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. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” … something goes wrong. 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. First 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. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel’s publication in Russia.
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Finding a book that is everything you love happens a handful of times in a lifetime. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky on audiobook format is one of them for me. Roadside Picnic was recommended to me by my 14-year-old. My kid also recommended I read Ready Player One. Which was so much fun. What can I say he’s got great taste in …
I liked it, but I think its reputation is a bit extravagant. Not bad, entertaining but not sensational.
What I’ve always found admirable about science fiction is that, at its best, it is the most imaginative of literary genres. Unfettered by convention, it takes the reader on wondrous journeys of possibility.
A man’s relationship to a capital-M Mystery over a number of years, how he steals from it, smuggles it past the authorities, is changed by it, sees it in his daughter… It’s about aliens who dropped off at Earth for a picnic and left their trash behind. It’s about the cost of dealing with the gods. It’s something else.
I really liked this. Great …
Roadside Picnic is a classic of Soviet science fiction that nearly vanished in the vaults of that country’s culture ministers and censors. Full of (very Russian) world-weary-but-humanity-loving flair and humor, the story’s built around a superb, ambitious and unusual concept. This novel is the inspiration for the Tarkovsky film “Stalker,” and …