Roadside Picnic

Books | Fiction / Science Fiction / General

4.3

(420)

Arkady Strugatsky

Boris Strugatsky

Olena Bormashenko

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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More Details:

Author

Arkady Strugatsky

Pages

224

Publisher

Chicago Review Press

Published Date

2012-05-01

ISBN

1613743440 9781613743447

Ratings

Google: 5

Community ReviewsSee all

"This is incredibly interesting and engrossing. I saw Stalker and read “Zona” prior to reading this source material and, while reading this would have made some things less vague, this is probably the best way to do it. The movie is incredibly slow moving and focused on a very narrow scope, taking many liberties in the details from the main story, while the novel is very fast paced and much more expansive, though not so much that you aren’t left with a lot to muse about. Very highly recommended!"

CaitVD

"I read this for my English class, and it's good! I wish it went a bit deeper, especially when it comes to the children of stalkers. besides that, pretty good! I don't remember a whole lot honestly, because I had to write a paper on this and I read the whole thing in like, five hours lol."

Rowan McCrindle

"Very different from the movie. I can see why people had issues with the film. The book is faster paced, with monsters, clear dangers and not so clear. More emphasis on what a slice of life and character motivation. "

Ian Dutcher

"This was...interesting. I liked the story, and I loved the concept, but I struggled a bit with the overall darkness that seemed to permeate everything about this. I appreciated the story for what is was though, and I’m fascinated by the struggles the Strugatsky brothers had with getting this published in the then USSR. It certainly adds another layer to the book in my opinion, and the foreword by Ursula Le Guin was an excellent start to the edition I read."

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Allie Peduto

"This book has a certain tone and style that I really enjoyed. In some ways a aimple survival story, but in other ways a unique way to impress the feeling of living on just one spec in a vast unknowable universe."