Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
2012-05-01
Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty," something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he'll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.
First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel's publication in Russia.
Diving into 'Roadside Picnic,' I encountered a rich tapestry of speculative science fiction, akin to the intricate worlds of PKD but with a distinctly Russian philosophical undertone. The authors explore the idea of extraterrestrial visitation through the lens of human curiosity and the unforeseen consequences of tampering with the unknown. The narrative's structure, with its fragmented yet cohesive storytelling, mirrors the chaotic and incomprehensible nature of the 'Zone' it describes. While the book presents a profound commentary on human ambition and the limits of scientific understanding, it occasionally suffers from the weight of its own ambition, with some plot threads left tantalizingly unresolved. Nonetheless, its contribution to the genre, particularly in the realm of hard science fiction, is undeniable.
