Post by The Ferret on Dec 20, 2004 5:38:28 GMT -5
Report by "Jammer" (Laramie, Wyoming United States)
"Roadside Picnic" (Macmillan 1st US printing 1977; or Pocketbooks, 1st US printing 1978, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky). For those fortunate enough to have read this 55,000-word novella, be advised that despite the Strugatskys' involvement, Tarkovsky's film bears at most a cursory
"Roadside Picnic" (engagingly-translated into modern English vernacular) is arguably among the twenty or so most brilliantly conceived, yet scientifically plausible science fiction novels (or novellas) ever written. Stanislaw Lem (who wrote "Solaris", another such entry) felt sufficiently moved by this work to write a 13000 word essay, "About the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic.", published in his "Microworlds," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st edition, 1984). Prospective readers of the story might read Lem's essay first, since it contributes to a better understanding and enjoyment of that work's depth and sheer originality.
Imagine six objects, perhaps a six-part procession of one object, approaching earth from inter-stellar space on a radiant passing through the star Deneb, the impact pattern caused by earth's rotation. Such an event happened twenty-some years prior to the near-future events imagined in "Roadside Picnic." The six "meteorites" had deadly effects immediately upon impact, and in the years following, to anything within the resultant multi-square-mile impact Zones, later postulated as alien Visitation sites.
A global UN "institute" was established to study these Zones, maintaining adjacent research centers, controlling and overseeing all legal access. These centers hire free-lance "Stalkers": experienced dare-devils with instinctual Zone survival ability and willing to risk their skins and genetics to legally enter the Zones, survive the hazards, and retrieve for scientific study alien artifacts of incalculable value. Significant profits reward such Stalkers, though some is frittered away in bribes, fines, illicit dealings, drink and carousing. Usually aided by darkness, there is even more profitable entrepreneurial business in "swag:" illegally recovered Zone artifacts for a rampant world-wide black market.
The story occurs at a Canadian Zone from the perspective of Stalker "Red" Schuhart. While a Zone's perimeter can be freely crossed, illegal sorties must elude not only the Zone's inner hazards, but also the institute's perimeter patrols. Red's notoriety as an "extra-curricular" swag trafficker exemplar simultaneously creates demands for his illegal services, and also results in jail time and constant harassment by those who know d**n well what he does but are usually unable to catch him red-handed.
The Zone's inner hazards are confined within its perimeter and include such as burning fluff; witches jelly - a highly proscribed, very dense and toxic colloidal gas that converts anything it touches into witches jelly (naturally some gets smuggled out!); hairy black "cotton" - a lethal mossy-like growth on such as abandoned TV antennas, desirable to study, but so inimical it cannot even be approached for samples; mosquito mange - intensely deadly and invisible gravitational anomalies - hence the throwing of nuts for detection; silvery webs that induce heart attacks; quasi-"alive" yet invisible disturbances that "creep" about, detectable only by light-refractive properties; searing heat traps; pseudo intelligent electrical strikes; something called the "meatgrinder" - describing its effects on unwary Stalkers; and numerous other hazards. In the story, the Stalkers interact with all these hazards on practically every visit. Several Stalker fatalities occur front and center, dozens more occur "off-stage."
Other effects like genetic defects and apparent violations of the laws of causality and of the first and second laws of Thermodynamics can be exported from the Zone through one's presence during the original Visitation time, through subsequent visits to the Zone, or by artifacts removed from the Zone: "empties" - containers of some sort whose structure defies known physics; "full empties"; "so-so" self-reproductive and eternal batteries used to power cars, an example of incomprehensible alien technology applied outside the Zone; "itchers" - gadgets that wreck psychological havoc over a given area; "black sprays" - surmised to be vast expanses of space curled into marble-sized spheres in our dimensional space; zombies or "moulages," - non-earthly-fleshy reconstructions on skeletons of pre-Visitation graveyard corpses with surprising physiological effects on those that harbor them; and of course the Golden Ball - naively and mythically rumored to grant anyone their innermost desires.
Consider Chapter 3's extended discussion between Dr. Pilman and Richard Noonan concerning the incomprehensibilities and mysteriousness of the aliens and their technology. Dr. Pilman also elaborates on the many Zone hypotheses, one such being to imagine how the remains from a roadside picnic might later appear to the local wildlife: an inexplicable collection of items like bread crumbs, raisins, apple cores, orange peels, meat scraps, candy; then perhaps a forgotten child's toy, a wrench, some pennies, marbles, someone's nail-clippers, faded nursery flowers; but then also hazards like cigarette butts, lye cleaner crystals, kerosene spills, a still-burning charcoal campfire, an opened boric acid container, several mothballs or snail pellets, insecticide spray residuals. Now imagine that we are the local wildlife. There are, of course, other hypothetical scenarios.
NOTE: From this nice report I've literally swept away all the comments related to Tarkovsky's movie, leaving the book summary intact... I simply found it very well done, enlighting and compelling for those who hadn't the chance to read the novel - The Ferret.
"Roadside Picnic" (Macmillan 1st US printing 1977; or Pocketbooks, 1st US printing 1978, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky). For those fortunate enough to have read this 55,000-word novella, be advised that despite the Strugatskys' involvement, Tarkovsky's film bears at most a cursory
"Roadside Picnic" (engagingly-translated into modern English vernacular) is arguably among the twenty or so most brilliantly conceived, yet scientifically plausible science fiction novels (or novellas) ever written. Stanislaw Lem (who wrote "Solaris", another such entry) felt sufficiently moved by this work to write a 13000 word essay, "About the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic.", published in his "Microworlds," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st edition, 1984). Prospective readers of the story might read Lem's essay first, since it contributes to a better understanding and enjoyment of that work's depth and sheer originality.
Imagine six objects, perhaps a six-part procession of one object, approaching earth from inter-stellar space on a radiant passing through the star Deneb, the impact pattern caused by earth's rotation. Such an event happened twenty-some years prior to the near-future events imagined in "Roadside Picnic." The six "meteorites" had deadly effects immediately upon impact, and in the years following, to anything within the resultant multi-square-mile impact Zones, later postulated as alien Visitation sites.
A global UN "institute" was established to study these Zones, maintaining adjacent research centers, controlling and overseeing all legal access. These centers hire free-lance "Stalkers": experienced dare-devils with instinctual Zone survival ability and willing to risk their skins and genetics to legally enter the Zones, survive the hazards, and retrieve for scientific study alien artifacts of incalculable value. Significant profits reward such Stalkers, though some is frittered away in bribes, fines, illicit dealings, drink and carousing. Usually aided by darkness, there is even more profitable entrepreneurial business in "swag:" illegally recovered Zone artifacts for a rampant world-wide black market.
The story occurs at a Canadian Zone from the perspective of Stalker "Red" Schuhart. While a Zone's perimeter can be freely crossed, illegal sorties must elude not only the Zone's inner hazards, but also the institute's perimeter patrols. Red's notoriety as an "extra-curricular" swag trafficker exemplar simultaneously creates demands for his illegal services, and also results in jail time and constant harassment by those who know d**n well what he does but are usually unable to catch him red-handed.
The Zone's inner hazards are confined within its perimeter and include such as burning fluff; witches jelly - a highly proscribed, very dense and toxic colloidal gas that converts anything it touches into witches jelly (naturally some gets smuggled out!); hairy black "cotton" - a lethal mossy-like growth on such as abandoned TV antennas, desirable to study, but so inimical it cannot even be approached for samples; mosquito mange - intensely deadly and invisible gravitational anomalies - hence the throwing of nuts for detection; silvery webs that induce heart attacks; quasi-"alive" yet invisible disturbances that "creep" about, detectable only by light-refractive properties; searing heat traps; pseudo intelligent electrical strikes; something called the "meatgrinder" - describing its effects on unwary Stalkers; and numerous other hazards. In the story, the Stalkers interact with all these hazards on practically every visit. Several Stalker fatalities occur front and center, dozens more occur "off-stage."
Other effects like genetic defects and apparent violations of the laws of causality and of the first and second laws of Thermodynamics can be exported from the Zone through one's presence during the original Visitation time, through subsequent visits to the Zone, or by artifacts removed from the Zone: "empties" - containers of some sort whose structure defies known physics; "full empties"; "so-so" self-reproductive and eternal batteries used to power cars, an example of incomprehensible alien technology applied outside the Zone; "itchers" - gadgets that wreck psychological havoc over a given area; "black sprays" - surmised to be vast expanses of space curled into marble-sized spheres in our dimensional space; zombies or "moulages," - non-earthly-fleshy reconstructions on skeletons of pre-Visitation graveyard corpses with surprising physiological effects on those that harbor them; and of course the Golden Ball - naively and mythically rumored to grant anyone their innermost desires.
Consider Chapter 3's extended discussion between Dr. Pilman and Richard Noonan concerning the incomprehensibilities and mysteriousness of the aliens and their technology. Dr. Pilman also elaborates on the many Zone hypotheses, one such being to imagine how the remains from a roadside picnic might later appear to the local wildlife: an inexplicable collection of items like bread crumbs, raisins, apple cores, orange peels, meat scraps, candy; then perhaps a forgotten child's toy, a wrench, some pennies, marbles, someone's nail-clippers, faded nursery flowers; but then also hazards like cigarette butts, lye cleaner crystals, kerosene spills, a still-burning charcoal campfire, an opened boric acid container, several mothballs or snail pellets, insecticide spray residuals. Now imagine that we are the local wildlife. There are, of course, other hypothetical scenarios.
NOTE: From this nice report I've literally swept away all the comments related to Tarkovsky's movie, leaving the book summary intact... I simply found it very well done, enlighting and compelling for those who hadn't the chance to read the novel - The Ferret.
It's just the question of finding it. It gets tougher and tougher as the years progress. 