Paperback, 160 pages
English language
Published Dec. 22, 1979 by Penguin Books.
[Comment by Hari Kunru in The Guardian][1]:
> Soviet-era Russian science fiction deserves a wider audience in English. The Strugatsky brothers collaborated on numerous novels and stories, the best known of which is this, partly because it was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker, in 1977. The novel takes place 10 years after a mysterious alien visitation, which seems to have no rational explanation. No one saw the visitors. Their presence caused disease and blindness in the areas where they landed. Now, in the six "Zones", the laws of physics (and, seemingly, of reality) are disturbed by anomalies, and littered with inexplicable, deadly wreckage. Only a few brave "stalkers" risk their lives to enter the zones to gather alien artefacts for sale. Some of these artefacts offer the promise of extraordinary powers. Unlike Tarkovsky's film, which concentrates on the hallucinatory, vacated landscape of the zones, the novels portray a society …
[Comment by Hari Kunru in The Guardian][1]:
> Soviet-era Russian science fiction deserves a wider audience in English. The Strugatsky brothers collaborated on numerous novels and stories, the best known of which is this, partly because it was filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker, in 1977. The novel takes place 10 years after a mysterious alien visitation, which seems to have no rational explanation. No one saw the visitors. Their presence caused disease and blindness in the areas where they landed. Now, in the six "Zones", the laws of physics (and, seemingly, of reality) are disturbed by anomalies, and littered with inexplicable, deadly wreckage. Only a few brave "stalkers" risk their lives to enter the zones to gather alien artefacts for sale. Some of these artefacts offer the promise of extraordinary powers. Unlike Tarkovsky's film, which concentrates on the hallucinatory, vacated landscape of the zones, the novels portray a society adapting to an inexplicable, terrifying event, an eruption of the unknown. Though written in 1971 and published in English in 1977, the novel was heavily bowdlerised by Soviet censors, and an authoritative text wasn't available in Russian until 2000. It's a book with an extraordinary atmosphere – and a demonstration of how science fiction, by using a single bold central metaphor, can open up the possibilities of the novel.
Original Title: Пикник на обочине
[1]: www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice
Didn't entirely understand this one. The language barrier doesn't help - although it's translated, the dialogue is not in English that flows very well (for me, at least). The Zone that the Stalkers enter does feel satisfyingly awful though. The characters aren't particularly likeable, mind.
Roadside picnic sees Earth receiving Visitors from the direction of Deneb for a very brief time, leaving behind six Zones where they stayed, and a whole heap of very strange phenomena and artifacts are to be found in each. Scientists want to study but there is a black market for artifacts brought out of the Zones by "stalkers" who risk their lives, illegally entiring the unpredictable and lethal alien affected areas at night.
The story is told from three points of view but is really about only one of them, Red, a stalker whose motivations are not always entirely clear even to himself. Each viewpoint character has a distinct voice that carries over well in this translation. The writing is excellent, in fact and I assume that it does justice to the original Russian in this respect.
The freakish nature of some of the alien phenomena is imaginative and interesting …
Roadside picnic sees Earth receiving Visitors from the direction of Deneb for a very brief time, leaving behind six Zones where they stayed, and a whole heap of very strange phenomena and artifacts are to be found in each. Scientists want to study but there is a black market for artifacts brought out of the Zones by "stalkers" who risk their lives, illegally entiring the unpredictable and lethal alien affected areas at night.
The story is told from three points of view but is really about only one of them, Red, a stalker whose motivations are not always entirely clear even to himself. Each viewpoint character has a distinct voice that carries over well in this translation. The writing is excellent, in fact and I assume that it does justice to the original Russian in this respect.
The freakish nature of some of the alien phenomena is imaginative and interesting - effects go well beyond the overtly technological and more and more weird and inexplicable interactions between humans and the Zones are revealed as the story moves forward.
Excellent, imaginative writing - why only two stars? Because the story just stops rather than finishes. Right at the climax. The reader never gets to find out what happens to Red and his family. It's enormously frustrating and disappointing after such a fine build up. I think readers deserved some kind of resolution to Red's story.
