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Comment by yaky | Hacker News Reader

I originally read Roadside Picnic as a teen, which, at the time, impressed me as an exciting sci-fi adventure. When I re-read it as a young adult, i saw it as a rather depressing tale asking the questions of sacrifice and duty.

My other favorite by Strugatskys is A Billion Years Before The End Of The World (translated as Definitely Maybe), which you can read as a somewhat humorous story involving paranormal events, or as a critique of the state suppressing unwanted research. (As far as I know, one of the brothers was involved with a dissident and questioned before writing it)

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I've had similar thoughts regarding the roadside picnic, the older I am, the more depressing it feels. I would highly recommend another Strugatskys book - 'Monday starts on Saturday', it is pure humor, as opposed to other works of theirs. It's about a soviet scientist that joins government's study on magic. Bureaucracy never been funnier, of course outside of 'The Twelve Tasks of Asterix', 1976.

Indeed, Monday starts on Saturday is better. Only Hungarian or Czech authors are similarily funny

> It's about a soviet scientist

It's actually about a soviet software engineer, and A LOT of the things in this book is still very relevant to our trade today.

Rather programmer than software engineer, I think that that time, his work was mainly just calculate something, not to write software products and such.

Incidentally, the spirit of the book fits both communistic, and hacker's views: work overtime, because you like it, not for an extra reward.

I agree. I enjoyed Roadside Picnic as its such a unique take on the ET visitation genre but my god is it depressing.

I still think it could have the potential be a really interesting TV show. Personally I think the slow nature of the book lends itself towards the show format.

Further, IIRC I believe that soviet authors/translators were able to skirt censorship for the LoTR books by wrapping them in a Sci-Fi setting. Soviet writer for science fiction are some of my favorites.

It possibly reflects on daily life in the Soviet Union. Beetle in the Anthill is even more depressing. Still, the Strugatsky brothers are two of my favourite authors.

I re-read their books every ten years or so (along with some of Philip K. Dick's) because I keep forgetting the plot and the details. The Noon Universe books, along with Roadside Picnic are quite cryptic.

Anyway, The Doomed City is considered one of their most depressing of their novels, with a feeling of hopelessness characteristic of the Brezhnev era. I've long posponed reading it due to this and the fact that it's the last of their books published in my language that I haven't read.

I read somewhere that Strugatskys were once asked whether Inhabited Island was a satire of the Soviet Union, to which they responded with something like “it was not supposed to be the Soviet Union or any country specifically, but because we lived there, that is what we inadvertently ended up writing about”

Some of the RP editions have an afterword about publishing in Soviet and evading censorship thorough Sci-fi, pretty interesting. Soviet was a strange place.

Roadside Picnic is a lovely perspective on the genre, in that it isn't at all about the zone or any supposed aliens. The zone makes for a fascinating backdrop for the story, but in the end it is about the people just trying to carve out a life while exposed to an extraordinary, incomprehensible situation grown mundane. The zone could be swapped out for a disaster area or a hostile jungle or whatever, but by being the zone it becomes very alien to the reader as well. It contributes to what I really like about the book, simply being very atmospheric and immersive. It's all show-don't-tell, the reader experiences everything through what the characters see or hear, and the reader's picture of the world is as clouded and uncertain as those living in it. I found a bit of the same feeling in Metro 2033, where anything happening outside of a couple kilometers range is just rumours. Nobody really knows anything for sure and neither does the reader!

Also there was actually a RP TV-series in production with a really cool trailer, but I think the pilot didn't take off so it shut down.

Had no idea there was a TV-series in the works. Would love to see that pilot.

Found this video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoGkB5yvDDk

its imdb page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5024734/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

There was an NBC TV series in 2021 called Debris, canceled after 1 season, that must have taken some inspiration from Roadside Picnic (at least from what I see in this failed series trailer). It's about 2 federal agents searching for parts of an exploded alien spacecraft. It was your typical "monster of the week" while building up an overarching story. Each piece of the ship would have some unique and crazy affect on the area and/or people around it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debris_(TV_series)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11640020/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

edit:

ah, looks like I'm not the first to notice this connection: https://www.reddit.com/r/Debris/comments/nz6pkl/debris_and_r...

Offhand this immediately reminds me of Warehouse 13. I wonder if it was similarly inspired?

> I still think it could have the potential be a really interesting TV show.

It's already a movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)

Roadside Picnic is probably my favorite version of alien visitation. I'm partial to stories where the aliens are largely incomprehensible. Especially the ones who can manage the high tech requirements of FTL. Felt very realistic having the aliens visit Earth as tourists and not invaders, ignore the locals, and throw their trash around.

I am also a little surprised it hasn't been made into modern show. It would perfectly fit the paradigm of the modern story arc-based show that's centered around a big mystery. But, there's some consolation when one can see the influence of Roadside Picnic on other shows. Seems like it was a big influence on Lost.

A Billion Years Before The End Of The World is neither humorous nor it can be dumbed down and framed as "a critique of the state suppressing unwanted research". It's one of their later and more complex works.

A critique of the state messing with research is "the tale of Troika", and it's also a weird, weak-ish book (it also comes in a pair, not unlike Janus Poluektovich).

You've got to love Roadside Picnic as it can be seen as the predecessor to other stories and games, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Escape from Tarkov. It's core trope is unique enough to have spawned an entire generation of content.

I'd say the same about Blindsight, but it hasn't spawned much. Although, it's core trope is arguably the most unique I've ever read before.

> I'd say the same about Blindsight, but it hasn't spawned much. Although, it's core trope is arguably the most unique I've ever read before.

I don't want to go into too much for fear of spoilers, but the video game Prey is at least playing in the same ballpark as Blindsight.

I think you are talking about second Prey game, not the first. First Prey game was unusual first person shooter, very interesting one. I haven't played second game.

Right, the basically entirely-unrelated game under the exact same name, from 2017, not the one from 2006.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game)

(tons of spoilers there, I'm sure)

[EDIT] It'd also have been pretty weird if the '06 Prey had seemed like it had some Blindsight DNA, since that novel was released a few months after the '06 Prey. And I don't want to overstate the connection, but it's enough that I'm reasonably sure that someone involved in writing '17 Prey had read Blindsight.

[EDIT AGAIN] In fact, I'd literally bet money someone involved had also read a certain Watts short story in addition to Blindsight, which story I hesitate to even name for super-spoilery reasons.

I was not able to finish Blindsight. It is too pretentious for me, it ignores what state of art was at the time. Let me quote an old comment [1] of mine:

Do you know that current 1sqkm radio telescopes produce data that can't be processed at real time in any cluster environment in use at 2015-2016? They scan skies at precision I just cannot express in words, let's try math.

https://www.skatelescope.org/uploaded/2950_31734_2007_IAU_Ta...

"...with a resolution of few micro-angular-seconds..."

sin(5/57/60/60/1000000) equals to 2.4366472e-11. It is sine of roughly 5 micro angular seconds (1 radian is about 57 degrees). 1/sin(5/57/60/60/1000000) is roughly equal to distance where current SKA can distinguish 1 meter radio-emitting object and it equals to about 41 million kilometers - a fourth of the distance between Sun and Earth.

These Firefall objects just won't be "unnoticeable until their entry to the atmosphere" in the state of the art sky scaling systems of Blindsight's time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18381870

Despite me being very unrespectful to Watts works, I recognize his influence. So, what is this Blindsight-related-story you are talking about? I read many of them and I cannot remember any that resembles your description.

I'm not sure how Blindsight is different in its essense from Arthur Clarke's Rama I. Even the social commentary layer in both books is very similar.

FYI, another of their works, _The Doomed City_ was finally translated into English a few years ago. It is now my favourite, among their works.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35133627-the-doomed-city

https://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/doomed-city--the-products...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doomed_City

I agree about Definitely Maybe, or, rather, I disagree that it can be read as humorous, but can't agree more that it's great, considering its philosophical or psychological depth.

Haven't read Roadside Picnic, but I've seen Tarkovsky's Stalker several times. How do they compare? Stalker on it's own is an amazing piece of art. The Stalker in the monologue at the end laments that no one believes anymore (this seems to be Tarkovksy's critique of materialism and probably got him in trouble with the Soviet censors) - it can also be seen as depressing, but there's that bit at the very end when Stalker's daughter does that telekinesis thing which can be seen as being a bit hopeful for the future.

they are similar yet very different. Stalker focuses on a single journey into the Zone, Rodaside picnic focuses on the life and world surrounding the zone. I've always said that Roadside Picnic is dark realist SciFi that dabbles in Philosophy, while Stalker is Philosopy that dabbles in dark realist SciFi.

I always thought that Stalker is pretty much the Soviet version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both are really good, but by modern standards extremely slow.

Stalker is only very loosely based on the Roadside Picnic universe, since you like you movie you should definitely give the book a go.

Interesting, I read 'A Billion Years Before The End Of The World' as a book about facing hard choices in life.

That's what constitute a great book: many meanings can coexist there, and one isn't not right reading it this or that way.

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