The Gods Don't Care
Oct. 22nd, 2012 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselApr 2012
Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Gollancz, 2007
* * *
An odd little book, this. It is is the basis for the Tarkovsky film Stalker and the similarly-named videogame series (neither of which I have seen), so clearly it has been an inspiration. Its premise is certainly striking and I liked the grim and darkly humorous Russian style, but ultimately its episodic nature and short length make it feel insubstantial.
The story is set in and around a Visitation Zone in Harmont, Canada. We are told in a radio interview prologue that this is one of several locations lying in a line "as if someone had taken six shots at the Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the Earth-Deneb line". The aliens have come and gone, leaving a number of strange devices and weird physical anomalies, and causing a plague that made nearby residents blind and skinless. There is, of course, a small fortune to be made from retrieving artifacts from the zone, and mercenary "stalkers" with a talent for avoiding the dangerous phenomena found there are in demand. One of them, Redrick Schuhart, is the protagonist, and we follow his career over an eight year period.
The highlights are of course the trips to the zone itself, the dangers and rewards of which are rather wonderfully described with surreal terms like "witches jelly", "mosquito mange" and "full empties". Which makes it odd that they occupy only about one fifth of the book. The Strugatskys' real concern is with the institutions - the bootleggers, scientists and government authorities - who have an interest in it. We do meet Schuhart's wife Guta and his mutant daughter Monkey, but they are peripheral characters whose main purpose is to motivate his actions (and they are the only women in the book). Various other characters come and go but do not leave an impression.
The theme of conflict between oppressive institutions and individual freedom of action was a dangerous one to discuss in Russia at the time that it was written (1971). The requirement to approach the subject obliquely may explain the book's brevity and the episodic nature of its four sections, but means that the consequences of the visitation aren't really followed through and the whole thing feels more like a fixup than a proper novel. The final section is downright annoying, with a central maguffin straight out of a fairytale and an infuriating ending. This is a pity, for the metaphor embodied in the title (which would have made no sense to me were it not for a surprisingly shocking scene from the TV series Mad Men) is incredibly powerful. However, the way in which it is developed is not.
Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Gollancz, 2007
* * *
An odd little book, this. It is is the basis for the Tarkovsky film Stalker and the similarly-named videogame series (neither of which I have seen), so clearly it has been an inspiration. Its premise is certainly striking and I liked the grim and darkly humorous Russian style, but ultimately its episodic nature and short length make it feel insubstantial.
The story is set in and around a Visitation Zone in Harmont, Canada. We are told in a radio interview prologue that this is one of several locations lying in a line "as if someone had taken six shots at the Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the Earth-Deneb line". The aliens have come and gone, leaving a number of strange devices and weird physical anomalies, and causing a plague that made nearby residents blind and skinless. There is, of course, a small fortune to be made from retrieving artifacts from the zone, and mercenary "stalkers" with a talent for avoiding the dangerous phenomena found there are in demand. One of them, Redrick Schuhart, is the protagonist, and we follow his career over an eight year period.
The highlights are of course the trips to the zone itself, the dangers and rewards of which are rather wonderfully described with surreal terms like "witches jelly", "mosquito mange" and "full empties". Which makes it odd that they occupy only about one fifth of the book. The Strugatskys' real concern is with the institutions - the bootleggers, scientists and government authorities - who have an interest in it. We do meet Schuhart's wife Guta and his mutant daughter Monkey, but they are peripheral characters whose main purpose is to motivate his actions (and they are the only women in the book). Various other characters come and go but do not leave an impression.
The theme of conflict between oppressive institutions and individual freedom of action was a dangerous one to discuss in Russia at the time that it was written (1971). The requirement to approach the subject obliquely may explain the book's brevity and the episodic nature of its four sections, but means that the consequences of the visitation aren't really followed through and the whole thing feels more like a fixup than a proper novel. The final section is downright annoying, with a central maguffin straight out of a fairytale and an infuriating ending. This is a pity, for the metaphor embodied in the title (which would have made no sense to me were it not for a surprisingly shocking scene from the TV series Mad Men) is incredibly powerful. However, the way in which it is developed is not.
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Date: 2012-10-23 09:49 am (UTC)I agree with pretty much everything you've said, although the "Roadside Picnic" metaphor is explained in the book, in a brief conversation between characters.
I don't mind the shortness of the book - science fiction in particular often lends itself to the short story or the novella excellently well, perhaps because it is often more about communicating a concept than developing plot or characters. And I don't care for books which have been artificially padded out by an author who has got too full of themselves, and a lack of strict editing.
However I too found the ending lazy and annoying - also I would say very much of its time. Which is a shame because otherwise I'd say the book has dated very well. This was particularly frustrating given how well the book is written - short, punchy, brutal, interesting.