And, perhaps, then, if the Golden Ball suddenly falls from the sky, people will clearly know what to wish for. The translation I read was a bit stilted, and there were many opportunities for subtlety which I could feel, but not quite comprehend. I wish it had been more personal, less built on dialogues after-the-fact, that it had more closely approached the horrific implications of the world, and that it had given us more time to come to terms. This explanation implies that the Visitors may not have paid any attention to, or even noticed, the human inhabitants of the planet during their visit, just as humans do not notice or pay attention to grasshoppers or ladybugs during a picnic. The artifacts and phenomena left behind by the Visitors in the Zones were garbage, discarded and forgotten, without any intentions to advance or damage humanity. There is little chance that the Visitors will return again because for them it was a brief stop, for reasons unknown, on the way to their actual destination. Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world.’ Unfortunately, I don't feel that the defenders of Video Games as Art have done a great job of making their points, either, and I found Kellee Santiago's much-lauded TED presentation simplistic and full of errors in reasoning, never really touching on what makes art, or why games should be included.

I'm not wild about the ending of the novel in some ways, which seems like it comes from a different story entirely, eschewing the more existential and weirdly practical questions of the rest of the book for a quest for a mythical object which may or may not exist, but demands much. There's something fascinating about where the Strugatskys choose to end the novel, though, which ties into that larger question of what exactly we are as a human race, and whether we truly can overcome our limitations. It's a compelling ending, even if I'm not sold on the way we get there. The 1992 video game Star Control II references alien visitations with mysterious effects and the mosquito mange regarding the disappearance of the Androsynth. [16] Strugatsky, Arkady; Strugatsky, Boris (1977). Пикник на обочине[ Roadside Picnic]. Translated by Bouis, Antonina W. New York: Macmillan Publisher, Ltd.But still, the authors leave us hope. The Strugatskys believe in the inner strength of people, that secret human desires are much better and purer than explicit ones. Therefore, even the most cynical and gutted by the system person can sincerely wish happiness for everyone, and suddenly it will come true … Story lessons

But I don't get a say. Well, not yet. Though with all authors, writing becomes the act of telling those stories you were always looking for, but never found; you must create them, for yourself. And that's part of the final barrier between video games and art. Can the audience participate in art? Does that destroy its vision? Does the undecided ending of Inception make it less art because it invites the audience to participate in that ending? There are other ideas about the aliens and what they left behind and why. Told from the perspective of a “stalker” – a kind of prospector or poacher who enters the zones to collect the artifacts and sell them. It’s a dangerous job as the zones are radioactive or magical or something as illness, mutation and death stalk the alleyways and empty streets in an eerie prophesy of Chernobyl years after this was published. I'm afraid I'll keep responding to the words "Russian science fiction" by shouting " We by Yevgeny Zamyatin!" since, in my humble opinion, Roadside Picnic does not reach those level if not, maybe, in the concept. I love the bizarre alien artifacts described in this book. For example “empties” which are empty containers of some kind but you can only see the lid and the bottom, the container itself is not only invisible but seems to be made of nothingness. You can put your hands through the container in the space between the lid and the bottom as if there is nothing there but the lid and the bottom always maintain their relative positions and distance. They are extremely interesting artifacts but nobody knows what they are for, or what they are supposed to contain. There are quite a few mysterious objects like this in the book but the descriptions are quite elaborate so I will leave you to discover them for yourself. In addition to these objects, there are also weird effects of the Zones on people who were in the vicinity when the Visitation occurs.In 2012, the novel was re-released in English. [3] This was not only re-translated, but based on a version restored by Boris Strugatsky to the original state before the Soviet censors made their alterations. [11] Awards and nominations [ edit ] This is the true tragedy of a person who survives in society. In pursuit of their own happiness and material wealth, people lose the ability to think, cease to be people and become only animals that look at this whole picnic from the forest. The meaning of the Roadside Picnic ending

The Zone does something to them. Their kids are mutants. Red’s child becomes less and less human as she grows and becomes something unknown, unknowable. People from this area can’t emigrate because odd disasters start happening in the places they move to. The Zone owns them. Still, Red should just settle down and get a real job, a safe job. The title of the story was born almost immediately. Let us recall the picnic in the forest that the authors saw, and the picnic that the Nobel Prize-winning scientist describes in the third part of the book.The story is set after the Visitation, when aliens briefly stopped on the Earth and left six Zones where strange alien technology and physical phenomenon exist. Residents of these areas never saw the aliens, but the alien artifacts have mysterious powers that can sometimes be harnessed by humans without understanding the underlying technology. The title refers to the simple analogy of a group of people going for a picnic in the countryside, having a good time, dumping various trash, and heading on. For the forest animals, the actions of these mysterious beings are incomprehensible, as are they objects they leave behind. So we are those helpless forest creatures. This novel explores many interesting themes and is in no way limited to the extraterrestrial question and philosophizing about what an alien visit might mean. This novel is also about daily struggles and question of morality. It is about isolation, about feeling trapped in a place of corruption where being a criminal doesn't seem so bad. If you have a look at it, most people in this book, that is, the stalkers are criminals. They cannot escape that place they live by, not once the anti -migrant laws are made. They are forced to either conform to the rules or to become criminals. To conform isn't a moral choice either. Red realizes not only the danger of zone early on- that's why he keeps staying alive- but also the impact the dangerous artifacts could have. Red is clearly worried when some shady guys want the dangerous stuff that can kill men. But isn't the government also a shady guy? One of the issues is that the government isn't someone interested in the safety of people, that government isn't someone you can trust- I guess that is a very Soviet feeling but it can be applied to modern times as well. Screw the years—we don’t notice things change. We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes—or we search for change in all the wrong places.’

The story was finished in the winter of 1971, but it was published only once in 1972 in the Aurora magazine, and after that it was not published in our country until the 80s of the XX century. In 1978, the Strugatskys were accepted as honorary members of the Mark Twain Society for their "outstanding contribution to world science fiction literature". [13] The tone of the book is akin to that of some noir works, dark, gritty, getting darker and grittier as the tale wears on . . . Like many great books, the meaning of the ending is left up to the reader' Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Roadside Picnic is a complex investigation of the transcendence – of the moral, scientific, political and humanistic problems it can create…The novel was nominated for a John W. Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of 1978 and won second place. [12]