Roadside Picnic

Roadside Picnic (Пикник на обочине - Piknik na obochine) is a science fiction novel written by brothers Arkady (1925 – 1991) and Boris (1933 – 2012) Strugatsky in 1971. The book has been the source of inspiration for various works and been adapted onto various media over the years. One of its merits in influence is coining the loan word stalker in its specific meaning (which I've gone over in my Metro 2033 post) in the Russian language.

I read Roadside Picnic in Finnish (translated by Esa Adrian) and its Finnish title is in fact just Stalker -- or at least that's the case on the print I borrowed. In some instances it does seem to carry the roadside picnic part ('huviretki tienpientarelle') as its subtitle in Finnish. The translation is from 1987 and there are quirks in the language. I wonder if they were due to the translator's dialect or just Finnish inflections and conjugations being slightly different in the '80s. It might have been worth reading the English translation because the available copy seems to be a SF Masterworks print which has an afterword by one of the authors.

I checked out a couple of reviews of Roadside Picnic after reading it, and found it amusing that one said it to be set in Canada and the other in the United States. The actual anglophone country -- based on the names of people and places -- is never specified in the book. I got the impression that it was overseas from Europe though.

In the book, an extraterrestrial lifeform visited Earth briefly but made no actual contact with humanity. They just left behind a few zones where reality is no longer quite the same -- much like in Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. Roadside Picnic doesn't have the weird vibe to it, though: it is more lucid in its science fiction and storytelling. That doesn't lessen the otherworldliness and strangeness of the zone in the novel. The Strugatsky brothers did an excellent job describing the protagonist's feelings.

Redrick "Red" Schuhart is a stalker. He does officially sanctioned trips into the zone, working as a guide. The zone is extremely dangerous, with a lot of unexplainable phenomenon. Only the most sangfroid people can keep their calm. Failing to do so often results in a quick death. Red ventures into the zone unofficially as well -- it's lucrative. The aliens left behind numerous weird objects whose purpose and workings are not understood. And for that they are valuable; there's a lot of money to be gained by smuggling them out.

The novel's title comes from an analogy suggested by a character in the novel. Animals and insects can't fathom the purpose of a littering roadside picnic -- and that is what the zones and their treasures are to humans.

Technically the novel has four sections but I divide it into three: the first and last feature stalking in the zone while the middle, the kind of boring part does not. It focuses more on Red's character and other elements. I suppose it's slowly building up the climax of the story: the chase for a mythical, wish-granting object in the zone.

At least one of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games features an ending with the very same thing. The games also copied the bolt-throw safety check Red does.

Reviews of the novel like contemplating the novel's possible political message. It was, after all, written by two Russians in the Soviet Union. Is the message for or against communism, or what -- I don't find pondering that terribly interesting an activity. The ending may have had something to do with it -- probably why it felt quite indifferent to me.