Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Cover art by Sarah Olson
Published by Chicago Review Press
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
I was first introduced to the Strugatsky brothers in the early 1980's, by means of a translation of one of their Noon Universe novels, which the translators gave the title of Prisoners of Power (its original title is more literally translated Inhabited Island). That volume was part of a series of Soviet science fiction in translation. Given that this was during that period of the Cold War marked by increasing tensions in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, reading it had a certain air of transgression, of forbidden fruit -- which was particularly ironic in retrospect because the novel is a pretty sharp critique of totalitarian governments, disguised as a planetary-romance action-adventure novel.
While the Noon Universe is space opera, Roadside Picnic shows that the Strugatsky brothers are just as capable of writing cosmic horror. Set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, it's a world where Earth got a visitation by cosmic litterbugs who dumped their "trash" onto several locations. As a result, these locations suffered catastrophic damage, yet there is great wealth to be found in the recovery of items that humans can make use of, if only on the level of a neolithic tribesman turning computer chips and CD's into ornaments. The title comes from the idea that humanity is in the position of ants coming across the discards from human litterbugs' careless picnic at a roadside table.
The novel has a brief foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin, who also notes how she first encountered the Strugatsky brothers during the period in which detente was ending and the Cold War was ramping back up, when it was assumed that every Soviet writer had to be an ideologue toeing the Communist Party line (which ignores the long history of dissident writers and even the merely apolitical catching flack from the various Party hacks who staffed Soviet censorship boards).
The novel is divided into four sections, plus a brief prolog in the form of an interview with one Dr. Valentine Pillman, who first realized that all six Zones fell along a line that could be traced back to a location somewhere between Earth and Deneb, as if a cosmic gun had fired from Deneb to Earth.
The first actual section introduces us to the protagonist, Redrick Schuhart, commonly called Red. He is one of the Stalkers who enter the Harmont Zone, located somewhere in the West (there are bits of information here and there which suggest it lies somewhere near the border between the US and Canada). At the beginning, he's commenting on the efforts of a man called Kirill to dismantle an object known as an empty, which appears to have been a type of container used by the mysterious aliens who dumped their trash on Earth. The discussion of these and other alien items with mind bending characteristics makes one think of HP Lovecraft's famous words "We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."
Red then enters the Zone on a search for things that may be of use to scientific research, or sold on the black market. He notes some of the more eldritch nasties that lurk there, such as the mysterious "whiskers" growing on television antennas in the Plague Zone, which scientists have wanted to research for ages. However, when a helicopter was sent to pluck one of those antennas out and bring it back for study, it began to smoke and hiss like a poisonous snake, and the chopper pilots only escaped with their lives by cutting the cable. And there is the witch's jelly which can be seen in some ditches and basements, which can dissolve bone right out of the body, and which may or may not be the same thing as the hell slime that is so dangerous that researchers are no longer allowed to investigate it.
In the second section, it's five years later and Red is sneaking back into the Zone, now that he's no longer employed as a laboratory assistant. There he finds Burbridge, a man he calls the Vulture, who has survived when many other Stalkers have died. He's babbling about the Golden Sphere, a mysterious device that is said to lie somewhere in the center of the Zone and which has the power to grant wishes.
However, Burbridge has run into trouble, and his lower legs are now boneless masses of rubbery flesh, so soft one could tie them into knots. Although there's something unpleasant about this man, Red still picks him up and carries him piggy-back out of the Zone to safety and medical treatment. Then Red heads home to his wife and his daughter, who's nicknamed "the Monkey" as a result of the mutations that have given her a tail and a full body pelt of soft fur.
Red then goes out to do some black-market dealing for some of the wonders he's found in the Zone, only to get caught. The section ends with him making a call to his wife, trying to arrange for her well-being while he's imprisoned.
The third section shifts focus to one Richard H Noonan, a businessman involved in supplying electronics to the bureau that investigates the Harmont Zone. This section provides us with a very different view on the phenomenon of the Zone and the alien trash that is found within it. In the end of this section Redrick reappears, as Noonan is trying to obtain access to the Monkey and investigate the nature of her mutations.
The fourth and final section returns to Red, now out of prison and making one last run into the Zone, this time with Burbridge's handsome young son Arthur. This time they are seeking the Golden Sphere which Burbridge had supposedly found but was unable to bring back with him. In the process, Red realizes not only how the Golden Sphere works, but also just how Burbridge survived when so many others did not. And then we are left with the magnificently ambiguous ending, which leaves us wondering whether Red succeeded or failed. Did he grant peace and happiness to all humanity, or was he found wanting and devoured by an object that clearly had some purpose for the aliens who created it, but is intensely inimical to human life?
The book closes with an Afterword by Boris Strugatsky, in which he discusses the various problems he and his brother had in dealing with Soviet censors, who put forth endless objections, ranging from violence and vulgarity to immoral behavior on the part of various characters. In the end, they had to surrender on some minor stylistic changes, but were finally able to convince the Soviet literary establishment to allow publication on the grounds that they were portraying the malign and destructive nature of a "late-stage capitalist society," which fitted into the censors' Marxist worldview sufficiently to be acceptable.
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Review posted March 12, 2021
