What struck me the most about Roadside Picnic is how it felt like it could have been written last year. With the prevalence of doomed world stories and the popularity of games like Fallout and Metro 2033, Picnic feels like something written to cash in on that popularity. But no--this is the work that clearly inspired those things.
Roadside Picnic tells the story of how the world fares after an alien invasion, but an invasion where the aliens didn't pay that much attention to the humans whose planet they briefly hung out on. Having only stayed for two days, the aliens departed, but left a lot of junk behind in six different areas of the Earth. It is the dangerous acquisition of these even more dangerous items and how that affects those who venture into these 'Zones' for a bit of profit that is the core of Roadside Picnic's story.
The book is bleak as the items the stalkers (the term for those who enter the Zones) are curious. There are no clear answers as to what happened, or what will happen next. As Ursula Le Guin points out in her introduction, the Strugatsky's focus on the everyday people and how this Visit affected them. As it would undoubtedly be if and when we meet alien life, there will be a lot of confusion and no real governmental direction. And maybe that's another reason why Roadside Picnic feels so current--it nails exactly how things would occur.
A wonderful book.
No comments:
Post a Comment