Roadside Picnic by Boris Strugatsky

First published:Piknik na obochine, 1972 (English translation, 1977)

Type of work: Science fiction

Time of work: The late 1990’s and the early 2000’s

Locale: The fictitious Canadian town of Harmont

Principal Characters:

• Redrick “Red” Schuhart, a roguish stalker from Harmont who works for hire and for himself
• Buzzard Burbridge, an old stalker, who sends Redrick on his final trip into the Zone
• Kirill Panov, a Russian scientist with the United Nations team at Harmont
• Dr. Valentine Pilman, a Canadian and senior physicist at the Zone
• Richard “Dick” Noonan, a lazy, complacent bureaucrat, out to stalk the stalkers
• Guta Schuhart, Redrick’s wife
• “Monkey” Schuhart, Redrick’s mutant daughter

The Novel

Roadside Picnic tells the story of humankind’s dealing with the strange and sometimes quite dangerous leftovers from an alien “visitation” at six isolated spots on Earth. Thirty years after the event, a central bureaucracy has set up the International Institute for Extraterrestrial Cultures at the site of one such visitation at Harmont in Canada. There, scientists and their supporting local police and United Nations security forces compete with independent adventurers, called stalkers, for the abandoned alien artifacts, the workings of which still elude human understanding. The salvaging process poses many dangers, since the men have to enter the deadly terrain of the Zone, as the now-deserted ground has been named.

A radio interview with witty head scientist Dr. Valentine Pilman leads to Harmont, where native son Redrick Schuhart works as a laboratory assistant for Kirill Panov. Out of pity for the overworked and unsuccessful Russian scientist, Red (as his friends call him) proposes a trip into the Zone, where he knows about an artifact of interest for his employer. Kirill agrees to what is the novel’s first of three excursions, even though Red has clearly compromised himself with his knowledge. As a former stalker who previously went into the Zone—which is off limits for all private citizens—Red sold his booty, called swag, on the black market; this illegal activity earned for him not only thorough knowledge of the deadly patch of stricken land but also a jail term and the suspicion of his antagonist from the police force, Captain Quarterblad.

In the Zone, Red guides his team through the perils created by the land’s contact with the Visitors; “mosquito manges,” centers of deadly enhanced gravity, and “witches’ jelly,” a man-eating slimy substance lurking in ditches and crevices, are all part of a vividly described and literally alienated yet terrestrial environment. At their destination, an abandoned garage, Red and Kirill salvage a magnetic trap holding a blue fluid; because of Red’s oversight, his partner touches an alien substance, a silvery web. Returned to the safety of the Borscht, his favorite hangout, Red receives the news of Kirill’s death. Drunk and enraged, he leaves the bar just in time to be caught by Guta, his girlfriend, who tells him she is pregnant. Despite known birth defects among children of men exposed to the Zone, they decide for marriage and against abortion—a fateful step which leaves Red with “Monkey,” his ape-haired mutant daughter.

An illegal trip into the Zone five years later nets Red a bag full of swag and the loss of his legs while rescuing Buzzard Burbridge, a victim of witches’ jelly. Dragged to safety by his companion, Burbridge promises Red the location of the Golden Ball, a seemingly magical alien leftover with the power to grant human wishes. Indeed, Burbridge’s “wished” children, although they are brats, testify to the Golden Ball’s potency. Pursued by Quarterblad after he has sold most of his booty to undercover officials who doublecross their own state bureaucracy, Red strikes a final deal with the agents before going to prison.

Three years later, at the time of Red’s release from prison, bureaucrat Richard Noonan experiences great difficulties in stopping the stalkers’ illegal salvage activity, which is, like its official counterpart, increasingly mechanized. Noonan and Dr. Pilman meet at the Borscht, and the conversation between commonsensical bureaucrat and top-notch unorthodox scientist reveals Pilman’s belief that the Visitations were quite literally the high-tech equivalent of a group of humans’ roadside picnics in a forest clearing, leaving behind their various debris ranging from discarded batteries to windup teddybears, all of which undoubtedly raise a stupid curiosity among the returning animals, who are far too primitive to begin to comprehend the human detritus. Indeed, humans have learned nothing from the alien artifacts in almost four decades of intensive studies. Valentine describes the use made thus far of the alien objects as analogous to using a microscope for a hammer.

Roadside Picnic climaxes with a turn of events slightly reminiscent of the biblical story of Isaac. On his last trip into the Zone, Red plans to sacrifice Burbridge’s son Arthur to gain access to the Golden Ball, since the alien wish machine is guarded by a “meatgrinder.” Within sight of the alien artifact, Red has to make his decision. As he has planned all along, he lets Arthur run into the trap and thus opens a passage to the Ball. Red is shamed by the selflessness of Arthur’s wishes, uttered seconds before his death, and he decides against his original plans when he shouts “Happiness for everybody, free, and no one will go away unsatisfied!”—which are Arthur’s words.

The Characters

Red Schuhart’s basic trait is his independence, which derives both from his extraordinary skills as an illegal explorer of the Zone and from his stubbornness. It is this strain of roguish autonomy and heroism in the face of a larger, constricting world which places Red in a long tradition ranging from the wandering hero of the Spanish picaresque novel in the Renaissance to the modern Jewish schlemiel. It is not difficult to see the Soviet reality behind the protagonist’s struggles with his bureaucratic and formalistic environment.

Nevertheless, Red’s independence is portrayed as being problematic. On the one hand, Red’s special abilities award him the privilege of carrying out his naturally idealistic ethical behavior. Thus, in defiance of the regulations of authority, Red is able to bring up his mutant daughter, Monkey, and keep at his table the mute corpse of his father, which the forces of the Zone have strangely reconstructed. Red’s individualism also has its bad side. Because he is accustomed to working alone, he fails to warn Kirill about the alien web which when he accidentally touches it causes the scientist’s death. In his deal with the agents of the state, Red agrees against his better instincts to trade, for his family’s sake, a small and well-secured portion of witches’ jelly fordubious military research.

Roadside Picnic’s finale is powerful because Red must face the principal problem embodied in his own character. As a loner, Red has decided to use Arthur as his key to personal happiness but has to fight his own better instincts. Throughout his last perilous trip into the Zone, Red tries to use language in order to minimize the moral impact of his murderous plan. He calls the boy “dummy” or “plastic” because he is his father’s wished-for product of the Golden Ball, but the novel does not allow this easy way out. In the end, Red has to decide between individual happiness—which would finally elevate him above his life of private opposition to the forces of his bureaucratic, impersonal, and unresponsive society—and the greater common good; it is his choice of the latter that redeems him.

Kirill Panov, Red’s Russian employer, is a fine example of the heroic yet deeply troubled human scientist, who has failed to catch even a glimpse of the principles behind the workings of the highly advanced alien technology. The irony of his situation is exemplified by his puzzlement over empty alien magnetic canisters: If he cannot understand even the obvious refuse of the Visitors, what else can be said about the state of human cognizance of the aliens’ abilities?

Driven by an honest thirst for knowledge, Kirill represents both the best in human scientific endeavor, when it is undertaken for pure knowledge’s sake at high personal cost, and the limit of human ambition. He is such a sympathetic character because of his sincerity and helplessness, two traits which earn for him Red’s authentic respect. “Nope, a second Kirill hasn’t been born,” is Red’s answer to Noonan’s offer to have him work for “another Russian.”

Among the secondary characters, Richard Noonan is given special attention in an in-depth study of a bureaucratic mind. In a finely crafted sarcastic doubling of the novel’s title, the stalkers evade Noonan’s hunt by disguising their activities with opulently celebrated picnics along a thinly supervised section of the Zone. Because Roadside Picnic offers such insight into Noonan’s soul, it is also hard to dismiss this character as being entirely contemptible: Too much human material surfaces in him.

The other minor characters are well-chosen, well-drawn members of the community of Harmont, who all obliquely represent some aspects of contemporary Russian life in addition to serving their functions for the story. Roadside Picnic is full of intrepid pioneers, laboring scientists, rowdy adventurers, arrogant housing officials, and black marketeers put to use by a suspicious state.

Critical Context

Roadside Picnic comes at a second turning point in the writing career of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who started out writing fairly conventional science fiction in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Their work of that era, as it is collected in the anthology Putna Amalteiu (1960; Destination Amalthea, 1962), resembles such classic American science-fiction stories as Robert A. Heinlein’s “juvenile” novels or Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953), which tell about man’s future conflicts among the stars while keeping intact the beliefs of the ideology of the writer’s home country.

When Soviet censorship became less stringent in the 1960’s, the Strugatsky’s tales turned darker and began to explore such hitherto taboo topics as the conflict between utopia and twentieth century experience. At the end of that cycle came Ulitka na sklone (1966-1968; The Snail on the Slope, 1980), a caustic satire on Soviet bureaucracy, which is also one of the most humorous pieces of science fiction yet written. With Roadside Picnic, however, the Strugatskys turn back to a more classical approach to science fiction, and their vision, although still bitter at times, becomes ultimately more gentle, as the hero is allowed a final moment of redemption, and absolute humanitarian values triumph, as they should, over petty bureaucracy and all-too-human limitations.

As a science-fiction novel, Roadside Picnic convinces because of its masterfully drawn technological background, out of which the larger intellectual questions organically arise. The Strugatskys’ novel is a welcome presentation of the fundamental conflict between individualism and commitment to a higher societal good, which can demand the sacrifice of personal happiness; this intellectual content is convincingly built into the depiction of the protagonist and his environment, which have a definite taste of human reality. The novel served as the basis for Andrey Tarkovsky’s much-praised film, Stalker (1981).

Bibliography

Griffiths, John. “Retreat from Reality,” in Three Tomorrows: American, British, and Soviet Science Fiction, 1980.

Le Guin, Ursula K. “A New Book by the Strugatskys,” in Science Fiction Studies. IV (July, 1977), pp. 157-159.

Lem, Stanislaw. “About the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic,” in Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy, 1984.

Zebrowsky, George. “Roadside Picnic and Tale of the Troika,” in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. LVII (July, 1979), pp. 33-35.