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Comment by fnord123 | Hacker News Reader

Roadside picnic didn't coin the term stalker. Stalker is a Soviet film based on the book.

Yes it did. "Stalker" is the name of their profession in the book.

The word "stalker" comes from the 1500s. Deer stalking is a profession that existed in the 1800s. Roadside Picnic came out in 1971.

Maybe you mean Roadside Picnic introduced the English word "stalker" to the Russian language? It certainly didn't coin the term (create a new word).

It coined the use of "stalker" to refer to a specific sort of post-apocalyptic profession, someone who is adept at navigating the waste left by some disaster or "forbidden" places. Dangers might be physical, radiological, or metaphysical.

In modern usage it has made its way into books and video games, and people who do tours of Chernobyl have been known to refer to themseves as such.

"Roadside Picnic" is a Russian book. The word "stalker" wasn't used in Russian language at all before it. Hence, it coined the term. The rest is demagogy.

That's not what coining a word means.

I'm not a huge film buff or anything, but I did watch Stalker. The music and cinematography was captivating in a way I rarely get in anything but video games or books. Usually movies don't capture me that way, they're far too fast, literal and descriptive. Stalker left so much to the imagination that I was constantly engaged in trying to figure out what they were thinking, where they were going, and what it was they expected to find. It gave me all the time I needed to think about it too.

If you like slow paced movies I would recommend checking out his (Tarkovsky) other works. Ingmar Bergman and Bela Tarr also come to mind. They are definitely slow and pretty far from being literal too.

It was interesting but much too slow.

I highly recommend his other movies too - I love Solaris and Andrey Rublev, but others are great too.

And I think currently in his steps is following another great Russian director, Andrey Zvyagintsev. The Return was mindblowing.

> Usually movies are too fast

Stalker consists of 143 shots in just under three hours. A blissful pace.

Not SF, but watch "Ivan's Childhood", his first film. I saw it first on New Years Eve in Scotland. Me and my then wife went round to her friends house to pick her up for the usual celebrations. While the girls were getting made-up I started watching the film on the TV - I had never heard of it or Tarkovsky before, and I have no idea why it was on at New Year. They eventually came down and said "let's go" but I refused - "catch you later" - I just had to watch the film. Somewhat later friends mum came in and said "X why aren't you out with Y and Z" - I said "I HAVE to watch this". And I did, and then I went out and got pissed. It's a great film.

Roadside Picnic is the equivalent of LOTR or Neuromancer when it comes to defining a genre of pop culture.

It was published 7 years before the movie Stalker.

It is a short novel and a great read, it is also a stark contrast to Western SciFi.

Both Roadside Picnic from Russia and the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy from China have made me interested in Science Fiction from non-western cultures. There's a freshness of view that's hard to describe.

Then definitely track down Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction series:

https://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/Macmillan%27s+B...

and:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?1107

Think Roadside Picnic x 100, because that's the quantity of really excellent science fiction stories and ideas you can expect.

A free (but bad) translation of 'Self Discovery' by Vladimir Savchenko is available if you search. I used this, together with my own physical copy, to make a proper ebook - let me know if you want a copy; I can't locate it at this moment...

And, in my opinion, the finest science fiction short story ever written (apologies to Asimov's Nightfall and Godwin's The Cold Equations): Nine Minutes, by Genrikh Altov https://www.altshuller.ru/world/eng/science-fiction4.asp

Not sure if you consider him non-Western or not but if you haven't read him try Stanislaw Lem.

You'd better read the book first before making such statements.

You've literally said a book from 1971 invented a new word. And I'm saying that the word already existed.

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