Roadside Picnic

De: Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Olena Bormashenko - translator

Narrado por: Robert Forster

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a "full empty", something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he'll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.

©1972 Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (P)2012 Random House

A unique Science fiction novel from the USSR.

Road side picnic is an odd tale that brushes on many subjects, from mans place in the universe and deep into humanities imperfections. Its really hard to explain without giving away the details, but if you enjoy a mix of fantasy, mystery, and just a touch of horror, you will love Roadside Picnic.

The performance of the narrator is not perfect. There are times when his volume drops very low and then goes quite high, forcing you to fight with your volume controls. He doesn't do this too often, so the audio book is still a great listen.

Interesting but......

This is not the book I was expecting. Mostly a commentary on the miseries of life and not an exploration of science are science philosophy. There are two good moments, one is an actual discussion of the possible meaning of the artifacts and the other is a description of the artifacts himself. this may be an historical significant book but I can't really recommend it.

Not sure...yet

I started listening to this audiobook because it was recommended based on other books/authors I have enjoyed in the past. While the plot line is interesting, the story itself takes a while to get into, and requires frequent “rewinding” to repeat what is happening to really grasp what is going on. I couldn’t finish, but I’ll give it another try in a few months.

Absolutely brilliant and timeless

This outstanding reading by Robert Forster !!! of a very special story was a happening... what was really happening? Did an encounter happen? Is it all about
gathering "things" from the zone, what is their value costing so many lives? Isn't mankind just digging in the dirt, what is to be human, what does it take to become, to remain an individual?
The Zone helps the herostalker to raise many a question, while working for different buyers of artifacts, some people get rich others, like the military, believe to benefit from the
know how, a scientist becomes rather puzzled in the process... Valuable the afterthoughts by Boris Strugatsky, which brings some context of the writing and publication processes in real Soviet times.
Bizarre, I personally wished the brothers had written that book about their quixotic adventure with ideological superstructure and intellectual garden gnomes. Interesting that Boris Strugatsky was bewildered himself by the battle over this book, they had thought it harmless and he suspected there was something cryptically mythical to it, that even the authors themselves couldn't see.
A. Tarkovsky probably sensed that when choosing the book as the basis for his last film. It took eight years of tedious correspondences to get the story published, heavily edited, although it is in the scifi genre and is set in the West, written by authors from the then Communist East, yet "Roadside Picnic"transcends East and West by raising human questions and
by moving towards the Golden Sphere, towards the center! This is the restored original version... a bravo ! also to Olena Bormashenko, the translator.

A full empty...

Enjoyably unlike any other sci-fi I have before read in that the almost matter of factness that such strange and other worldly things and events are handled.

It's a Classic. It's a Strugatsky. It's ...

Stories told by "the Strugatskys" tend to unfold their power only after you have read them, closed the book and almost forgot about it. This was my experience with "It's not easy being a God" (I apologize if that is not the common English title, I read the German translation a long, long time ago) - and it sure is with "Roadside Picnic".
There isn't much to be said about the story - it's a plot often used in SciFi, sometimes to show wonders of alien abilities, sometimes to show the inabilities of mankind. Here, it clearly is of the latter, although, being Russian in tone, there isn't much of "exploration" or "study" going on. You just take the situation and deal with it, trying to get your share of whatever bonus might be in there.
It would be trivial to point out political and social inklings - some obvious, some hidden between the lines and, very likely so, somewhat lost in translation. You could, if you wanted to do so, compare the scenario to the Russian versus Western civilization. You could, if you preferred to do so, see it all as an experiment about "what is our place in the universe anyway?"

The reason for me not giving this audiobook a higher rating is that it doesn't *work* for me as an audiobook. Mr. Forster does a fine job giving Red Shuhart as much character as there is - unfortunately showing that this character is even less interesting than it would be in writing only.
I do think that a "weak character" like this, one that neither has the intelligence NOR the interest to understand the world around him and that is NOT wondering about what is going on really works best if the reader can skip paragraphs, jump back to what he skipped over and find his own PACE instead of being forced to listening to Red remaining "tumb".
This just isn't a story about "a hero discovering a secret" or "marvels of the Universe and how we cope with them" or anything you can "wrap your head around". This is JUST a GIVEN situation and some dull figures trying to deal with it. Its meaning, if you want to find some, unravels over time, gets you thinking, remembering scenes or situations.

Overall: If you are interested in classic SF and stories that don't "end" with a solution - give Roadside Picnic a go. If you are looking for a strong narrative, for fascinating characters or storylines, look somewhere else.
That's not what Strugatskys are about. And that's not dismissive at all.

Goodness in a world filled with strife

While on its surface Roadside Picnic is a harsh and unforgiving adventure filled with loss, and pain, it has a determined goodness at its core that could make event the most hardened of cynic smile. Unlike many western science fiction settings which feature unusual words, and strange exotic adventures, Roadside Picnic offers one of my favorite aspects of sci-fci in its exploration of the human condition through extraordinary (or extraterrestrial) circumstances. The reading, while effective, leaves a little to be desired, as there is little differentiation in the performance between characters.

very different kind of read but in the best way

this will be short but in truth I originally got into the series of movies and games through the Metro series and then eventually played the stalker series been slowly but surely I kept going back in time and found this book The only thing I haven't seen yet is the stalker movie but I'm absolutely in love with these types of stories and their settings

Great story... now I need to watch the movie!

Great story and performance. At first I wasn’t sure if I’d like Forster’s vocal style but after finishing the audiobook I’m not sure anyone else could do it as well as he did. He’s great. Overall this is an excellent novel, though it could have been twice as long. I was on the edge of my seat for most of it and want to spend more time with the Stalkers in the zone.

Amazing audio performance.

Loved the story but over the moon with the audio performance. Afterword was a nice bonus as well.