ŷ������

��Intelligence is the ability of a living creature to perform pointless or unnatural acts.��

While the prospect of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe has long captivated the human mind, we must also wonder if, when we do find it, those other beings will even bother with us. What if, perhaps, we were so insignificant on a grand scale that an alien visit would be nothing more than a a roadside picnic where we are merely ants to their stop. Such is the case in Roadside Picnic by Russian brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky where in the aftermath of this very scenario the earth is left with deadly “Zones�� full of discarded alien refuge that people risk their lives—often dying in horrific fashion—to obtain. But will these objects be used to improve the world or be weaponized because, knowing human desires for profit and power ��it’s possible that by randomly pulling chestnuts out of this fire, we’ll eventually stumble on something that will make life on Earth completely unbearable.�� The novel is also the basic for the 1979 cult-classic film, , which draws on the set-up and several themes of the novel while taking its own philosophical journey. A tense, page-turner of a sci-fi novel that navigates philosophical and social quandaries with the grit and caustic characters of a noir, Roadside Picnic goes down with all the burn and delight of a harsh whiskey that leaves you reeling and coming back for more.

��Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world.��

When I first came across this novel, I opened it intending to read just a page or two and the next thing I knew I was 40 pages deep and had barely taken a breath as the opening chapter was so intense. For as heady and ponderous the book is, the action with its blend of horror and complex noir-like underhanded dealings will keep you eagerly turning pages. A lot happens and there are many surprise twists and turns, yet at the heart it is a deeply philosophical investigation on human nature in a hellish landscape where truth and the search for a divide between good and evil is a stumble through a fog of ambiguity. All of which is playing out against a backdrop of humanity confronted with being cosmically insignificant after the most monumental moment in human history passed by without humans even being acknowledged.

��That's the Zone for you: come back with swag, a miracle; come back alive, success; come back with a patrol bullet in your ass, good luck; and everything else - that's fate.��

Written in the Soviet Union, there is a distinct Cold War vibe permeating the novel, particularly around the topics of arms buildups and the restricted Zones where the aliens had landed being walled off. There are the “Stalkers�� who sneak in at night to recover objects and sell them for profit, a high-stakes profession with a high body count and other side-effects that they only learn about once it is too late. The novel is rather episodic, spanning nearly a decade in the life of Redrick “Red�� Schuhart, who works for a scientific research lab by day but over the course of the book is repeatedly pulled back into the gangster-esque underworld of the Stalkers in order to survive financially. Redrick is as hard drinking as he is hard living, dealing with the side-effects of exposure to The Zone that caused his child to be born covered in fur for which they lovingly nickname her “Monkey��, but as time passes she is slowly losing her humanity and become more animalistic. Not to mention the visit woke the dead and a zombie-like version of his dad is living in their apartment. But money talks and there is rumor of a golden sphere in The Zone that can grant wishes, but those who have used it tend to make selfish wishes or kill themselves after. But is it possible someone could wish for something to help everyone?

��Man is born in order to think... Except that I don't believe that. I've never believed it, and I still don't believe it, and what man is born for -I have no idea. He's born, that's all. Scrapes by as best he can.��

I quite enjoy how there are so many entertaining and bizarre details to this speculative future that just pass as natural—such as the walking dead—and aren’t addressed beyond just being the way things are. The book is very much about ordinary people living in extreme times but just accepting this as the world.

��Screw the years—we don’t notice things change. We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes—or we search for change in all the wrong places.��

We also see Redrick as a sort of anti-conformity hero, accepting the world around him but always wanting to live by his own rules and desires to get away from all the rigamarole of society. But he’s trapped by his own lack of mobility in a world ruled by power and profit, by ��decaying capitalism and triumphant bourgeois ideology.�� He is always considering the ironies of like such as how ��you need money so you don’t have to think about money,�� and asking himself ��what the hell are we all running around for, anyway? To make money? But what the hell do we need money for if all we do is run around making it?�� His options for money seem decidedly immoral, such as the request to recover something known as ‘hell slime,�� an ooze that dissolved an entire lab killing most inside and will undoubtedly be used as a weapon. In such a world, he questions if there can truly be ethical living. ��This is the way I figure it: if a man works with you, he is always working for one of you, he is a slave and nothing else,�� he says during an attempt to recruit his services, adding ��I always wanted to be myself, on my own, so that I could spit at you all, at your boredom and despair.�� With a few escape scenes (including out a bar as well as carrying a man who’s leg has been dissolved in The Zone), a prison sentence, and plenty of moments drinking away the stress of the day while cursing at authorities, Redrick is practically a noir hero.

First serialized in Russia in 1972, this edition is a re-translation by Olena Bormashenko () returning all the text removed by censors and includes a fascinating introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin. There is plenty of discourse on the perspective of the novel, and its Cold War attributes, being rather strangely apolitical yet still managing to touch on a lot of issues the ordinary person would consider during these times. For one, the Zones and the wall around them calls to mind the Berlin Wall and one could interpret the alien artifacts to be symbolic of Western culture and goods that would be smuggled back into Soviet territory. Additionally, some have argued the representation of capitalism in the novel could represent Soviet sensibilities, though this seems shoehorning an interpretation since critiquing the evils of capitalism is hardly uniquely Soviet even at the time.

This did, however, aid in the novel avoiding censorship, as Boris Stugatsky has noted ��it was quite ideologically appropriate and certainly not dangerous�� to Soviet censors, and the bits that were removed were more about language and “immoral behaviors��. On the other hand, Roland Boer discusses in his book Knockin' on Heaven's Door that the brothers being blacklisted for an unauthorized East German publication of their novel The Ugly Swans led many in the West to embrace them as Soviet dissidents and brought them into wide translation, though Boer argues this is a misinterpretation of their politics as well. In the introduction, Le Guin argues they are, instead, ��indifferent to ideology�� and that looking for a Cold War political divide in their books or in glorifying them as smuggling Soviet critiques through science fiction is to miss the point:

��Bureaucrats and politicians, who can’t afford to cultivate their imaginations, tend to assume it’s all ray-guns and nonsense, good for children. A writer may have to be as blatantly critical of utopia as Zamyatin in We to bring the censor down upon him. The Strugatsky brothers were not blatant, and never (to my limited knowledge) directly critical of their government’s policies. What they did, which I found most admirable then and still do now, was to write as if they were indifferent to ideology—something many of us writers in the Western democracies had a hard time doing. They wrote as free men write.��

Perhaps this is what makes this book so effortlessly invigorating and engaging: it is a look at humanity at a struggle against abuse of power and cosmic indifference without needing to divide into political camps and instead hope for the success of people instead of our destruction by those who seek to divide. Which there is plenty of here, particularly when Redrick knows governments want to obtain the ‘hell slime�� in order to weaponize it for war. �� And it’s not because they are more clever and cunning than we are. The world is just like that,�� the Strugatsky’s write, ��Man is like that. If it wasn’t the Visit, it would have been something else. Pigs can always find mud.�� Someone is always paying for power, and there will always be someone to accept the payments even at risk of their own life. It seems society has cornered people in poverty and harsh conditions to ensure the supply of these folks is unending. Just look at the quick flash of arguments against minor student loan repayment aid in the US whining that it will lower military enlistment.

��We merely don’t understand a thing, but they at least understand how much they don’t understand.��

A primary theme in Roadside Picnic is our limits of knowledge and how that also plays into the obfuscation between what is good or evil. We have teams of scientists trying to learn what the Zone objects do and how to use them, occasionally finding uses for power sources and occasionally realizing they could be a devastating weapon. An incredible centerpiece in the novel is a discussion between one character and the scientist who’s radio broadcast about the alien visit begins the novel, a discussion that covers the meaning of intelligence, our minimal purpose in a vast universe and the hate of humanity as a whole. There is hope, however, that humanity will weather any storm, but the tragedy that many often die in order to get there.

Which leads us to the incredible final section of the book where Redrick is seeking the wish-fulfilling object. It becomes a marvelous parable on ethics, particularly as to reach the orb and make a wish, a human sacrifice is required. In this case, it is a rather innocent youth who is seeking the orb to wish for the salvation of all humanity which becomes a pretty grim moment that reminds me of the ways society often looks down at young activists. Can one who is able to obtain the orb and have their deepest wish be read by it actually have a wish for mass goodness in their heart? It also reminds me how frequently human sacrifice to curry the favor of the gods (and what is a wish-granting machine if not godlike) occurs in the history of human literature, from the story of Abraham and Isaac to Agamemnon murdering Iphigenia to appease the gods for good sailing weather. Curiously, the Book of Revelations is alluded to frequently in the novel, such as the resurrection of the dead and other “demonic�� miracles, and the character Gutalin is quick to mention the objects as satanic and warn ��the pale horse has been saddled,�� and that ��thou, of human flesh, whom Satan has seduced, who play with his toys and covert his treasures,�� referring to The Zone.

The end is abrupt, yet beautifully so as ambiguity and interpretability is one of Roadside Picnic’s greatest strengths. It also lends itself to the beauty of the film adaptation, Stalker, which is largely concerned with the wish-granting golden orb and what truly lurks in the hearts of people as their greatest wishes. The film is shot in Estonia and primarily outside an abandoned hydroelectric plant and has incredibly powerful imagery in long shots (this edition of the book even uses a still from the film as the cover). The film imagery frequently draws comparisons to the zone around Chernobyl, though the disaster would happen several years after the film. Interestingly enough, following the success of the film and book the term Stalker became a popular neologism in Russia for people who guide others into dangerous or restricted areas.

Stalker (1979)--Watch the

I cannot recommend Roadside Picnic enough. This book comes swinging and lands each blow with such power and philosophical impact that I can’t help but love it. Imaginative, gritty, thought provoking and even rather humorous at times, this is certainly a favorite sci fi and book overall. Enter the Zone if you dare, and keep your wits about you.

5/5

��Look into my soul, I know - everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I've never sold my soul to anyone! It's mine, it's human! Figure out yourself what I want - because I know it can't be bad! The hell with it all, I just can't think of a thing other than those words of his - HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN!��