Roadside Picnic (16) (Rediscovered Classics) Paperback – May 1, 2012

They came thirteen years ago and went forty-eight hours later, leaving shattered landscapes and strange debris in their wake. Who they are, and their reason for stopping on Earth, remain unknown — as are the exact purpose and function of these artifacts. Human scientists are hard at work studying these valuables, and are even making remarkable scientific breakthroughs with these devices, but are left unsure that they’re using these miracle devices even remotely as intended — or, as LeGuin puts it in her introduction, if they’re using “Geiger counters as hand axes and electrical components as nose rings.”While these six locations are now Zones of Alienation, guarded by military-police, a booming black-market subculture has grown around the young men calling themselves “stalkers” who sneak into the zones to recover these valuable alien artifacts. Braving the hazards of the Zone, many die short and nasty deaths trying to acquire artifacts. Others get tracked down by the police, while some others give up and move away to work in real jobs.Red Schuhart is one of these stalkers; employed as an intern by the scientists studying the Zone, he’s trying to live on the border between legality and outlaw, using his expertise to guide the Russian scientist Kirill in and out of the Zone. On one of these excursions to collect a “full empty,” the worst possible result happens. The embittered Red keeps going back into the zone, addicted to its dangers and thrill, yet hateful of its attraction and the emotional toll associated from all the dead friends and compatriots left in the Zone’s anomalies. But Red will keep going back, because the Zone has what he needs: a limitless supply of valuable artifacts, including a golden sphere which will make wishes come true.Roadside Picnic is not what you might imagine when thinking of a first contact story; the contact isn't between species, but between Red and the alien debris. This focus makes the story all the more human. On the one hand, we have the theme of humanity attempting to adopt these futuristic technologies, the human spirit to survive and better itself. On the other, we have the plight of the stalkers: bitter and poor young men who live in a lower-class ghetto beneath the shadow of the shiny scientific community. The scientists and the military have overtaken the city, and while those born there have various avenues of escape, most pursue the lure of the Zone and become stalkers. They’re not quite forced to go into the zone to survive, but do so in attempts to better their economic standing — part of the Strugatsky’s philosophical commentary, on capitalism and communismYet Red never manages that upward mobility; later in the story, he’s still living in a run-down Soviet-style tenement and struggling to provide for his family. The value of the artifacts is supposed to be high, but while all the stalkers dream of cashing in and moving to Europe, most of them seem to die in the Zone’s many hazards or emerge too broken to continue smuggling. A vicious cycle, veering towards post-colonial literature in its depiction of the impoverished lower-class doing dangerous things for a quick buck; it’s a refreshing brand of irony to see this applied to what’s ostensibly Canada (the prologue mentions the Royal Armored Corps blockading the Zone, and refers to “over in Europe,” but leaves the exact locale undefined).This is one of the best books I've read all year. The translation was amazing, the prose crisp and clean and readable… and readability doesn't always go hand-in-hand with philosophical genius, as it does here. This was a book I couldn't put down, and I enjoyed every minute I spent engrossed in its pages. I wish someone would re-translate and re-publish more Eastern European SF — or at least more Strugatsky novels — because I’m enthralled with them after finishing Roadside Picnic.

It's somewhat amazing that the end of the Cold War occurred a generation ago and that no one under 30 has much in the way of memories about it. The early 1970s would have been around the midpoint of the Cold War, a time when the Soviet Union was still pretty totalitarian. It was also when Boris and Strugatsky, probably the most prominent science fiction writers to come out of that Soviet era, wrote Roadside Picnic.Superficially, at least, Roadside Picnic seems like a novel that could have been written in the West, albeit with an intriguing idea. A little over a decade before the novel begins, aliens briefly visited Earth. This wasn't a first contact situation as there was no real contact; they stopped by and then left, leaving behind a whole bunch of interesting material. One assumption was that Earth was merely a site for a roadside picnic and what was left was little more than alien litter.This material is in several Zones that typically have restricted access. That doesn't stop "stalkers" from trying to enter a Zone to get the fabulous material within, objects that seem to defy the laws of physics. The Zones are also extremely dangerous with various gases, slimes and other things that can deform and kill. Even a successful stalker like protagonist Red Schuhart can't by completely unscathed; his constant Zone excusions have had genetic effects.Written at a time and place where the government had a big say in what was published, it's interesting to see what type of political themes there might be in Roadside Picnic. There is a vaguely anti-capitalist bent, only in the sense that many of the characters are driven to stalking or its related professions by money. What I find more likely is a subtle anti-Soviet concept, in particular condemning the shortages caused by communism. At this time, items that were plentiful in the West were rare in the USSR, even restricted by law. The stalkers are like smugglers, but instead of going to the West to get blue jeans and rock albums, they're going into the Zones to get wondrous alien machines.It's all interesting, but the book would fail if it were poorly written. It is, however, quite entertaining and it's understandable why some would consider a classic. I don't know if I'd go that far, but this is a pretty good science fiction book.