Roadside Picnic

I had read this right after reading another Strugatsky novel,Hard to be a God, and just as with that one, Roadside Picnic deals heavily with the ideas of humanity, and the struggle that people face. Unlike that novel, which deals with a person masquerading as a noble, this book is almost all about the common people, as seen through the character of Red Schuhart, and what they have to do to survive in a capitalist society.

The novel is about a series of areas called Zones, where the normal laws of physics don't necessarily apply, and every inch is laced with danger. Access to these area's are strictly forbidden outside of scientific excursions, but a black market pops up supplied by Stalkers, who risk life and limb to get the bizarre artifacts that are scattered about each one.

Red Schuhart is one of these Stalker's, and the book follows him throughout the years as society changes and adapts to the Zones and what they can provide. The book shows how much the underclass has to sacrifice, and what ideals they may have to break, in order to provide for their families. Before asking us in one of the most gut-wrenching scenes I've ever read, "At what point does a man sell his soul?"

This is a great Science Fiction book ! An unputdownable page turner. Good story, good character development, very well written. I enjoyed it a lot, read it in two sittings :)

A pretty solid soviet science fiction novel, in which prospectors referred to as Stalkers explore and retrieve artifacts from the Zone, the site of an alien visitation event years in the past. It has just the right amount of science fiction terminology, concepts and lore to string the reader along, but it's strength really is the character's interior voices and social commentary. I listened to the audiobook version with an afterword by one of the authors and found it particularly insightful.

Two decades have passed since the Visitation, when aliens visited Earth. The landscape has been left permanently altered. The so-called "Zones" remain quarantined, full of extraterrestrial disease, incomprehensible anomalies, and mysterious debris. Scientists continue to study the remains of the aliens' visit, and scavengers called "stalkers" prowl the Zones in secret, putting their lives on the line to steal artifacts for the black market. This short novel follows one such stalker, Redrick "Red" Schuhart, tracing the impact of the Zone on him and the other people in the adjacent semi-deserted town of Harmont.

I read this book in one sitting, as the premise is incredibly compelling. While the book would have been interesting enough had it focused entirely on the stalker's perilous adventures in the Zone, a great deal of attention is devoted to exploring how contact with the capital-U Unknowable changes the characters. The aliens themselves never make an appearance, and rather than a first contact scenario it's suggested that we humans are merely terrified and uncomprehending insects picking over the incidental litter of their brief visit (the titular "roadside picnic"). Despite their close proximity to the unknown, the humans largely continue to be driven by self-interest, lusting for money and fame. Despite this—if my interpretation of the ambiguous finale is correct—the book ends with the faintest glimmer of hope that humanity can move past their baser instincts.

Despite all the mystery and unanswered questions, this was an exciting and satisfying read. Although there are no direct connections, I think fans of Lovecraft's cosmic horror will especially appreciate this book.

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, leave room for your own personal interpretation.

Reasonably quick read but even so, I would recommend passing this for something better as we all seem to have less and less time for reading.

I didn't like any of the characters, but the rest of the book was OK, I suppose.

Light on plot and character, and the translation feels a bit off, but this is my kind of sci-fi: bleak, ambiguous, full of haunting images and that sense of awe that we don't understand much of anything in the universe.

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 corrected this censorship, to quote the back of the book “this authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions”. I know some of the corrections made included to the original translation starting thirty years after the visitation rather than thirteen but unsure what else was changed. However, despite the censorship and notwithstanding the fact this novel was out-of-print in America for thirty years; Roadside Picnic is wildly regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time.

The title Roadside Picnic refers to the visitation and the fact that they never made contact with humanity. The novel plays with the idea that intelligent life wouldn’t want to make contact with the human race. One look at humanity, full of all the violence towards each other, aliens would conclude that humans are not intelligent life forms but rather savages. One character within the novel, Dr. Valentine Pilman compared the aliens visit to that of an extra-terrestrial picnic.

“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.”

It is fascinating to look at humanity in a first contact novel and it reminded me of how much I’ve enjoyed the psychological/philosophical science fiction novels that seemed to be produced in the 1960s and 70s. However Roadside Picnic went deeper; like most Russian novels of this time, there was a strong reflection on society at the time. Like I said before, I am not sure if this edition still holds the Soviet censorship but I was impressed by the subtle look at society. It wasn’t just a poke at the Soviet Union but rather a look at humanity under an unidentifiable superpower. This could be an American superpower and it looks at ideas of what might happen if the government prohibits the people from gaining access to the biggest scientific discovery of their time. You have a struggle between quarantined verses legitimate scientific research, playing with the moral idea of government regulated technology.

Moving away from the themes, Roadside Picnic is a thrilling and beautifully written novel. Red Schuhart almost comes across as a hard-boiled narrator but less cynical; he remains a wide-eyed curious protagonist throughout the narrative. A surreal, tense story that threw out the rules found in a ‘first contact’ novel and ended up redefining the genre. It went on to challenge some of the ideas in the study of xenology and perhaps even ufology.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky have been the authors of over twenty science fiction novels, their unique style of blending Soviet rationalism with speculative fiction can be found throughout their books. Roadside Picnic remains their masterpiece and inspired the Russian cult classic movie Stalker (1979) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky wrote the screenplay for Stalker and then the novelisation; no idea why you need a novelisation of a movie that was based on a book. Roadside Picnic is an amazing novel, and reminds me why I love Russian science fiction. The blend of social commentary and science fiction is what I continue to look for when searching for books in this genre.

This review originally appeared on my blog: literary-exploration.com/2014/12/12/roadside-picnic-by-arkady-boris-strugatsky/