Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those strange misfits who are compelled by some unknown force to venture illegally into the Zone and, in spite of the extreme danger, collect the mysterious artefacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the Zone and the thriving black market in the alien products. Even the nature of his daughter has been determined by the Zone. And it is for her that Red makes his last, tragic foray into the hazardous and hostile depths.
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About the Author
Arkady Strugatsky (1925-1991) and Boris Strugatsky (b.1931) began to collaborate in the early 1950s after Arkady had studied English and Japanese and worked as a technical translator and editor and Boris was a computer mathematician at Pulkova astronomical observatory.
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Most helpful customer reviews
By Kieran Fox
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
I had little if any exposure to 'Soviet' sci-fi before reading this book, except for the excellent 'Solaris' by Lem. This ranks up there with Solaris, and among the best sci-fi books I've ever read. The theme of an alien 'visitation' yet with no aliens to be found is extremely original and well-executed. The major theme of the book, explained in title (which I won't ruin here) is profound and deeply thought-provoking, along the lines of what Lem was getting at in Solaris as well - that alien intelligences may be so incredibly different from our own that meaningful 'contact' may be impossible. Expecting basically humanoid forms with an extra eye or blue skin is just ludicrous, and the Strugatsky's give a very interesting perspective on what the implications of this may be for us.
By Jack Purcell
Format:Paperback
The Strugatsky brothers wrote fiction with a slant readers won't find in any western works in the genre. Roadside Picnic is one of the most imaginative. A brief visitation to our planet from some unknown place by unknown beings for reasons incomprehensible. Six locations on the face of the globe, positioned as though someone fired a pistol at it from space as it turned, are permanently changed, studied and fought over by humans. The storyline involves a 'stalker', a young man who was a child in one of the areas at the time of the visitation, who then spends the remainder of his life sneaking past guards and barriers risking his life in bizarre expeditions to remove and blackmarket artifacts. His trails into the hometown of his birth are marked by piles of clothing of other less-fortunate stalkers, guideposts of danger spots. The activities then lead him into prison sentences and an alienation from the bulk of humanity that only the Strugatsky brothers might visualize.
If you love good science fiction you'll love this book. If you don't love science fiction you'll still love it. You'll probably also form a desire to read their other contributions. If so, you are in for a difficult pursuit. These tomes are rapidly becoming obsure.
By R Bell
Format:Paperback
SF in English has two problems... 1) it's become branded and commercialised e.g. Star Trek pulp novels and 2) it doesn't know enough about SF in other languages. Reading "Roadside Picnic" is a nice antidote to both. SF is meant to be Science and Fiction, not Pulp and Trash.
As a novel it isn't perfect. I reckon it only really gets going about 3/4 of the way through, but having said that, the first 3/4 ARE readable. Like Lem's "Solaris" it tackles questions about ETs that corporate SF doesn't deal with, like "Can we communicate with aliens?" & "Can we even understand them?". The aliens in Roadside Picnic aren't two dimensional Klingons or Vulcans, but genuinely alien.
Some of the dialogue could do with tidying up too (translator's fault?), but unlike the majority of junk that masquerades as classic Science Fiction in English, it stands up as literature and a good novel in its own right. Theodore Sturgeon's excellent foreword points this out better than I can.
One more thing... you might be surprised to find out that Russian characters are actually thin on the ground in this novel. They seem to be in the minority - apart from Kirill. There are no obvious "Soviet vibes" from it either, political or otherwise.
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