To increase sales of the magazine Veckohatten, the management decides to invest heavily in the beauty contest Miss Sweden. A communist cell is planning to sabotage the competition, because it is sexist.

Nobel Laureate Harry Martinson's famous poem consists of 103 cantos and relates the tragedy of a space ship which, originally bound for Mars with a cargo of colonists from the ravaged Earth, is ejected from the solar system after an accident and into an existential struggle.