Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #953216 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-24
• Original language: Russian
• Binding: Paperback
• 145 pages

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.

Customer Reviews

Truly exceptional
There are few sci-fi books as great as this. It's a pointer as to exactly what sci-fi can do. It's full not of macho escapist nonsense but of humanity and reflections on the place of the individual in modern societies, be they Soviet or capitalist.

Packed prose
It's a pleasant thing to read fiction from Eastern Europe and Russia, mostly because it seems to highlight differences in the way things can be considered and approached. A new angle on something, a new way of looking at it can be very enlightening. This is most certainly true of science fiction.
Until quite recently the vast bulk of fiction/sci-fi I read was western european/american. After reading this, I know that it's time to change that pattern and start looking further east for a few more things that are a bit like this.

The premise of this novel is not completely unfamiliar to those who enjoy sci-fi. It's the approach that's different. I really don't want to make sweeping generalisations, but the whole thing just felt 'russian', which helped increase the sense of alienation when visiting the zone. There were certainly some influences of life behind the iron curtain, which had the effect (for me) of making it feel almost claustrophobic. Some of the ideas where not explored fully enough, which is why I gave this four stars.

The writing style is concise and detailed, and although the page count is quite low, there is a lot packed into those pages.
Definately worth giving this a go if you're looking for something in this genre that's just a little bit different.

SF needs to get back to its roots
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. (Although I have heard it is a sly dig at the Soviet mechanical view of the universe, where everything is cut and dried and certain...).