Brothers Arkady & Boris Strugatsky are top writers of Russian science fiction, on par with the most widely read science fiction writer, Stanislaw Lem (author of the classic Solaris). In a genre as limitless as the boundaries of time and space, they are required reading. Roadside Picnic was made in to the brilliant Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker in 1979, available from Criterion.
A Nobel Prize winning physicist explains the Visitation Zones which appeared around the world 30 years ago. Many Zones can be directly calibrated along the Deneb Line, the so-called trajectory from Earth to the alpha star of Cygnus. This important discovery to mankind is not who they are or where they came from, not why they came or why they disappeared, but that humanity now knows they are not alone.
Inside the Zone there is no time, and natural laws do not apply; incomprehensible dangers have been named (witches jelly, death lamps, burning fluff) which kill and maim, and paths plotted cannot guarentee safety. As in a roadside picnic you or I may have, extra terrestrial debris has been left behind, though this litter is utterly alien technology defying earthly logic or science. We have adapted some items without understanding them in the least, others are incomprehensible. A UN military district controls the technologies - but there are those who risk their lives to plunder what they can sell on the thriving black market. Stalkers.
Redrick Schuhart: 23, is a freelance Stalker working with a scientist at the institute studying empties - small copper discs with solid space between. There are rumours of 'full' empties in the zone, beneficial to research. You ideally need three people to survive, and protective suits and masks cannot guarantee safety, as you travel the paths of the preceding dead. 'Mosquito Mange' are graviconcentric clouds of extreme directed gravity, and odd liquid pools of silver shining like cobwebs mutilate beyond killing. It is a barren space where nothing can survive, and they do not return unharmed.
Redrick Schuhart: 28, continues to enter the zone despite the risk of prison. No one near the zone is unscathed, including Redrick's young daughter with her furry little paws. There is not much left to take, when a dying Stalker tells him of the fabled Golden Ball, too heavy to carry.
Redrick Schuhart: 31, has been offered $500,000 to retrieve the Golden Ball, bringing along a young Stalker as a minesweeper, a canary to mark the path ahead. This section of the novel is most like the film by Tarkovsky, a meditative journey into the overgrown wilderness of a once domestic uninhabited town, deeper into the Zone than anyone has been.
This is a dystopian future, where human mutations, military control and the underground black market (fed by those in the institute itself) are all a part of everyday life. Redrick has a wife and child, and visits from his deceased father (a 'moulage', the returning undead). Everyone continuing to make the best of an incomprehensible world. It is a mistake to assume the Visitors even think like us, when in all probability they are incoherent to our human minds. Did they stop for a visit leaving traces behind? Why did they leave? or is the Zone intended to slowly mutate our environment to their liking?
All good science fiction presents the big questions, in this case, we may never comprehend.
Reminiscent of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, Roadside Picnic is highly recommended as required reading for those who love classic science fiction writers such as Stanislaw Lem, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, John Wyndham, and Frank Herbert.
1972 / Hardcover / 209 pages
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