Roadside Picnic
Recommended by Francis Spufford, and 1 others. See all reviewsRanked #1 in Solaris, Ranked #21 in Russian — see more rankings.
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. less
Reviews and Recommendations
We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Roadside Picnic from the world's leading experts.
Francis Spufford Yes, Roadside Picnic is the single greatest work of sci-fi fiction, written by these two scientist brothers. It is what Tarkovsky’s great and weird film Stalker is based on. The story, like a lot of Soviet science fiction, is set safely outside the Soviet Union in a capitalist wasteland, where interesting things can happen that you can talk about! (Source)
Rankings by Category
Roadside Picnic is ranked in the following categories:
- #95 in Classic Sci-Fi
- #99 in Translated
- #85 in Weird
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