Aniara differs from dystopian literature in general in that its focus is not on a nightmarish vision in the future but rather portrays global annihilation as already having taken place, as an event described in the past tense.

Harry Martinson's Aniara in a new translation" Swedish Book Review (1991.

Aniara first appeared in English in a version that identifies itself as having been "adapted from the Swedish by Hugh McDiarmid and Elspeth Harley Schubert" with an introduction by the indefatigable Tord Hall, who is well remembered for his Vetenskapens poesi: Studier och dikter, Naturvetenskap och poesi, and a large number of unusually literate textbooks on various aspects of physics and mathematics.