The Soviet sci-fi novel “Roadside Picnic,” written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and published in 1972, follows Redrick “Red” Schuhart. Following a brief visit from extraterrestrial forces — of whom were never seen, either as beings or their mode of transportation — several “zones” of altered reality were left behind.
Individuals known as stalkers, including Red, break into these zones to steal and sell anomalous artifacts of great value on an international black market, surviving otherworldly and inexplicable dangers as they go. In-text, it is hypothesized that the aliens had a “roadside picnic” on Earth, leaving their trash — the artifacts — as they left from their pitstop.
Red’s journey in the zone is strange and often unexpected with the precedent of a man suffering a fatal heart attack hours after touching a silver strand of webbing in the zone. The anomalies are treated as a reality of the world but are rarely explained, leaving the reader in a constant mystery where the fantastic is treated as the mundane.
Grappling with humanity’s place in the cosmos when aliens cared so little to even notice them, Red eventually journeys to the center of one zone to find a mythical artifact that grants any wish.
The Strugatsky brothers’ “Roadside Picnic” has also had a lasting cultural influence. The novel was adapted into a movie, and both the book and movie inspired the “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” video game series (of which there are four installments); the “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” series also inspired the novels and video game series of “Metro.” All of these draw upon the supernatural horror of the anomalous artifacts and dangers, varying in their cause, ranging from man-made ecological disasters to a nuclear apocalypse.
The novel even introduced the word “stalker” to the Russian language, often used to describe urbex and industrial tourists.
All in all, “Roadside Picnic” is a quick and enjoyable read, for both new and advanced readers.