Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic is one of the most important works of Soviet science fiction.

It’s a first contact story, but a very unconventional one.

The Visit only lasted a very short time. Aliens visited six sites on Earth and then departed as mysteriously as they had appeared. Those sites are known as the Zones. There was no communication whatsoever between humans and the aliens. There were casualties among the human populations but it was never clear that the aliens actually had hostile intentions.

The Zones are littered with alien artefacts. Visiting the Zones is very very dangerous. No-one understands the nature of the dangers but they are very real. Governments have successfully suppressed all knowledge of what went on in the Zones and of what the Zones contain. The truth is that scientists do not have the remotest idea of what the Visit meant or why it took place.

Uses have been found for some of the alien artefacts (such as batteries providing limitless energy) but nobody knows the real purposes for which these devices were intended.

Entering the Zones might be incredibly hazardous but where there’s a profit to be made there will be people wiling to take the risks. Such people are known as Stalkers. The scientists do not care to take such risks but they are willing to buy artefacts from Stalkers. And there is a thriving black market.

Redrick Schuhart is a Stalker. Redrick is an ambiguous hero with complex motivations. Money is one of his motivations, but not the most important.

One of his Redrick’s forays into the Zone almost ended in disaster. He managed to save his companion, Burbridge. Burbridge claims to know the location of the Holy Grail of artefacts, the Golden Sphere. Maybe he will tell Redrick how to find it. The rumour is that the Golden Sphere can grant wishes. That might be mere rumour, but some of these artefacts really can do impossible things.

Close contact with the Zones can have unexpected consequences. Children who are not quite normal. Even more frightening and puzzling, when people who were in the vicinity of the Visit movie away to other cities very strange things happen. Strange inexplicable impossible things.

There are some wild, bizarre and very imaginative ideas in this novel. It’s a novel that exists on the fringes of conventional science fiction.

There is also a certain amount of excitement and suspense. Death can come quickly and unexpectedly in the Zone. And maybe worse things.

You find yourself hoping that the authors will be able to come up with an ending worthy of all the cool ideas that they’ve thrown into the story. Sadly they do not do so. I found the ending to be bitterly disappointing.

The authors ran into considerable censorship proems in the Soviet Union even though they had gone to great lengths to avoid taking any ideological positions. There is a rather cynical tone to the novel, which might explain the censors’ hostility. The Visit is after all the subject of government cover-ups throughout the world.

Roadside Picnic was filmed in 1979 by Andrei Tarkovsky, as Stalker.

Roadside Picnic is extremely interesting and imaginative but the feeble ending robs it of true greatness. Still worth a read. Recommended.