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| I'm sad that the audio version omits the foreword. |
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and
Boris Strugatsky
Reason for Reading: The film Stalker was recommended to me ages ago.
I have a copy, but have never watched it, because it takes a special time slot
to sit down and enjoy a subtitled movie without getting sidetracked. I've also
owned the book for a while, but struggled somewhat to get into it. For whatever
reason, I decided to take a pass at it on Audible (in a fairly high-profile edition, using a new translation and the Oscar-nominated Robert Forster as a reader.)
The novel is set in the years following an alien visit, which left a
series of Zones around the world, filled with alien technology and weird,
deadly effects. These Zones are studied by scientists, but also plundered by
stalkers, thieves and smugglers who loot alien artefacts from the Zones for
profit. The novel primarily follows the fortunes of Red Schuhart, a young stalker
and sometime employee of the institute set up to study the Zone in Harmont,
Canada. Caught between his criminal fraternity and family commitments, Red is
pushed to make one last trip into the Zone, in search of the ultimate prize.
While written under the Soviet system and thus scathingly critical of Canada's
capitalist response to the Zone, Roadside
Picnic gives a grubby, roughhewn appeal to its flawed and broken characters.
It's probably best characterised as SF noir, which is a sorely underrepresented
field now that I think of it. It doesn't have much of a plot, or even arcs for
its characters - Red begins by getting someone killed by trying to do someone a
favour, then ends by getting someone killed trying to help himself and his
family - but is more in the way of a short snapshot of the community who
surround and exploit the Zone. Like a lot of noir, I find it appealing, but not
deeply engaging, which coupled poorly with the largely unlikeable characters to
make an interesting book with a lot of great ideas, but not a really gripping
one.
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