245 pages

English language

Published Jan. 1, 1977 by Macmillan.

ISBN:
978-0-02-615170-2
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OCLC Number:
2910972

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4 stars (24 reviews)

Roadside Picnic is set in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event called the Visitation that took place in several locations around the Earth, simultaneously, over a two-day period. Neither the Visitors themselves nor their means of arrival or departure were ever seen by the local populations who lived inside the relatively small areas, each a few square kilometers, of the six Visitation Zones. The zones exhibit strange and dangerous phenomena not understood by humans, and contain artifacts with inexplicable properties. The title of the novel derives from an analogy proposed by the character Dr. Valentine Pilman, who compares the Visitation to a picnic.

4 editions

A great read

No rating

This is a second Slovenian translation of Roadside Picnic and this time we got uncensored version of the book translated by the same translator. It has a very informative foreword which speaks about the fight that brothers Strugacky with the Soviet Union state bureaucracy to get this work published. What is really interested is that the censors in the end took out the bad language in the swear words. Roadside picnic is, according to the foreword, one of the few books that won the battle against censorship. The book is apolitical with slight anti-capitalist subtone so it is hard to imagine why it was not approved by the censors in the first place.

Regarding the book itself it is very gripping sci-fi thriller that questions what is humanity. It is almost at the top of my suggestion list.

Taking the crumbs from the table

5 stars

Aliens visit earth and leave again, as if they were just stopping for a picnic along the way to somewhere more interesting. The people living near the visited sites (Zones) find all sorts of mysterious and often dangerous things left behind that shatter our concepts of physics and the possibilities of life. Scientists are no better off than anyone else tring to understand them. And that's the crux of it - when humans are so insignificant, so far away from understanding reality, there is really very little separating us. I've typed and deleted a few more things but felt like it cheapened the book's themes because ultimately I think they are affective rather than ideological. So I'll just keep them to myself.

Review of 'Roadside Picnic' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

First contact is made in the form of Zones and its far from idyllic or disastrous scenarios from the SF past. What we got is far more akin to a slap to the face... hell we can understand a slap. This is an indifferent gesture, if it can be called that and nobody knows for certain. This uncertainty and danger sucks in all that have anything to do with it and probably drives them mad, or at least make them pay for it. We see all this through the life of the Stalker Red and with him ask: Why, How, Did we do something wrong, Is it worth it, and never get an answer.

Review of 'Roadside Picnic' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This book is dated with reference to smoking a whole lot, (indoors!), heavy drinking as a normal way to pass the evening, light drinking on the job, women portrayed as secondary to to men, can't call someone because phone lines have not been laid out that far yet, sitting at the typewriter.

I did not like the writing, or flow of text, and maybe the way sentences were structured. This was not an easy comfortable read. It should be noted, however, that this story was written in Russian and later translated to English. Proper flow and deeper meanings, even references, may have been lost in translation.

So, that's two strikes against, then why three stars?

Originality.
These guys, brothers, came up with some really cool relics. The story is told, not from the normal scientist view, but from your average working class man. The deeper meanings, if you see them, …

Review of 'Roadside Picnic' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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 …

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