Roadside Picnic

by Arkady Strugatsky

The problem is we don’t notice the years pass, he thought. Screw the years—we don’t notice things change. We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes—or we search for change in all the wrong places.

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.”

He knew that billions and billions didn’t know a thing and didn’t want to know and, even if they did find out, would act horrified for ten minutes and immediately forget all about it.