Roadside Picnic

I had encountered enough references to Roadside Picnic for it to have been on my wishlist for years. It was clearly an influence on some of my favorite 21st-century sf, notably VanderMeer's Annihilation* and Harrison's Nova Swing.

The version I read was the 2012 "new translation" which freed the original Russian text from hostile Soviet publisher's edits. An afterword by Boris Strugatsky provides a partial account of the authors' struggle with publishing authorities. It wasn't Soviet political ideology they ran afoul of. LeGuin in her 2012 foreword (drawing on a 1977 review) calls the story "indifferent to ideology" (vi), and it is in fact rather hostile to liberal economics and bourgeois morality. Surprisingly, it was a blinkered show more escapist editorial aesthetic that interfered with the Strugatskys' work in the publishing environment of 1970s Soviet sf.

On the whole, I read the book's philosophy to be one of cosmic indifferentism verging on existentialism. The "stalker" protagonist Red isn't really an anti-hero, although he is a criminal without revolutionary aspirations. A "stalker" in this book is a freelance looter of artifacts resulting from the Visit by some inscrutable extraterrestrial power. The book is short and reads quickly, with a prologue for some background and four longish chapters set over a twelve-year span in the town of Harmont, which has been partly absorbed by one of the Zones of alien effects and residues.

I haven't seen the Tartovsky film Stalker (1979) based on this book, but I am now curious to do so. To no small degree, the story strikes me as what you'd get if Eugene O'Neill wrote a science fiction novel.

* Edited to add: I gather that VanderMeer has disavowed familiarity with Roadside Picnic when writing Annihilation. In any case, the resonance is strong enough to have been remarked by multiple reviewers. show less

I went into this totally unfamiliar with STALKER as a videogame or film. I also went into this with no prior exposure to the Strugatsky's, though I've read some other russian science fiction and fantasy translated to English. Unfortunately by folks with much more objectionable politics than the Strugatskys. A dear friend, intimately familiar with my reading preferences over the last two and a half decades, sent this to me thinking I would like it.
And they were not wrong. Its steeped in that unique blend of fatalistic optimism that oozes from certain aspects of soviet society. The characters aren't likable as heroes, but likable as real human being behaving in ways consistent with their backgrounds and environments. The treatment of the show more alien visitors that could care less about humans, our world, or our resources is visionary for the time, and humanity's response to the event feels all too accurate. The fact that they were writing and getting some of the underlying themes and ideas here past the soviet era censors is inspirational, and the fact that other than Ursula K. Leguin and a few others the giants of the genre at the time in the West ignored them feels criminal. Almost as criminal as many of the characters!
I've already picked up several more novels by the Strugatsky's and can't recommend this highly enough to anyone looking for a bit more cerebral, more literary scifi. show less

This is a really interesting and humbling take on alien visitation. And it’s a good, old fashioned story of life on the edge of desperation, to boot.

The term “roadside picnic” refers to one scientist’s interpretation of what the visitation really was — a stop-off by alien travelers with no more interest in us than we would have in the ants showing up for our own picnic. Maybe even less, since they didn’t even give us the attention that pests get. They came, they left scraps of their technology lying around, and they never showed any interest in us, never tried to communicate.

I’ve always thought that disinterest may well be the likely attitude of any aliens who really did visit our planet. With completely different show more biological paths, very different types of intelligence, and likely very different types of technology, why would such aliens regard us as their like? Notwithstanding our obvious technological footprint on the Earth, might they not regard us as just another of the species living on this planet, among many other planets they probably have visited? Why do we think we are so special that they would make it a priority to contact us or show any special interest in us at all?

Well, these aliens didn’t. When the story starts, they have come and gone. They left behind scraps of their technology, all now contained within an area called “the Zone.” The Zone is maintained by the International Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures. They study the alien technology and restrict access to the Zone, both for exclusive access and because the artifacts within it are extremely and unpredictably dangerous to anyone who goes near them.

Redrick Schuhart is one of a small number of “stalkers” who sneak into the Zone, take artifacts and sell them on the black market. One reason there is only a small number of stalkers is that most die (or are horribly injured) on the job.

The story of Redrick (Red), his fringy life near the Zone, and the small community of stalkers is engrossing all on its own. It has a desperate feel. Stalking is like the gold rush, but with alien booby traps. You can be squashed flat by an invisible field of concentrated gravity. You can be eaten by burning “hell slime.” Your children will be mutants, your genetic endowment having been twisted by your exposure to the Zone. And it’s pretty much just a matter of time before something in there gets you.

But there is also the “Golden Sphere.” Maybe only a myth, maybe something other than what everybody thinks it is, but it’s top prize in the Zone. It grants wishes, like an Aladdin’s Lamp. Red’s cohort, Burbridge has been to it, and he even has a map to get back to it.

The story carries itself well. Red is a noirish character, if not doomed himself then likely doom for anybody around him. Despite the awkwardness of translation from the Russian, the writing is fluid and engaging — I know I can’t appreciate the Strugatsky brothers’ writing in their own language, but, if the English translation is any indication, they are masterful writers.

And over the whole story looms this humbling perspective — this is a trash heap that Red, the other stalkers, and the Institute are poking through. They are all scavenging the discards of an unimaginable intelligence, like ants scavenging trash in a picnic ground. show less

This book takes place several years after aliens have visited Earth. The aliens were only there briefly, but the places where they visited, known as the Zones, are littered with strange technology and tainted with weird aberrations in the laws of physics. Humans have been studying the Zones ever since, trying to understand the alien technology and decipher whatever messages the aliens might have left. One character surmises that there is no message, that the technology is not a gift, but instead that the aliens just stopped briefly on Earth and what they left behind is their litter, like people stopping for a roadside picnic and leaving behind their food wrappers and soda cans.

It is illegal and highly dangerous to enter the Zones, but show more there is a black market for alien technology, so of course there are people, known as stalkers, who risk life and limb to go into the Zones and smuggle out alien artifacts. The book primarily focuses on one stalker, following him for a few adventures into the Zones, but also looking at the effects that his journeys have on other characters. There isn't really a plot, but a very moody and atmospheric probing of the fascinating premise and the characters.

This book is deeply weird in a very Russian way: the arbitrariness of the world is reminiscent of Kafka, and the creepiness of the alien presence reminded me of Solaris by Stanislav Lem. show less

An (unspecified) time ago spaceships landed in several places along the same latitude. They stayed a very short while and then left, but in their wake they left . . . depending on your point of view, potentially miraculous technology or fatally dangerous trash. Not normal trash, but objects and slime that burns, and and spatial anomalies that can tear a person apart and . . . the list goes on and on. But some of the stuff is unbelievably useful even if people have no idea how any of these objects (say, batteries) that never run out of power and, if encouraged even multiply!. In this (unspecified) country, not the Soviet Union, and western culturally, a black market thrives alongside the governmental research agencies despite all efforts show more to curb them. Stalkers, if they aren't immediately killed, gradually learn their way around and to recognize potentially useful things. The aliens made no attempt to communicate with the humans and Why Not? is a burning issue. Is this a test? Was this just a casual stop, a look around, or even, as is suggested, no more than what humans used to sometimes do in a rest area, eat a picnic and dump all the trash cluttering up their car or camper and take off. Maybe they never even noticed there was anything remotely like a civilization. Maybe we aren't even close yet (if ever). I loved everything in the novel: Redrick Schuhart is a fully rounded person (somewhat unusual in SF until more recently, it must be admitted--and this came out in 1972) and many minor characters are developed exactly as necessary, the dialogue is excellent (in all good translations, Russian dialogue tends to be good), the plot is perfect and intertwines with the thematic/philosophical content. Also -- the novel barely feels dated perhaps because the emphasis on people as they are is so true and ever-unchanging. I've often wondered if we aren't insane thinking that some alien culture might be delighted with us. In this one, it's clear to me, anyway, that we are beneath notice. Just. Wow. ***** show less

Roadside Picnic is (in my estimation) a masterpiece of fiction, let alone of genre fiction. How it was published before the Chernobyl disaster is completely beyond me. It works just as well on a philosophical/thematic level as it does as a piece of gripping entertainment. Such a good translation too; I'm amazed at how well the casual tone was preserved across the language barrier. The dialogue, Red's internal monologue, and the characters that surround him are rooted in a realness that plays well as foils to the unknowable and terrifying otherness of the Zone. Hardly a shred of wasted space. So much happens in this tight 190 pages; so much subtextual work that deepens the world without needing to use expositional dumps. I was left show more wanting so much more in the best possible way.

To be honest I've been struggling to even write down some thoughts on it, because there's just so much to say. Even after several years of collecting my thoughts on what I read, I feel I am completely over matched. Luckily the page count lends itself to rereading, and I'm sure I'm be back for more.

I also really enjoyed the forward by Le Guin and the afterward from Boris. I'd very much recommend reading the forward after the novel itself though, as Le Guin does a decent amount of spoiling. I think the less you know about the plot and characters the better. show less

Aliens have made contact, or have they? Thirteen years after the visitation, an international science cooperative has locked up each landing site, dubbed Zones in an effort to study the unexplained phenomena. Red Schuhart is a stalker, someone that sneaks into the zones and tries to collect artefacts. Despite the legal ramifications, artefacts on the black market sell really well. When Red puts together another team to collect a “full empty” everything goes wrong.

The attempts to gain publication of Roadside Picnic is a story in itself; like most Russian literature this novel was originally serialised in a literary magazine. Attempts to publish in book form took over eight years, mainly due to denial by the Department for Agitation show more and Propaganda. The heavily censored book that originally was published was a significant departure to what the authors originally wrote. I am unclear as to whether the new translation I read corrected this censorship, to quote the back of the book “this authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions”. I know some of the corrections made included to the original translation starting thirty years after the visitation rather than thirteen but unsure what else was changed. However, despite the censorship and notwithstanding the fact this novel was out-of-print in America for thirty years; Roadside Picnic is wildly regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time.

The title Roadside Picnic refers to the visitation and the fact that they never made contact with humanity. The novel plays with the idea that intelligent life wouldn’t want to make contact with the human race. One look at humanity, full of all the violence towards each other, aliens would conclude that humans are not intelligent life forms but rather savages. One character within the novel, Dr. Valentine Pilman compared the aliens visit to that of an extra-terrestrial picnic.

“Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption—that an alien race would be psychologically human.”

It is fascinating to look at humanity in a first contact novel and it reminded me of how much I’ve enjoyed the psychological/philosophical science fiction novels that seemed to be produced in the 1960s and 70s. However Roadside Picnic went deeper; like most Russian novels of this time, there was a strong reflection on society at the time. Like I said before, I am not sure if this edition still holds the Soviet censorship but I was impressed by the subtle look at society. It wasn’t just a poke at the Soviet Union but rather a look at humanity under an unidentifiable superpower. This could be an American superpower and it looks at ideas of what might happen if the government prohibits the people from gaining access to the biggest scientific discovery of their time. You have a struggle between quarantined verses legitimate scientific research, playing with the moral idea of government regulated technology.

Moving away from the themes, Roadside Picnic is a thrilling and beautifully written novel. Red Schuhart almost comes across as a hard-boiled narrator but less cynical; he remains a wide-eyed curious protagonist throughout the narrative. A surreal, tense story that threw out the rules found in a ‘first contact’ novel and ended up redefining the genre. It went on to challenge some of the ideas in the study of xenology and perhaps even ufology.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky have been the authors of over twenty science fiction novels, their unique style of blending Soviet rationalism with speculative fiction can be found throughout their books. Roadside Picnic remains their masterpiece and inspired the Russian cult classic movie Stalker (1979) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky wrote the screenplay for Stalker and then the novelisation; no idea why you need a novelisation of a movie that was based on a book. Roadside Picnic is an amazing novel, and reminds me why I love Russian science fiction. The blend of social commentary and science fiction is what I continue to look for when searching for books in this genre.

This review originally appeared on my blog: http://literary-exploration.com/2014/12/12/roadside-picnic-by-arkady-boris-strug... show less