the idealism of technology benefiting man as maybe an echo of the dream of communism, which may be a stretch, or see what seems to be spelled out directly, which is the heart’s innermost desire for liberty and happiness. it all seems to come from the conditions the story was written under. It’s a great tale and very well told by the Strugatsky Brothers, my favorite I’ve read from them.There are many aspects of the story that made me think of life in the Soviet Union (the story was written in the 1970s) - the suppression of information, beauracracy, spies/informants, an industrial wasteland (almost a premonition of Cherynobyl), indeterminate/random danger, and the black market. The resulting items left in various zones on the planet have strange properties, sometimes highly valuable, sometimes lethal, and a black market quickly forms, fed by expert scavengers called stalkers who lead dangerous expeditions to retrieve them. Read moreĪ fantastic concept for a science fiction story, that advanced alien visitors stopped off on earth for a rest, leaving behind various bits of junk and technology while being completely oblivious of humankind, kind of how a family on a road trip might litter and enjoy themselves carelessly, oblivious to animals and insects. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel's publication in Russia. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. 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.įirst 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.

But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a full empty, something goes wrong.

His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. 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.

Strugatsky brothers roadside picnic