My latest paper has recently been published! “‘I Close the Mima’: The Role of Narrative in Harry Martinson’s Aniara” is out in volume 54, number 2 of Scandinavica. It should be available for free on their website soon; I’ll put a link under the Papers tab when it is, in case anyone’s desperately interested in reading it. Though if you’re into sci-fi, I’d definitely take a look at the source material. It’s a fascinating book-length poem about the dangers and isolation of spacecraft…
Abstract:
In 1956, Swedish writer and Nobel Laureate Harry Martinson published an epic science fiction poem, Aniara, about a spaceship thrown off course and dooming its passengers to an eternity of deep space travel. Aboard was also the Mima, an artificial intelligence that eventually committed suicide out of despair. The Mima is generally perceived to be a mimetic construct, but this article also interprets her in the form of a personified narrative: when the Mima dies, both the community aboard the Aniara, and the structure of the poem itself, breaks down into individualised constituents.
It’s the first paper of mine to focus on a science fiction text. Hopefully not the last!
ojcade.com 