Roadside Picnic (Rediscovered Classics)

They came thirteen years ago and went forty-eight hours later, leaving shattered landscapes and strange debris in their wake. Who they are, and their reason for stopping on Earth, remain unknown — as are the exact purpose and function of these artifacts. Human scientists are hard at work studying these valuables, and are even making remarkable scientific breakthroughs with these devices, but are left unsure that they’re using these miracle devices even remotely as intended — or, as LeGuin puts it in her introduction, if they’re using “Geiger counters as hand axes and electrical components as nose rings.” While these six locations are now Zones of Alienation, guarded by military-police, a booming black-market subculture has grown around the young men calling themselves “stalkers” who sneak into the zones to recover these valuable alien artifacts. Braving the hazards of the Zone, many die short and nasty deaths trying to acquire artifacts. Others get tracked down by the police, while some others give up and move away to work in real jobs. Red Schuhart is one of these stalkers; employed as an intern by the scientists studying the Zone, he’s trying to live on the border between legality and outlaw, using his expertise to guide the Russian scientist Kirill in and out of the Zone. On one of these excursions to collect a “full empty,” the worst possible result happens. The embittered Red keeps going back into the zone, addicted to its dangers and thrill, yet hateful of its attraction and the emotional toll associated from all the dead friends and compatriots left in the Zone’s anomalies. But Red will keep going back, because the Zone has what he needs: a limitless supply of valuable artifacts, including a golden sphere which will make wishes come true. Roadside Picnic is not what you might imagine when thinking of a first contact story; the contact isn't between species, but between Red and the alien debris. This focus makes the story all the more human. On the one hand, we have the theme of humanity attempting to adopt these futuristic technologies, the human spirit to survive and better itself. On the other, we have the plight of the stalkers: bitter and poor young men who live in a lower-class ghetto beneath the shadow of the shiny scientific community. The scientists and the military have overtaken the city, and while those born there have various avenues of escape, most pursue the lure of the Zone and become stalkers. They’re not quite forced to go into the zone to survive, but do so in attempts to better their economic standing — part of the Strugatsky’s philosophical commentary, on capitalism and communism Yet Red never manages that upward mobility; later in the story, he’s still living in a run-down Soviet-style tenement and struggling to provide for his family. The value of the artifacts is supposed to be high, but while all the stalkers dream of cashing in and moving to Europe, most of them seem to die in the Zone’s many hazards or emerge too broken to continue smuggling. A vicious cycle, veering towards post-colonial literature in its depiction of the impoverished lower-class doing dangerous things for a quick buck; it’s a refreshing brand of irony to see this applied to what’s ostensibly Canada (the prologue mentions the Royal Armored Corps blockading the Zone, and refers to “over in Europe,” but leaves the exact locale undefined). This is one of the best books I've read all year. The translation was amazing, the prose crisp and clean and readable… and readability doesn't always go hand-in-hand with philosophical genius, as it does here. This was a book I couldn't put down, and I enjoyed every minute I spent engrossed in its pages. I wish someone would re-translate and re-publish more Eastern European SF — or at least more Strugatsky novels — because I’m enthralled with them after finishing Roadside Picnic.

It's somewhat amazing that the end of the Cold War occurred a generation ago and that no one under 30 has much in the way of memories about it. The early 1970s would have been around the midpoint of the Cold War, a time when the Soviet Union was still pretty totalitarian. It was also when Boris and Strugatsky, probably the most prominent science fiction writers to come out of that Soviet era, wrote Roadside Picnic. Superficially, at least, Roadside Picnic seems like a novel that could have been written in the West, albeit with an intriguing idea. A little over a decade before the novel begins, aliens briefly visited Earth. This wasn't a first contact situation as there was no real contact; they stopped by and then left, leaving behind a whole bunch of interesting material. One assumption was that Earth was merely a site for a roadside picnic and what was left was little more than alien litter. This material is in several Zones that typically have restricted access. That doesn't stop "stalkers" from trying to enter a Zone to get the fabulous material within, objects that seem to defy the laws of physics. The Zones are also extremely dangerous with various gases, slimes and other things that can deform and kill. Even a successful stalker like protagonist Red Schuhart can't by completely unscathed; his constant Zone excusions have had genetic effects. Written at a time and place where the government had a big say in what was published, it's interesting to see what type of political themes there might be in Roadside Picnic. There is a vaguely anti-capitalist bent, only in the sense that many of the characters are driven to stalking or its related professions by money. What I find more likely is a subtle anti-Soviet concept, in particular condemning the shortages caused by communism. At this time, items that were plentiful in the West were rare in the USSR, even restricted by law. The stalkers are like smugglers, but instead of going to the West to get blue jeans and rock albums, they're going into the Zones to get wondrous alien machines. It's all interesting, but the book would fail if it were poorly written. It is, however, quite entertaining and it's understandable why some would consider a classic. I don't know if I'd go that far, but this is a pretty good science fiction book.

Ideal

Here we have a late edition of the work, and one of the Strugatsky's according to the cover is still alive in st petersburg that ancient city of Old Russia and center of an old order and culture..whenever we read a text especially by a writer who not only look inside people but at the outside world and this is quite difficult to accomplish in a literary text of 200 pages or less. The afterward is humble as he details as a literary person the bureaucratic travails of getting his works published, and I do recall hearing of him and reading newspaper articles in my youth, and he was the most famous of Russian writers next to Solzhenitsyn and I must remind western critics his books and ideas are actually aimed at all political systems. Much like shakespeare's tempest pr Huxley's Island the zone is not located anywhere anyplace, but are humans in general and what they are all about and why they are suffering the way they are. He has been called a communist, but this word is often misunderstood perhaps he uses marxism as a way to diagnose society, how people are alinated and what the problems are in current society rather than endorse any party. Although I dont pretend to speak for him..other titles for the novel are interesting Hard to be God, and the worse comment a writer likes is he thinks he's God and is capable of writing and thinking up a great society that no one else can, and I doubt he liked this title. Other comments on the afterward, regarding what the far left's ideal of agreat society, freedom, but can there be such freedom, or any kind of far left rule when on p 204 he states concerning the violence "comments concerning physical vilence" and the novel is about a stalker(sic) entering a zone and getting artifacts, and although alienation is apparent throughout this novel, and in his great forbear's masterpiece, Zamyatin's WE, the question is how do we really civilize people. In one passage midway through the book the character muses about aliens and invasions into children, and woman being prettied up like dolls, will that bring satisfaction to him, and a very humane remark about providing for children and his wife, and these are all things which are capitalist society does not bring I agree, but why blame the economy and why not put the blame elsewhere..he in no way takes these views..as a work of art it is impeccable, one of the hallmarks of science fiction, serious science fiction. On p 180 "Vultures..there are too many of them..that's why there are no clean places..the whole world is filthy..later on p 185 "begging for peace..water..memories..knocking one another.,jostling, mingling, intertwining..pity or hatred."..The whole world is a zone, and we I think are the first words of the declaration of independence, our experiences never quite jive, what the world should be, but the heart of this novel lies in stalker and violence, it would be interesting to see this Russian film, a novel evocative of all nations where this novel is actually located..

I had only ever seen the movie version of this story so it was significant surprise to find that the original setting for the story isn’t somewhere in the former Soviet Union, but in fact appears to be Canada. An even bigger surprise, and a most welcome one to me as Kipling fan, was to discover in Arkady Strugatsky’s afterword in this book, that the authors’ derived the word Stalker from the character 'Stalky' in Kipling’s Stalky and Co stories. Both the film and book have different but equally melancholic endings. However the novel might be said to have the ultimate happy ending, depending on what you believe the protagonist is actually thinking in the last paragraph…

Très mauvaise traduction… Mais l’histoire est géniale ! A acheter sous une autre édition !!!

The translation is rather clunky (clumsy wording, shifts in tenses mid-sentence, once even a change of the sentence's subject that renders a whole paragraph nonsensical). But I forgive all that because of an accidental pentameter on page 110 (complete with rhyme): "The risen dead have no place to return ... and that is why they're sorrowful and stern." I also enjoyed the descriptions of unpredictable physics and weird artefacts inside the Zone, and shuddered at the various "accidents" and ways to die in there (that totally go with my "descriptions of war can never represent war" argument). All in all, I'm really glad to have read this book. Still, I think that Tarkovsky probably picked out some of the best bits for his adaptation STALKER.