Dustin asked Ville Vuorela:

In your mind, how does your book differ from Roadside Picnic, and how are they the same? Aside from the obvious goings on of the stories, that is.

Ville Vuorela Hmm. Where to start? The biggest difference is probably the setting. I've made a conscious choice to stick as close to Roadside Picnic as possible while not adopting the compulsory (and it really was compulsory at the time) "World Socialism" -setting of Roadside Picnic. Instead, I have taken the elements, the setup and all the names and events I possibly could and transplanted them into our post-Soviet world and age.

Next, I have extrapolated how our world would react to it and in some cases, such as the Institute, what would these core elements of the original novel have to be like if they were to exist in our reality. All other changes, such as the nature of the protagonist, the extra-sociatal nature of stalkers themselves, the status of Zone Refugees, the violent underworld of artefact smuggling and power struggles around and within the Institute stem from this shift away from the Socialist Utopianism (which the original novel was, in my opinion, subtly mocking).

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