Roadside picnic (original 1972; edition 2012)

Il passaggio degli alieni è come un picnic sulla strada: sono arrivati e se ne sono andati lasciandosi alle spalle le aree in cui hanno sostato. In questi luoghi (le zone) si possono ritrovare artefatti alieni, alcuni utili, altri incomprensibili alla mente umana. Il recupero però è rischioso vista l'apparizione di fenomeni fisici potenzialmente letali.
Solo gli stalker si addentrano nelle zone per guadagnare dalla rivendita dei manufatti; il romanzo segue la vita di Red Schuhart e di come questa sia determinata dalla presenza delle zone, così tanto che anche la sua famiglia ne risentirà.
La visita aliena viene presentata attraverso due punti di vista: da una parte gli scienziati, interessati a capirne il perchè e a studiare oggetti e fenomeni presenti nelle zone, dall'altra gli stalker che invece non si pongono questi dubbi ma vedono le zone come possibilità di arricchimento e di riscatto anche se ne subiscono gli effetti collaterali (figli mutanti etc..).
L'aspetto fantascientifico è quindi in molti casi marginale, nonostante questo il romanzo è molto interessante, soprattutto per l'ambientazione e la drammaticità degli eventi narrati.

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The alien visitation is like a roadside picnic: they come and left leaving behind the areas where they stand. In these places (the zones) it's possible to find some alien artefacts, some useful and some unintelligible to the human mind. The retrieval is dangerous due to some possibly lethal physical phenomena.
Only the stalker wander in the zone to find objects to sell; the novel follows the life of Red Schuhart and describes how his life is determined by the presence of the zone, so much that also his family will be affected.
The alien visitation is presented following two main point of view: on one hand the scientists, interested about the cause of it and in knowing about the objects in the zone, on the other hand the stalkers, who have not this kind of doubts but see the zone as a way to become rich; the latter are the ones that suffers the effect of the zone (mutant child etc..).
The science fiction aspect is sometimes marginal, however the novel is very interesting, in particular because of the setting and the dramatic nature of the events. ( )

Aliens came to visit. Aliens have gone. And what's left on Earth is basically a couple of piles of trash from these picnics. Wait, that isn't quite as rosy as it sounds - they're disaster zones, and the "trash" is dangerous as hell. Some think that meticulously retrieving and probing the mysterious artefacts and items would yield interesting scientific results. Some think that the zones should be left alone. Some think there's a black market out there for all the weird stuff. So in come the stalkers - people skilled in traversing the dangers of the visitation zones, some using their skills with permissions and proper gear, some taking the harder way and just going there on their own.

"Roadside Picnic" is a bit disjointed book - a series of episodes in and out of the visitation zone. Compared to the film "Stalker" that was loosely based on the novel, the story focuses a little bit more on the milieu and lifes and situations and feelings of individual characters, and doesn't really have as much direction. On the other hand, "Stalker" is a slow and meditative film, while "Roadside Picnic" is positively action-packed at times. The protagonist, Red Schuhart, also isn't one upholding all that solemn and contemplative narrative, and goes for a bit more of relaxation.

Reading this book was part of my "oh damn, now that I have a tablet, I'll read all the ebooks I've wanted to read" challenge. Most of those books were from Project Gutenberg, but while Roadside Picnic isn't public domain, the book and its first English translation has been available on the web for a long time through official Strugatsky websites. Years ago, I even tried feeding the novel through text-to-speech. Never quite completed it, but now I did. Of course, I had to deal with the fact that the reader app didn't really like the *fascinating* HTML conversion, so reading experience wasn't optimal. It went okay, though. ( )

Fascinating idea: I love this view of contact with aliens, the idea that maybe they'll come along and they won't care about us, they'll just leave their litter here on earth and not care what happens to us because of it. Obviously the novel unpacks that, but that's the basic idea at the heart of it. And as with so many masterworks of SF, the book is mostly worth reading for that: the characters are indifferent to unpleasant, and only a couple of the relationships are important.

The end is -- whoa. It's awful. And it's somehow the more awful because we don't see what comes of it, whether it was remotely worth it. ( )

Brilliant

I’ve been aware of this book for a long time, it spawned both a celebrated film (Stalker) and computer game (Stalker) and is a classic of soviet era SF. The world has a number of sites that are part of “The Visit” where aliens have been to Earth and have left behind mysterious artefacts in “The Zone”. The book opens with a scientific explanation of the distribution of these Znes and then follows Red who is a “Stalker”, a treasure hunter who goes into the Zone to retrieve artefacts. This is a first contact story but one that is utterly strange and wonderful. There are lots of theories, expounded by various characters in the novel, but no hard telling of “this is what’s happening” and the mystery and utter alien-ness of the Visit is what is brilliantly portrayed here as well as following some of the characters over more than 10 years as the Zone is explored. The ending (which I won’t spoil) is also very memorable and stunning. This edition has an introduction by Ursula Le Guin (don’t read this before reading the book!! – why can’t people write introductions with the assumption that you’ve not read the book and don’t want spoilers, luckily once it started talking about the plot I skipped and came back after I read the book) and a brilliant afterword by Boris Strugatsky about the difficulties they had getting it published and Soviet censorship.

Overall – Highly recommended for lovers of SF and the weird ( )

see http://www.sfsite.com/11b/rp93.htm ( )