Roadside Picnic

I have to admit, I really enjoyed this one. Admittedly, the switch of Red's POV from first person to third person threw me a little at first (not sure I could figure out the reason for that either. If anyone knows the answer, please holler), but other than that it's a great read.
The pacing is great, the jumps in time smooth and natural, and all the different aspects of the story are explained just enough to be understood on a superficial level, but not so much that we're not left with heaps of questions. The story offers some hypothetical answers to some of those questions, but mostly leaves it up to the reader to interpret.
If you're the kind of person that needs to have everything perfectly explained, spoon-fed and tied up with a show more neat bow, stay clear, this book is not for you. If however you enjoy a good "what if" scenario, and aren't afraid to think for yourself, you can't go wrong here. show less

This old Russian classic SF is surprisingly relevant and fresh today, sans all the copious amount of smoking going on. :) If anything is going to give this little gem away, it's pretty much only that.

It's very tight, masquerading as a scavenger adventure that becomes a black-market thriller that becomes a Question about the nature of intelligence, discovery, and even the most basic question of all: "What the hell are these aliens thinking???"

After all, they just left a huge mess by the side of the road, not even bothering to say hi to the damn locals before dumping their half-eaten crap and leaving their high-tech soda bottles.

I mean, seriously? Who do these Americans think they are, despoiling such a pretty Russian countryside? *sigh* show more And then there's the whole mess about consumerism and capitalism, giving us a pretty complete and coherent condemnation while never quite "saying" anything. It's all just shown, and shown extremely well.

And then there's the now obvious connection to the much later work that is heavily indebted to Roadside Picnic, the redoubtable [b:Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy|22752442|Area X The Southern Reach Trilogy (Southern Reach, #1-3)|Jeff VanderMeer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1412547809s/22752442.jpg|42299018]. Others have gone over the connections better than I will, but I can say one thing freely: The two are very similar in the gross, between the oddness within the area and the desire for both understanding and possible trinkets, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. Sure, we'll keep asking questions in both novels, long after they've ended, but this one keeps things pretty light even when the MC is crawling through the mud. I blame it on the alcohol. But then, this is very much a Russian novel.

I think I might go ahead and say that I think this one is the tighter SF story. The first novel in Area X was delicious for the surreal and the details, but this novel had a lot more action and straight talk for those who prefer their tales snappy. Don't be surprised, though, if you get more of a bellyful of the evils of capitalism rather than a deeper exploration of aliens and our own ultimate insignificance. It's there, but the sneaky diatribe against the West is actually the superior portion of the novel. (Superior both in fun and plot and the things that our MC must endure, rather than sheer page space.)

This is quite an awesome classic SF and I heartily recommend it. It obviously had a lot of love and care poured into it, and the results are fantastic. :) show less

Are you familiar with Stalker, the stunning 1979 Soviet science fiction film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky? If so, I have good news, comrades: the novel on which the film was based is even better. I join the ranks of sf aficionados who judge Arkady & Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic among the greatest science fiction novels ever written.

Although there are six locals or Zones where aliens left mysterious objects behind on this planet, the setting for Roadside Picnic takes place in and around one such Zone in Harmont, Canada, a fictional mining town way out in the boonies. The bulk of the novel consists of Redrick "Red" Schuart's first-person account at age 23, 28 and 31 as a stalker risking his life and the health of others in order to show more conduct illegal sneaks into the Zone to smuggle out alien artifacts.

At 200 pages Roadside Picnic is not an overly long work but a reader can gather a bushel basket of probing insights and powerful images on every single page. The novel is a gripping adventure story, no doubt about it, but if readers wish to delve deeper, this is a book that could be used in a university course for either psychology, philosophy, sociology or history. Such fertile, thought-provoking material - my initial drafts included no less than three dozen points I planned to cover. But, alas, since this is a review not an extended essay, I've whittled down the number. Here they are:

The Visit
As Nobel laureate Dr. Pillman states unequivocally in the first few pages, the fact that aliens payed a visit to Planet Earth is the most important discovery in human history, proving once and for all we Earthlings are not alone in the universe. Many of the philosophic dimensions of this earth-shattering breakthrough are explored more in depth later on in the book.

Critics and scholars of the Strugatsky novel have speculated what the Zone might represent, equating the Zone with things like capitalism, the black market or, more generally, the yearning for consumer goods; however, as fruitful as these interpretations might prove, Roadside Picnic retains its magic and power for readers if we let the Zone be the Zone where extraterrestrials left behind their stuff as if they were happy-go-lucky vacationers who tossed their trash along the roadside after a picnic, as if they considered human intelligence too minuscule (or human stupidity too colossal) to bother making direct contact with our kind.

The Many Human Roadside Picnics
One of the seasoned officials servicing the international organization in charge of the Zone characterizes the belt of land surrounding the Zone as "a hideous sore on the face of the planet." Since the Zone has attracted a huge number of tourists and scientists and military troops, skyscrapers and a complex for jazz, variety shows and a gigantic brothel have been slapped up. In this regard, Harmont is not unlike the thousands of ugly towns and cities built for their strict utility that quickly become useless, an architectural phenomenon common to all political and economic systems across the globe. Modern society as a producer of mass roadside picnics.

Xenology, the study of extraterrestrials
I agree with Dr. Pillman: the way we humans are going about studying the left-behinds is highly flawed in that it assumes the aliens think like we think. Such arrogance! Why can't people in modern society keep their hands off ? For additional examples we don't have to look far: of all the indigenous peoples who have their own society and cultures, how many have escaped the Western world invading and disrupting their way of life?

The Midwich Cuckoos Redux
Dr. Pillman goes on to observe "All the people in contact with the Zone for a sufficiently long time undergo changes. You know what stalkers' children are like, you know what happens with stalkers themselves. Why? What causes the mutations? There's no radiation in the Zone." A spooky scenario. It is quite possible those mutations could have catastrophic long range consequences, turning humans into aliens for an eventual alien takeover. In this way Roadside Picknic bears comparison to John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos or Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers. And those aliens need not do anything more than leave their stuff behind since we humans can't resist keeping our hands off what belongs to others.

Holy H. P. Lovecraft!
Our Nobel laureate goes on to explain how duplicating spacells and reanimated corpses from the Zone violate the principles of thermodynamics, or, in more ordinary language, are outside the laws of nature. Wow! In this way Roadside Picnic is not only a work of science fiction, it crosses over into the realm of Lovecraftian supernatural horror. Now, good humans, you really having something to worry about! Empties, Full Empties, Hell Slime, Graviconcentrates, a Golden Sphere - if these extraterrestrial objects and realities have or might have supernatural properties, you should definitely think twice before messing with them.

Red the Stalker
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky caught hell from Soviet censors for the coarseness, vulgarity and immoral behavior included in their novel. Case in point: Stalker Red Schuhart is addicted to booze, cigarettes, crass language and gross behavior. And Red can't wait for his next opportunity to use his brass knuckles or return to the Zone, his home away from home.

Can we blame Red? He's surrounded by nothing but filth and ugliness, tawdriness and crap. While turning the pages I attempted to find anything, I mean ANYTHING in Red's world, either in nature or in art or music that contained the slightest gram of beauty. There was none. The closest thing bordering on uplifting aesthetic experience is when Red passes a bakery with brightly lit windows in the early morning and he "let the warm, incredibly delicious aroma wash over him." I mention this to note how Red could appreciate beauty if there was any to be had, but, most unfortunately, his world is one of unending ugliness.

Pulp Science Fiction Revisited
I take it back. There is a second uplifting aesthetic experience Red comes across. It's the most obvious one for a young adventurer: a beautiful woman. "She was silky, luscious, sensuously curvy, without a single flaw, a single extra ounce - a hundred and twenty pounds of twenty-year-old delectable flesh - and then there were the emerald eyes, which shone from within, and the full moist lips and the even white teeth and the jet-black hair that gleamed in the sun, carelessly thrown over one shoulder; the sunlight flowed over her body, drifting from her shoulders to her stomach and hips, throwing shadows between her almost-bare breasts." Ha! Perhaps Arkady and Boris had their tongues deep in their cheeks, purposely conjuring up the stereotypical female image so common in science fiction pulp magazines in bygone years.

A Hero's Journey
Red's adventures as a stalker spans eight years. As we learn toward the end of the novel, Red's journey is a hero's journey, involving what Joseph Campbell termed 'sacrifice and bliss.' To judge the truth of these words, I encourage you to read this classic for yourself - I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

“How can I give up stalking when I have a family to feed? Get a job? I don't want to work for you, your work makes me puke, do you understand? This is the way I figure it: if a man works with you, he is always working for one of you, he is a slave and nothing else. And I always wanted to be myself, on my own, so that I could spit at you all, at your boredom and despair.”
― Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic show less

"Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky offers a tantalizing glimpse into a world both mysterious and perilous, where the relics of an extraterrestrial visitation lay scattered about the "Zone." In this book, we follow Red Schuhart, a bold and reckless stalker, who dares to venture illegally into this enigmatic realm to retrieve alien artifacts. The story is narrated with eloquent prose and is driven by a promising premise, but ultimately left me wanting more.

The novel presents a gripping exploration of a society deeply affected by the presence of the Zone. The black market thrives, and the allure of the alien products is undeniable. It's a world that beckons you to explore its dark corners, and the characters, particularly Red show more Schuhart, are well-crafted and engaging. I couldn't help but be excited to see where this journey into the Zone would take me.

However, my enthusiasm was short-lived, as the narrative began to unravel. The concept of the Zone, its origins, and the purpose of the alien artifacts were frustratingly underdeveloped. This left me with a profound sense of disappointment, as the novel hinted at a vast, untapped potential that was never fully realized.

The analogy of a "roadside picnic," introduced later in the book, attempts to convey the idea that the alien artifacts are akin to litter left behind by extraterrestrial travelers, much like the trash humans might leave at a roadside picnic. Unfortunately, this analogy only raised more questions than it answered, and the motivation behind leaving artifacts like everlasting batteries seemed perplexing and counterintuitive. The argument that these artifacts were left for humanity to advance science felt weak, especially in the face of the inherent dangers of the Zone.

I wanted to love "Roadside Picnic," but I couldn't help feeling that the authors fell short of their potential. The writing is undoubtedly commendable, but the lack of a satisfying narrative payoff left me unsatisfied. The novel's premise was rife with possibilities, but it ultimately left me with more questions than answers, and the overall experience was, regrettably, underwhelming.

In conclusion, "Roadside Picnic" is a book that raises intriguing questions and teases the reader with a unique and mysterious world, but it ultimately fails to deliver a fulfilling resolution to its compelling premise. The disappointment stemming from unfulfilled potential overshadowed the strengths of the book, leading to a two-star rating. While this novel may leave readers with a lingering sense of curiosity, it may not fully satisfy those seeking a truly satisfying exploration of its captivating concept. show less

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

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

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