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Roadside Picnic

by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Antonina W. Bouis (Translator)

4.21 · Rating Details · 20,758 Ratings · 1,222 Reviews

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick u ...more

Paperback, 145 pages

Published August 24th 2000 by Gollancz (first published 1972)

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Feb 25, 2014 Nataliya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: soviet-and-modern-russian, 2013-reads

When people talk about the "special" feel of Russian literature, I tend to shrug it away as yet another point of confusion "Westerners" have with anything Slavic.

But when I tried to explain the feeling this book evoked in me to a few "Westerners" I startlingly realized that "it just *feels* so essentially Russian" may indeed be a valid description that encompasses the soul-searching ambiguity, the pursuit of deeper truths shrouded in light sadness, the frustrating but yet revealing lack of answ
When people talk about the "special" feel of Russian literature, I tend to shrug it away as yet another point of confusion "Westerners" have with anything Slavic.

But when I tried to explain the feeling this book evoked in me to a few "Westerners" I startlingly realized that "it just *feels* so essentially Russian" may indeed be a valid description that encompasses the soul-searching ambiguity, the pursuit of deeper truths shrouded in light sadness, the frustrating but yet revealing lack of answers to the clear divide between right and wrong, and the heart shattering "scream of soul".

This is a story of the aftermath of the aliens' visit to our planet. Well, a visit may be too grand of a word. It seems dishearteningly likely that the space visitors made little notice of us; that their visit here was little but a "roadside picnic" - a quick stop in the middle of nowhere, a break after which they left to never be seen again, leaving only a bit of waste behind them - the relics worth quite a bit of money, and a toxic area - the Zone¹ - where humans cannot survive, where the invisible effects of something inside it inflict permanent scars (mental and physical) on those brave (or foolish) enough to venture inside it.

¹It was hard for me to believe that this book was written years before the catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station - an explosion that left a "Zone" full of deadly invisible poison affecting those in it or near it, with ghost city that once was full of people and now is just a shell of a disaster.
No wonder that in popular culture Chernobyl and Strugatsky's "stalker" became intertwined.

The disheartening insignificance of the contact goes well against the well-established rules of science fiction. There was no communication, no contact, nothing. It appears that despite the hopes of all the sci-fi writers over decades, we were not that interesting to the other intelligence - actually, we probably weren't even worth noticing. Just a matter-of-fact quick purposeless roadstop and a bunch of refuse - which still proceeds to affect the lives of people around the mysterious Zones.

“A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around... Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind... And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow.”

Echoing the insignificance of humanity is the insignificance of the main character. Red Schuhart is a "stalker" - a "riffraff" taking frequent quick forays into the Zone to smuggle out the alien artifacts that are valued on the black market, undeterred by having to live on the outside of the law, always at risk of horrific side effects or death inside and imprisonment outside. He does what he does not for any noble purpose but simply because there's little else to do. He is a common guy, ordinary, inconsequential, average, hard-hit by life. His goals are not noble - just survival. In life, he is a bottomfeeder. It's underscored many times how inconsequential Red is - and maybe it's precisely why his plight has such an appeal to us. After all, despite the bravado, most of us carry no illusions of our own significance in the grand scheme of things.

The visits to the Zone that we undertake with Red and his less cynical, more wide-eyed companions - first ill-fated Kirill, then just as ill-fated Arthur - are harrowing in a peculiarly surreal fashion. It's not about what's happening - it's about the possibility of something unknown yet dreadful happening, the nerves set completely on the edge, the uneasiness of tense anticipation. You can feel the characters on the verge of snapping, and the uneasy feeling is omnipresent.

And yes, in the true Russian and Soviet fashion, the politics are very much in the background of this story even if it's written as though it's seemingly apolitical. The idea of little people affected by the "bigger things" that are out of their reach. The caution of us unable to understand and come to grasp with even the refuse of the outside civilization. The endless corruption that always seen to almost spontaneously spring into being. The mundane drone hopelessness of being just cogs in the machine. The hollowness of the society. The bitterness of a small person when faced with something larger - be it other worlds, or the government, or the powers that we do not understand, or humanity itself.

And yet there is something akin to hope in the end - or, on the other thought, maybe there is not. Redrick's semi-delusional soliloquy at the end of the book, in the sight of the mysterious Golden Sphere - the feverish, desperate, pleading semi-rational painful revelation as he with horror realizes that "My whole life I haven't had a single thought!", that "... they've cheated me, left me voiceless..." in the semi-delirious haze -- is his final scream-of-soul speech a fierce ray of hope for us or is it another lost, desperate, delusional scream into the void? Maybe there's no answer, after all.

And he was no longer trying to think. He just kept repeating to himself in despair, like a prayer, "I'm an animal, you can see that I'm an animal. I have no words, they haven't taught me the words; I don't know how to think, those bastards didn't let me learn how to think. But if you really are -- all powerful, all knowing, all understanding -- figure it out! Look into my soul, I know -- everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I've never sold my soul to anyone! It's mine, it's human! Figure out yourself what I want -- because I know it can't be bad! The hell with it all, I just can't think of a thing other than those words of his -- HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN!"

...more

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May 06, 2016 Jeffrey Keeten rated it really liked it

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, the-russians

”Intelligence is the attribute of man that separates his activity from that of the animals. It’s a kind of attempt to distinguish the master from the dog, who seems to understand everything but can’t speak. However, this trivial definition does lead to wittier ones. They are based on depressing observations of the aforementioned human activity. For example: intelligence is the ability of a living creature to perform pointless or unnatural act.”

“Yes, that’s us!”

There is a 1979 film by Andrei Tar ...more

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May 12, 2016 Bill Kerwin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, science-fiction

SF writers typically approach alien contact in grandiose terms, but the Strugatsky brothers wonder instead, "What if it is more like a 'Roadside Picnic?'"

Aliens trekking through space find they have to rest a spell and land on Terra, for lunch, a little r & r, perhaps a smoke. After an interval--however long it takes for an alien to enjoy a meal al fresco--they lift off from our uninteresting planet, probably never to return, leaving behind the star voyager equivalent of empty beer cans, pl ...more

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Nov 11, 2011 J.G. Keely rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, reviewed, post-apocalyptic, russian

I play video games, now and again, but I don't care about being 'good' at them. I'm not competitive about my skills. I'm interested in the story, the characters, and the world. After a particularly irritating series of losing battles, I frustratedly told a friend "I don't want to have to spend a bunch of time practicing and becoming an expert just to get on with the story. It would be like having to read the same page of the book over and over until I 'got it right' and could proceed to the end! ...more

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Mar 18, 2016 Brad rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi

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 t 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* 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 Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy. 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. :) ...more

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Oct 18, 2013 Forrest rated it it was amazing

Another gem introduced to me by my friends at Goodreads. This short novel is a "how-to" on sidelong insinuations, information gaps, and inferences that make for a wholly satisfying story. The main character, Redrick Schuhart, starts out as an entrepreneurial collector of alien artifacts, and becomes a hardened, curmudgeonly, but effective artifact hunter searching for (view spoiler). The Strugatsky brot Another gem introduced to me by my friends at Goodreads. This short novel is a "how-to" on sidelong insinuations, information gaps, and inferences that make for a wholly satisfying story. The main character, Redrick Schuhart, starts out as an entrepreneurial collector of alien artifacts, and becomes a hardened, curmudgeonly, but effective artifact hunter searching for (view spoiler). The Strugatsky brothers use multiple Points-of-View, switching from first person to third person, moving in and out of people's thoughts as they go. I tend to like stories done in this way, when it's done well, and it is done well here. In this case, the shifting viewpoints allow the authors to focus in or telescope out on events and attitudes, as needed. The result is a very rich narration, especially for such a short book.

The premise is simple. Aliens have left some things behind. They reside in "The Zone," a contaminated area from which the government is trying to protect its citizens. "Stalkers" go in and collect the artifacts, then resell them. No one quite knows the full functionality of the artifacts, and no one understands the full dangers of "The Zone". This makes for some intriguing and intense moments throughout.

The tone of the book is akin to that of some noir works, dark, gritty, getting darker and grittier as the tale wears on. I suspect that many of the discussions and plot line centering around the artifact trade are reflective of the Soviet-era underground economy (i.e., Black Market). I have no proof of this, but I wonder. Some friends of mine in high school traveled to the USSR in the late '80s. They had heard rumors about what a pair of American jeans could buy over there, so a few took over extra pairs, in case opportunity presented itself. One came back with one less pair of jeans and one more Soviet "bear hat" from one of the border guards that "inspected" their bus. Crazy, and true. But I digress.

Like many great books, the meaning of the ending is left up to the reader. Is this novel about triumph over existential angst? Or is it about the inevitability of our naivete conquering our logic and good sense? I don't know. But the fact that I am left meditating upon these questions shows clearly that Roadside Picnic was no mere picnic. ...more

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Oct 17, 2013 Hadrian rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: russia, scifi, fiction

In the 1940s, during the height of the Pacific island campaigns of the Second World War, the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies built airbases and other facilities on Melanesian islands. The local inhabitants, who had only previously had localized and temporary contact with the West, if they had any at all, were suddenly introduced to technology far beyond the range of their experience, such as refrigeration, or airplanes, or soft drinks.

When the war ended and we all left, the ...more

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Jan 29, 2016 Apatt rated it liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, pre-80s-sf

4.22 average rating, eh? It is not undeserved but I would say satisfaction is not guaranteed.

Roadside Picnic is something of a minor classic that I have often seen mentioned in sci-fi literature discussion groups like the excellent PrintSF on Reddit. Certainly the basic conceit is wonderfully “sfnal”. Six zones of Earth have been visited by aliens over a two-day period, there are no witnesses for these visitations, the only evidence is the strange artifacts these alien apparently left behind or ...more

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Dec 05, 2015 Stuart rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantastic-weird, near-future, alien-contact, new-wave-sf

Roadside Picnic: Russian SF classic with parallels to Vandermeer’s Area X
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Roadside Picnic (1972) is a Russian SF novel written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. This was back when authors and publishers were subject to government review and censorship. Since it didn’t follow the Communist Party line, it didn’t get published in uncensored book form in Russia until the 1990s despite first appearing in a Russian literary magazine in 1972. So its first book public ...more

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Oct 09, 2014 Nate D rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Zones

Recommended to Nate D by: Tarkovsky

Shelves: sci-fi, russia, 70s-delerium, read-in-2014

At long last. Somehow Andrei Tarkovsky was able to read this, extract an absolute masterpiece of pseudo-genre film, and yet actually have almost no relation to the source. Where Tarkovsky took this into ambiguity and philosophic riffs, the original is more specific in its terms, dealing almost entirely with the massive criminal economy that springs up in the wake of a tremendous event (if you've ever wondered what the Zone actually is, here we're simply told in the first pages, but that doesn't ...more

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May 24, 2016 Ellie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016

Το κύριο θέμα του βιβλίου είναι η Επίσκεψη εξωγήινων στη Γη και τα κατάλοιπα που αφήνει σε διάφορες περιοχές της. Χρονικά, τοποθετείται στο πρώτο μισό του 20ου αιώνα και απλώνεται σε έξι περιοχές. Οι επισκέπτες δεν έγιναν αντιληπτοί από κανέναν, τουλάχιστον ως παρουσίες, αλλά μόνο τα αποτελέσματα της σύντομης επίσκεψης (περίπου κανα διήμερο διήρκησε) η οποία είχε ως αποτέλεσμα να εξαφανιστεί ο πληθυσμός και η πανίδα από τις Ζώνες. Γύρω από αυτές, αποκλεισμένες τώρα από τον ΟΗΕ, έχουν στηθεί σταθ Το κύριο θέμα του βιβλίου είναι η Επίσκεψη εξωγήινων στη Γη και τα κατάλοιπα που αφήνει σε διάφορες περιοχές της. Χρονικά, τοποθετείται στο πρώτο μισό του 20ου αιώνα και απλώνεται σε έξι περιοχές. Οι επισκέπτες δεν έγιναν αντιληπτοί από κανέναν, τουλάχιστον ως παρουσίες, αλλά μόνο τα αποτελέσματα της σύντομης επίσκεψης (περίπου κανα διήμερο διήρκησε) η οποία είχε ως αποτέλεσμα να εξαφανιστεί ο πληθυσμός και η πανίδα από τις Ζώνες. Γύρω από αυτές, αποκλεισμένες τώρα από τον ΟΗΕ, έχουν στηθεί σταθμοί ελέγχου και Ινστιτούτα που διενεργούν μελέτες σε ό,τι βρίσκεται εντός. Όσα άφησαν πίσω οι «Επισκέπτες» είναι το αντικείμενο πόθου των διάφορων κυνηγών (Σταλκερ*) που μπαινοβγαίνουν στη Ζώνη, προκειμένου να υφαρπάξουν ό, τι μπορέσουν είτε για να το πουλήσουν στη μαύρη αγορά όπου θα πιάσουν πολύ καλές τιμές, είτε γιατί δουλεύουν για τα Ινστιτούτα.

Στη Ζώνη, όμως, εκτός από τα αντικείμενα που άφησαν πίσω οι εξωγήινοι (λες και βγήκαν πικνίκ στο δάσος και άφησαν πίσω τους σκουπίδια "[...]ένα πικνικ δίπλα στο δρόμο, σε κάποια οδό του συμπαντος [...]" ), παρατηρούνται περίεργα και ανεξήγητα φαινόμενα, που επηρεάζουν τους κυνηγούς τόσο ψυχικά όσο και σωματικά, τόσο εφήμερα όσο και μόνιμα. Κάθε επίσκεψη στη Ζωνη, ειδικά όσες δεν είναι εξουσιοδοτημένες - άρα οι κυνηγοι δεν είναι καταλλήλως εξοπλισμένοι - βάζει σε κινδυνο τις ζωές τους. Η ιστορία επικεντρώνεται στη Ζωνη του Καναδά.

Το βιβλίο χωρίζεται σε 4 μέρη με τη σταδιακή κλιμάκωση της ιστορίας ενός κυνηγου του οποίου οι προθέσεις και οι στόχοι διαμορφώνονται ανάλογα με τη φάση που διανύει, την ηλικία του και άρα τις ανάγκες του. Η αφήγηση εναλλάσσεται από α σε γ πρόσωπο, αλλά και εσωτερικό μονόλογο ή stream of consciousness (θα έλεγα, ορμώμενη από τον Οδυσσέα). Το ενδιαφέρον με αυτό το βιβλίο είναι ότι ξεκινά με τυπικο θέμα επιστημονικής φαντασίας για να εξελιχτεί σε κυνήγι θησαυρού και τέλος να εγείρει ερωτήματα γύρω από τη φυση της ανθρώπινης διάνοιας, τη θρησκευτική πίστη. Το τελευταίο κεφάλαιο δε, μυρίζει έντονα Ντοστογιέφκι.

«Θεέ μου, πού είναι οι λέξεις, πού είναι οι σκέψεις μου; Σε όλη μου τη ζωή δεν έχω κάνει μια σκέψη!»

Για τα αντικείμενα που κάνουν την εμφάνισή τους σελίδα τη σελίδα υπάρχουν μόνο υπαινιγμοί και τίποτε άλλο κι εκεί που θα μπορούσε να είναι ένα αμιγώς sci-fi μυθιστόρημα διαρκώς (και αενάως) τροφοδοτούμενο από αυτές τις ανακαλύψεις και την αποδόμησή τους, στον πυρηνα του ειναι ένα φ και ψ βιβλίο, ένα βιβλίο για την ανθρώπινη φυση, χωρις να λείπουν οι σαφείς υπαινιγμοί για την ιδεατή (κομμουνιστική?) κοινωνία.

"Το κύριο πρόβλημα με αυτό όμως, είναι ότι ο μέσος άνθρωπος -αυτός που έχετε στο νου σας όταν λέτε "εμάς"- πολύ εύκολα ξεπερνά αυτή την ανάγκη για γνώση. Δεν πιστεύω καν οτι η ανάγκη αυτή υπάρχει. Υπάρχει ανάγκη να καταλάβεις, αλλά γι΄αυτό δε χρειάζεται γνώση. Η υπόθεση του θεού για παράδειγμα, δινει μια ασύγκριτη και απόλυτη ευκαιρία να καταλάβεςι τα πάντα, χωρίς να γνωρίζεις τίποτα απολύτως. Δώσε στον άνθρωπο ένα αρκετά απλουστευμένο σύστημα του κόσμου και εξήγησε κάθε φαινόμενο βάσει αυτού του συστήματος. Μια προσέγγιση σαν κι αυτή δε χρειάζεται καθολου γνώση. Μόνο λίγες ευκολομνημόνευτες συνταγές είναι αρκετές για να εδραιώσουν αυτό που λέμε διαίσθηση κι εκείνο που αποκαλούμε κοινή λογική." (σελ 169)

*Απο το βιβλιο ειναι εμπνευσμένη και η ομώνυμη ταινία του Ταρκόφκι το σεναριο της οποιας εγραψαν οι αδερφοι Στρουγκάτσκι.

originally posted at ΛτΒ. ...more

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Mar 08, 2015 Mona rated it liked it · review of another edition

Gripping Russian Science Fiction

"Roadside Picnic" is a gripping science fiction story written while the U.S.S.R. was still alive and well, although it wasn't published until years after it was first written; and it took longer still for the original version (without cuts) to be published.

The authors, two brothers, have an entirely original viewpoint. There are no American or British science fiction novels like this in any way.

In a way the novella can be read as an indictment of capitalism. It ca ...more

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Jun 27, 2016 Nickolas the Kid rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

Ακόμα ένα βιβλίο που χρησιμοποιεί την ΕΦ για να εμβαθύνει στους κοινωνικούς και πολιτικούς προβληματισμούς του ανθρώπου...

Οι εξωγήινοι περνάν μια βόλτα από τον πλανήτη μας και φεύγοντας αφήνουν διάφορα αντικείμενα τα οποία γίνονται πόλος έλξης για επιστήμονες, τυχοδιώκτες και οραματιστές... Τα "σκουπίδια" των εξωγήινων βρίσκονται σε μια περιοχή που ονομάζεται Ζώνη και εκτός των θησαυρών κρύβει πολλά και διάφορα μυστικά. Οι άνθρωποι ανακαλύπτουν έναν καινούργιο πολιτισμό ή ποια πραγματικά είναι η ...more

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Jan 30, 2016 Charles Dee Mitchell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: late-20th-century-sf

The Visit occurred sometime in last half of the 20th century. Aliens dropped by earth, landing in six areas scattered across the globe. They stayed a few days and then they left. What becomes known as The Zones are the sites of their brief sojourn on our planet. Behind them they left landscapes where the laws of physic no longer apply, or have perhaps simply taken a vicious turn. They have also left odd detritus, objects of alien manufacture of immense interest to science and very profitable on The Visit occurred sometime in last half of the 20th century. Aliens dropped by earth, landing in six areas scattered across the globe. They stayed a few days and then they left. What becomes known as The Zones are the sites of their brief sojourn on our planet. Behind them they left landscapes where the laws of physic no longer apply, or have perhaps simply taken a vicious turn. They have also left odd detritus, objects of alien manufacture of immense interest to science and very profitable on the black market.

Harmont is a town that borders one of the Zones. It seems to be in Canada or the Northern Midwest of the United States. Such vagueness suits the authors well. Their elliptical narrative, composed of four series of events some placed years apart from one another, leaves the reader on his own to put together what has happened and how, over the years, the proximity of the Zone affects the inhabitants of Harmont. Harmont itself becomes a kind of boomtown. Government research centers bring in hundreds of new citizens and manufacturing concerns spring up to exploit the new technology. A service industry of bars and brothels proliferates. The town is also a tourist attraction, although the Zone is far too dangerous for any but the best trained and carefully monitored scientists to enter. And then there are the Stalkers.

Stalkers are young men drawn to the Zone for profits and adventure for which they are willing to risk almost certain death. Since so many wannabes die in their first attempt, successful Stalkers become legendary. Our hero is Rendrick Schuhart, known as Red. (Stalkers earn nicknames that make them sound like gunslingers or the bad guys from Dick Tracy comics.) Red is the perfect outlaw hero. What he does is outside the law, but he is a man of honor, a good family man, and loyal to his cohorts. But entering the Zone takes its toll. Although he may be caught and imprisoned for years at time, he always provides for his wife and child. His daughter is a mutant covered in fine, tawny brown fur. Oh, and his father is among those who have returned from the dead and hang around their old homes as slightly putrescent inconveniences. The dead man and his mutant granddaughter have an inexplicable bond.

Roadside Picnic is a novel of character and atmosphere rather than plot. Descriptions of trips into the Zone are suspenseful and usually tragic. Red is burdened with difficulties at home, with the law, and with both the scientists and black marketers that employ him. The scientists and bureaucrats who manage them know that they have no idea what they really have their hands on or how their experiments will end. Are they doing good? Are they introducing deadly technology into a world that is not prepared for it? Or are they simply making geegaws for the commercial market? Despite the action and suspense the novel offers, the overall tone is despairing. But this is, after all, a Russian novel.
...more

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Aug 28, 2013 Ruby Tombstone [With A Vengeance] rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: wheres-my-effing-jetpack, rockin-the-classics, rad-russians, cross-cultural-adventures, spec-lit, treasure-hunt-scorers

Well, this wasn't quite what I was expecting. I came into this knowing that the book was about the debris left behind by alien visitors to Earth, and that it posed questions around what humankind would do if we couldn't figure its mysteries. What if we found alien technology, and had no idea how to use it or for what purpose it might be used? What if we didn't know how it came to be here, never mind what it all might mean? I was expecting this to be a look at the issues of cross-cultural underst Well, this wasn't quite what I was expecting. I came into this knowing that the book was about the debris left behind by alien visitors to Earth, and that it posed questions around what humankind would do if we couldn't figure its mysteries. What if we found alien technology, and had no idea how to use it or for what purpose it might be used? What if we didn't know how it came to be here, never mind what it all might mean? I was expecting this to be a look at the issues of cross-cultural understanding when neither culture knows anything about the other. I was expecting this to be Ursula LeGuin-esque.

While all of those elements are there in the book, they're only there on account of the Foreword written by LeGuin herself, and a conversation between two of the characters about 3/4 of the way through the book. This conversation poses those very questions directly - no subtext, no further thought required. If you removed this single conversation from the book, I really don't think those valuable points would come across very strongly. You might wonder at the characters who devote their lives to trawling through the most dangerous, unpredictable zones in the universe to retrieve objects they can't even fathom, let alone use. You might laugh at the characters who use these amazing light-emitting stones which break all the laws of physics as beaded bracelets, but I don't think you'd be prompted to meditation on what it means to be human unless this single piece of dialogue did it for you. I guess what I'm saying is that the ideas are fascinating. I just wish there had been a more nuanced delivery method.

That said, I did really enjoy the Afterword by Boris Strugatsky which gives us a window on what it was like to be a writer in Soviet Russia during the 1970s and 80s. It's also a great example of his writing style - all the warmth and humour and pent up anger that's inherent in the book's main characters, who by the way, are incredibly relatable for those of us outside of Eastern Europe.

So I'm torn between a 3 and 4 star review. I'll say 3 stars for any edition which doesn't include this particular Foreword and Afterword, and 4 stars for this edition which has both. ...more

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Dec 15, 2011 Aaron rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Absolutely crazy good. A tight little bundle of joy concerning the aftermath of an alien visitation. This speaks to human behavior, the essence of intelligence, and a whole butt load of other wonderful philisophical and moral questions. Pure literature.

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May 27, 2013 Evgeny rated it it was amazing

Shelves: scifi, favorites

Strugatsky brothers have a cult following on the territories of the former Soviet Union; think Heinlein of the Soviets. This is probably their best-known novel internationally thanks to a movie Stalker by Tarkovsky and several video games by the same name.

The main idea explained right in the prolog. A highly advanced alien race left (discarded?) artifacts and anomalies in several places on Earth called Zones. The Zones are dangerous, but the artifacts are highly prized and so some people called ...more

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Mar 17, 2009 Jason Kelley rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is the novel on which Andrea Tarkovsky based the motion picture Stalker. I have been an enormous fan of this film for years and was excited to finally get my hands on this novel. It wasn't so easy to do just 5 years ago. Thank you internet.

An alien culture visits earth in several different locations. There is no human contact, and the aliens don't stay long. But they do leave behind a myriad collection of technological bits and an immediate landscape that is uninhabitable and very dangerou ...more

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Sep 29, 2015 Simon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-masterworks, sf

I didn't know what to expect when I picked this up, and I had to skip Ursula K. Le Guin's introduction once I realised it was full of spoilers (I went back and read it afterwards and it was a good rumination of the book and it's impact back then but really, give away the final line of a book in it's introduction?) but I found myself quickly drawn into the curious story of the after effects of an alien visit to Earth in which no contact with man was made and we are left scrabbling in the debris t ...more

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Aug 15, 2016 Heidi Ward rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, comedy-and-satire, alien-contact, 20th-century, translation, russia, borrowed, reviewed

Peculiar and fascinating Soviet sci-fi from the 1970s, Roadside Picnic posits an interesting first-contact problem: what if visitors from elsewhere came to Earth but didn't care to stay, leaving behind only a number of unearthly, poisonous "zones" littered with a bunch of eldritch, alien crap? How would humanity deal with that?

Not well, as it turns out. Also predictably, hilariously, fallibly . . . humanly. That is if you're the Strugatsky brothers, and your "hero" is Red, a professional "stalke ...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Gwyn Ryan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, post-apocalyptic

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I admit I haven't read much classic 'sci-fi' and I'm trying to correct that oversight. This is a particularly interesting example because it was written by Russians during the Cold War and there's a kind of pessimistic fatalism about it that seems appropriate to that milieu. It managed to combine authoritarian government with run-amok capitalism in a way that suggests they are comparable evils. The novel takes place in a future in which aliens have visited Earth and then left just as mysteriousl ...more

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Jul 14, 2016 DΛV·D rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Solamente voy a decir...

¡ES DE OBLIGADA LECTURA!

Alucinado con la fluidez, imaginación y escritura de los hnos. Strugatsky.
Un gran trabajo por parte de Gigamesh en esta nueva revisión y edición.

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Jul 06, 2015 Nikki rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I suggested this book for the Cardiff SF/F bookclub.

Reading this again after finishing Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), the debt is obvious. If VanderMeer hasn’t read Roadside Picnic, there’s a whole bunch of similarities: the central idea, that maybe humans and aliens won’t/can’t understand each other, the mysterious and unknowable purpose behind the alien presence, the transformations of people in and around the Zone, even the revenant people who ...more

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Yuliya I think "Russian flavour" can be a step to understand some "drawbacks" you saw.

For example, pale indifferent characters are certainly intentional.
Fir ...more
Jul 06, 2015 09:04AM

Sep 01, 2015 [P] rated it really liked it · review of another edition

His career as a master criminal was short-lived. He was twelve or thirteen, and bored, bored with his life, with being poor, with having no prospects or anything to look forward to except the day when he could leave the stinking shithole where violence and misery stalked his heels like a pair of dark dogs. He had walked to Meadowhall, a large shopping centre that resembled a hellish doll’s house, and was kicking his heels. He had no money, but didn’t really want anything anyway. He just wanted t His career as a master criminal was short-lived. He was twelve or thirteen, and bored, bored with his life, with being poor, with having no prospects or anything to look forward to except the day when he could leave the stinking shithole where violence and misery stalked his heels like a pair of dark dogs. He had walked to Meadowhall, a large shopping centre that resembled a hellish doll’s house, and was kicking his heels. He had no money, but didn’t really want anything anyway. He just wanted to be somewhere away from what he knew, where, to his immature mind, people were living differently. He took a turn around a bookshop, lifting books from the shelves, and, without making any kind of conscious decision, put one of them under his t-shirt, tucked it down his jeans. He expected to be caught, to be nabbed at the entrance as he walked out, but he wasn’t.

He was more scared when he got outside, when he had got away with it, than he was in the act of stealing. He knew he had done something wrong, that it should not have played out like that, and that is why he went back. He realised afterwards, that he wanted to be caught, that being caught was part of it. Something had to happen, of that he was adamant; he wanted something important to happen to him, something momentous, to give his day some sort of meaning. So he went back in, and he came back out again. Another book. No one batted an eyelid. Three, four more times. Nothing. The situation had become absurd. He was untouchable, or so he felt. Why will no one acknowledge me? Am I really this insignificant? And then, eventually, they did notice him. He had become more and more reckless; he made no effort to conceal what he was doing, and, in fact, could barely walk for all the books he had hidden on his person.

He was relieved when the security guard touched him on the shoulder. He wasn’t rough, he simply requested that he turn around and accompany him. He took him ‘in the back’ and the police were called. Only he didn’t think they were really the police. They didn’t have on uniforms and they don’t send out non-uniformed officers to deal with teenage shoplifters. It was a ruse, a way of scaring him straight. He was already straight, they didn’t get it. He wasn’t going to steal again. He had done it and had got what he wanted, which was their attention, and a new experience. Something different. No matter how negative. The policemen drove him home. He sat in the back of the car swearing to myself. They threatened to arrest him. He smiled.

Redrick ‘Red’ Schuhart is a stalker, a criminal. He stalks the Zone at night, without permission. The Zone is what the aliens left behind, after the Visit; it is a dangerous place, full of alien litter, which can kill or mutate the people stupid enough or greedy enough to enter. However, this litter is valuable, and that is why Red is important. Schuhart is an average kind of guy, street-smart, but relatively poor. He has spent time in prison for stalking, which is illegal. He drinks a lot, swears a lot, and smokes a lot; he delivers wise-cracks like a hard-boiled, tough-talking PI; he is an irascible, but likeable anti-hero. On the most basic level, Roadside Picnic is a pulp novel, a noir, about an ex-con trying to go straight. Red frequently alludes to wanting to get out of the game, to become a normal citizen, and yet he never does.

description

[A still from Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky’s film adaptation of the book]

It is suggested that Red became a stalker, i.e. someone who enters the Zone and steals and sells objects from it, for money; he says himself that he requires money so as to be able to live without having to count every penny. Therefore, sure, you could see Roadside Picnic as being about what people feel forced to do in order to survive, in order to live comfortably, but for me that is too simplistic. It struck me that Red is just like the kid I wrote about in my introduction, that he continues to be a stalker, even after being arrested and doing time in prison, even after the birth of his daughter, when he has so much more to lose, because he needs the excitement, he needs to feel like someone. The Strugatsky’s write about the ‘surrounding, indifferent chaos,’ Red himself talks about life being ‘gray,’ and this is, I think, most telling, most significant. Some people don’t want to go straight because that would mean they are just like everyone else, working for a cunt of a boss [Red is antagonised by authority and frequently rebels against it], plodding towards extinction.

“I lock myself in the stall, take out the flask, unscrew it, and attach myself to it like a leech. I’m sitting on the bench, my heart is empty, my head is empty, my soul is empty, gulping down the hard stuff like water. Alive. I got out. The Zone let me out. The damned hag. My lifeblood. Traitorous bitch. Alive. The novices can’t understand this. No one but a stalker can understand. And tears are pouring down my face—maybe from the booze, maybe from something else. I suck the flask dry; I’m wet, the flask is dry. As usual, I need just one more sip. Oh well, we’ll fix that. We can fix anything now. Alive. I light a cigarette and stay seated. I can feel it—I’m coming around.”

Roadside Picnic is not, however, simply a character study. While it isn’t as relentlessly philosophical, or thought-provoking, as, say, Solaris, there are many points of interest outside of the protagonist. The objects, for example, that are smuggled out of the Zone are, as previously noted, valuable to humans, both scientifically and criminally. However, one character, Doctor Pillman, states that as these objects are alien, we therefore cannot truly understand them or utilise them properly, not yet anyway. Stanislaw Lem makes a similar point in many of his novels, which is that if you can only bring human reasoning, understanding etc to an alien life-form or object or message then you cannot fail but to misunderstand it. Humans and aliens are, to all intents and purposes, incompatible; and contact, genuine contact is, therefore, impossible. Like in His Master’s Voice, the Strugatsky’s show humans misusing and misinterpreting the alien. The aliens are far more advanced than we are, and so when we try to interact with their litter, when we try to utilise it, we are, essentially, like monkeys using an ipad as a dinner plate.

There is also something darkly funny about the nature of the alien visits. I’ve long thought that we are interested in aliens coming to earth, in alien-human contact, not because we want to study the creatures or learn from them, but because, in our arrogance, we think that we are worthy of their attention. The Strugatsky’s brilliantly burst this bubble, by having their aliens visit earth, only to make a mess of it, then skidaddle without ever saying a word or doing anything of note or paying humans any attention at all. The upshot of their visit is that the aliens couldn’t give a monkeys about us, and why should they? They are, as I wrote in the previous paragraph, far more advanced then we are, so why would they want to hang around with the likes of us? This is, of course, where the title of the book comes from, which is to say that the aliens came to earth almost as a kind of stopover to somewhere more exciting, almost by accident, as though they had a brief picnic and then carried on on their way.

“A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around… Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind… And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow.”

I wrote in my review of Solaris that Sci-Fi doesn’t really do it for me, and maybe I ought to revise that opinion, because I enjoyed this novel very much. However, the Strugatsky’s, again like Lem, are more concerned with us than they are aliens. There are no intergalactic battles, no spaceships, we don’t even see the creatures that created the Zones. Roadside Picnic is a [broadly pessimistic] study of human nature. Think about how what is discovered in, or retrieved from, the Zones creates a black market and an industry whereby people are trying to snaffle up the stuff for themselves to serve their own ends. The message here seems to be that whatever man comes into contact with he will seek to exploit it, corrupt it, make money out of it. Furthermore, one could also point to the picnic idea as being a hint at environmentalism, as being a critique of the way that we treat our planet, and the animals that share it with us. The truth is that we are pretty disgusting, and we are making a big fucking mess of this eternally spinning globe. So, sure, there may be something out there, but is it any wonder that they have turned their backs on us? ...more

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Mar 08, 2015 Andrew rated it liked it · review of another edition

This was an interesting read (and although its showing the SF masterworks cover - I did choose the Gollancz Yellow Jacket edition) as part of a run of classic titles I decided to embark upon. There are as I say much better reviews on this book what I will say is that this is an intriguing book which took a unique concept and turned it in to something quite different. The science fiction aspect of the story really takes second place to the characters - almost a plot device to get the people where ...more

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Dec 14, 2014 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, russian, translated-fiction, 1970s

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 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 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/... ...more

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Nov 19, 2009 Chris rated it it was ok

In a lot of scifi, the aliens come to Earth with a defined purpose. Share their advanced technology, enslave the human populace, etc. Roadside Picnic takes place after the aliens have come and gone, and no one really knows why they visited this planet. However, they did leave a lot of incomprehensible doodads that fascinate simian minds and sell like hotcakes on the black market. It's an interesting premise focusing on how society (and the humans in it) responds after a mysterious visitation. I ...more

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Jun 11, 2015 Claudia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, deep-thoughts

Too bad I did not read this one prior to VanderMeer's Southern Reach, because now I cannot help thinking about the Zone otherwise than being another Area X, when it obviously should have been the other way around.

It is an untypical sci-fi story, centered on human behavior when facing the unknown, with accents of ethics, psychology and a bit of politics.

It's the kind of book that the more you think about it, the more you'll like it. I guess that Strugatsky brothers' slogan is indeed appropriate ...more

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Oct 02, 2015 Miquel Codony rated it really liked it · review of another edition

(4,5/5)

Buenísimo. Un clásico en toda regla, merecidamente.

Reseña pronto, espero.

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Aug 11, 2015 Alexander Páez rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, 2015

La reedición de Gigamesh era necesaria (ya no solo por que la anterior edición estaba descatalogada, sino porque la traducción era un poco justa (en la primera página podemos leer scholar traducido como escolar)). Empecé a leer sin informarme sobre la obra y ha sido tras le lectura que he descubierto lo mucho que ha influenciado esta obra en videojuegos o películas, e incluso otras obras literarias. Un imprescindible.

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About Arkady Strugatsky

The brothers Arkady (Russian: Аркадий; August 28, 1925 – October 12, 1991) and Boris (Russian: Борис; April 14, 1933 – November 19, 2012) Strugatsky (Russian: Стругацкий; alternate spellings: Strugatskiy, Strugatski, Strugatskii) were Soviet-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated on their fiction.

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“The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense.” — 61 likes

“Мы будем делать Добро из Зла, потому что его больше не из чего делать.” — 58 likes

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