Aniara Mothership- Name of Class Etymology

[AlphaGeek]

From Wikipedia:


"Aniara is an opera in two acts by Karl-Birger Blomdahl, with a libretto by Erik Lindegren based on the poem Aniara by Harry Martinson, that was premiered in 1959.[1] The opera was described by the composer as a "review about Man in Time and Space".[2]"


Reading the entire wiki entry shows a paints a pretty bleak picture of what happened on the first ship of this class. I hope other ships of the Aniara class fare better!

 

[LathaSerevi]

The wiki page for Martinson's 1956 poem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniara , mentions the ancient Greek ἀνιαρός, "sad, despairing", as Martinson's etymological source.

I hadn't thought to look it up when I read Vernor Vinge's book A Fire Upon The Deep, in which a space fleet left homeless by the destruction of their home planet named themselves the Aniara Fleet. "It was the official name chosen at the fleet conference just ended. There was a certain grim pleasure in embracing it, the ghost from before Sjandra Kei and before Nyjora, from the earliest times of the human race."


Professor Latha Serevi