The Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic is somewhere in Canada, where specialists pick through the debris left by careless Extraterrestrial picnickers. There is no picnic.The picnic is a metaphor offered by knowledgeable scientist Valentine Pillman to explain the visitation by the extraterrestrials and the phenomenon of the debris.
The environment described is dour and utilitarian, inhabited by people on the verge of disfiguring mutations and suffering depression. It’s a Cold War classic depicting the U.S.S.R, but the Strugatsky brothers deny this.
Pillman explains what he calls a roadside picnic on some road in the cosmos” that happens to be our planet Earth. “Imagine a picnic,” he says, “A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car drives off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out of the car carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Gas and oil spilled on the grass. Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around. Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind. Oil slicks on the pond. And of course, the usual mess–apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded Bowers picked in another meadow.”
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1982) is casually based on the novel.
Featured Image: Arkady is on the right, and Boris is on the left.
See Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Roadside Picnic: Tale of the Troika. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis, Edited by Trans. Helen Saltz Jacobson. London: Victor Gallancz, 1972. Reprint, 1977; e-text at http://www.russiansifiction.com/translated/strugazckie/picnic/index.php; and trailer for Tarkovsky at http://vimeo.com/4565225