhabitability.
31	* GenderFlip: The narrator, male in the original, is a lesbian in the 2018 movie.
32	* GenerationShip: One of the cruelest aversions in the sci-fi literature. While the Aniara was never intended for inter-generational travel, the captain insists that the mimarob teach science and engineering to the children unlucky enough to have been brought aboard. [[spoiler:If any of the second generation survive to adulthood, they can't do anything to save themselves or improve their lives in any meaningful way.]]
33	* GhostShip: What ''Aniara'' eventually becomes. The penultimate section of the film is titled '''Sarcophagus'''.
34	* GoneHorriblyWrong: The evasive maneuver on asteroid Hondo and the ensuing collision with space debris and break-up of the steering gear sends the goldonder into interstellar space, with no hope of return.
35	** The mimarob spends years creating a way to project photos of Earth's greenery and natural beauty outside the windows of the ship. [[spoiler:While pretty, it's strongly implied that this reminder only serves to drive the surviving colonists further into despair, possibly including Isagel's MurderSuicide of her infant child.]]
36	* HopeSpot:
37	** The crew detects a probe launched towards them and believe it contains fuel and supplies to help them. When this news is announced to everyone, morale soars. [[spoiler:But when the probe finally arrives and brings it onboard, they are unable to find anything of use.]]
38	** The 2018 movie has a scene six years in where MR and her team successfully gets the beam projector working to replace the mima with pictures of nature in the ship windows, [[spoiler:only for her to come back and find Isagel and her baby dead from a MurderSuicide]].
39	* LaymansTerms: Deconstructed. After the death of the mima, the narrator is hauled to court to explain what happened... only to find that he can't. He knows exactly what happened and can explain it clearly in the jargon the mimarobs use, but when he tries to simplify it for public consumption his analogies collapse or his thoughts become muddled and incoherent to the point where they have no relation to what happened at all.
40	** The movie ''exclusively'' [[InvertedTrope describes the mima as an anthropomorphic creature]], with the machine's disrepair and eventual destruction only ever referred to as an intentional act of suicide by a grieving bring.
41	* MachineWorship: Many of the colonists take to viewing memories of Earth from the mima to dispel their angst and ennui, and some even take to worshipping the mima as a deity. Needless to say, they don't take the mima's death well. The movie shows the establishment of a fertility cult in the mima's name after its death.
42	* MaternallyChallenged: Isagel vocally hates the idea of having children, which is understandable given their situation. After her boy is born, Isagel seemingly briefly considers [[OffingTheOffspring drowning him]] while swimming.
43	* MeaningfulName: ''Aniara'' is a modified version of an Ancient Greek word meaning "grieving" or "in despair".
44	* MileLongShip: 16,000 ft, to be exact.
45	* MurderSuicide: [[spoiler:As explicitly shown in the 2018 film, Isagel, who has long since crossed the DespairEventHorizon, kills both herself and her child.]]
46	* NamedByTheAdaptation: The [[FreezeFrameBonus welcome video]] shows the otherwise-unnamed chief engineer's name to be Roberta Twelander.
47	* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: The mima.
48	* OffingTheOffspring: [[spoiler:Isagel murders her own son in a MurderSuicide.]]
49	* RiddleForTheAges: What was the probe that the ''Aniara'' places all of their hopes onto? None of their scientific instruments can even tell what the thing ''is'', much less what's inside or how to use it.
50	* TheScapegoat: After the Mima commits suicide, the blame is put on the Mimarobe even though she warned Captain Chefone the A.I. needed a rest and tried to stop people from entering the Mima room, but no one would listen.
51	* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: ''Heartwrenchingly'' averted. Martinson was a personal friend of Niels Bohr, and perfectly aware of the nature of the interstellar space. One of the things that breaks several of ''Aniara'''s inhabitants is that, in spite of the fact that they have travelled for twenty years, they are still only sixteen light-hours, within spitting distance in astronomical terms, from Earth, but still have no chance to get back to it, even with working engines.
52	* ShownTheirWork: Martinson consulted Bohr in many scientific aspects to get it right.
53	* TheStoic: The space pilots.
54	* TyrantTakesTheHelm: The Chefone is the captain of the ship from the start, but even after the incident sets the ship off course with no hope of rescue, he retains an iron grip over the entire civilian population for at least twenty years.
55	* WagonTrainToTheStars: UnbuiltTrope: ''Aniara'' is possibly the single most depressing example in existence. It has none of the hope of the rest of the genre; it is implied that the Mars-colonies were a desperate last-ditch attempt to save anything of humanity, and the colonists on ''Aniara'' are well aware from the get-go that there is no way for them to do anything other than live out their lives and then travel through nothingness forever.

Context Literature / Aniara