Frederick Pollack asks:
>
>I wonder if anyone else has read Aniara, a book-length science fiction
>epic by Harry Martinson, a Swedish poet who shared the Nobel Prize (with
>another Scandinavian, I think) in the early 70s? Poem was written,
>again I don't quite recall, in the early 60s and was made into a superb
>opera - one of the first to incorporate electronics - by Karl-Birger
>Blomdahl. Story Line Press here in US has rereleased Aniara. It's an
>excellent poem (you have to get past nearly impossible translation of
>Swedish slang, and the dated cybernetics). Title character is a
>computer piloting a ship full of refugees from a polluted, destroyed
>Earth. Ship goes off course and Aniara sings incredible aria over death
>of humanity - you can imagine what Blomdahl does w/ this in the opera.
>Despite the awkwardnesses, vastly superior to F. Turner's
>sci-fi-with-swordplay epics.
And I have to admit I haven't, but it does sound interesting... especially
the opera version...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
I'm going to swim for my life
to another shore. The human shore's
too much
You can speak. You're on safe
ground, you mandala, you. I'm
getting out of here
Charles Olson
|