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+title = "Roadside Picnic (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1972)"
+author = ["Michał Sapka"]
+date = 2024-07-15T21:35:00+02:00
+categories = ["reviews"]
+draft = false
+weight = 2014
+reviewSection = ["Books"]
+abstract = "A short review of an absolute marvel of a book"
+image = "reviews/covers/roadside-picnic.jpg"
+rating = 4.5
+related = ["Strugatsky brothers"]
+relatedName = "Roadside Picnic"
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+
+_Roadside Picnic_ has a very particular heritage.
+There is a book.
+It was then made into a movie, which took the last 30 pages and went its own way. It's great.
+Then they made it into a game, which takes some ideas for the basic premise, and then the authors went their own way, creating an antithesis of the book. I've been told it's good.
+But this time: the novel.
+
+In the near future, aliens have landed on Earth.
+No one knows why, but they came and went without much ado.
+Their landing site is now called _the zone_.
+Before leaving, the aliens left some artifacts.
+We don't know what they are, but there is the promise of giant leaps for mankind.
+Therefore, a new occupation is born: - _stalkers_, who venture into the zone and try ans retrieve some alien leftovers.
+The zone is dangerous, and stalkers often lose their lives upon making the smallest mistakes.
+
+But _Roadside Picnic_ is not a book about that.
+It's depressing and full of commentary on humanity.
+Very often, people call it the best book by the Strugatsky brothers, and who am I to disagree?
+
+But it is not a book about aliens, or the zone.
+Those things exist, but first contact went and gone.
+Stalkers are not the heroes of humanity, they are expendable criminals.
+We think we may someday understand what happened, but we may as well not.
+The aliens visited Earth, but most likely haven't found anything of interest.
+What people are dying for, what may change the entire planet, may be nothing but some trash left on the side of the road.
+
+The cosmos is not something to explore or conquer.
+It's vast, and our planet is insignificant.
+
+And this is what the book is about.
+The Zone occupies very small portion of the novel, it's just means to an end.
+Red, the main hero, is just trying to make a living.
+He is not shy about drinking, visiting a bordello or cheating on his wife.
+At the same time, he is not shown as an evil person, because his existence doesn't matter.
+Even though he is one of the most experienced stalkers, his death would mean nothing.
+
+The novel is also much less adventurous than one could expect, knowing the movie or the games.
+We spend just a handful of pages in the Zone, the rest happens in the nearby town.
+_Roadside Picnic_ is beautiful as anti-SiFi story.
+Everything we were taught to believe by western SciFi, the authors ignore.
+There is nothing _there_ for us.
+We are _nothing_.
+Space exploration?
+Meeting aliens?
+We don't even have any hopes or dreams left.
+
+But this makes the novel timeless.
+Our entertainment is no longer optimistic.
+We are not going into _Star Trek_, we missed that ship.
+Maybe hope in our insignificance is better than thinking we are our own worst enemy?
+
+_Roadside Picnic_ gets my high recommendation.
+Similarly to _[Hard to be God](/brain-rot/eastern-block-scifi/hard-to-be-a-god-strugatsky-1964/)_, the reader may breeze through it.
+It's short, and it's easy to read.
+But then we reach the last pages, where the weight of the story is passed us.
+
+There was to be an American TV series based on _Roadside_.
+All that we got was [trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dts0rjp5V8) which clearly shows, that it is impossible to make an Americanized version.
+In it, a shot of people saluting the stalker is shown, which is a complete antithesis of what the Stugatsky brothers are telling us.