Episode 49 transcription - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - "Roadside Picnic" (1972)

(listen to episode on Spotify)

(music: main Chrononauts theme)

introductions, non-podcast reads

Gretchen:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. I'm Gretchen, and I'm joined here with my co-hosts, J.M. and Nate. How are you both doing tonight?

JM:

Oh, it's pretty hot. Yeah, we had a cool weekend now, and now it's boiling here again. So my bathroom feels a little bit like a sauna, but luckily I have my air conditioner here. Because of a new mic setup, I can actually use it when we're recording the podcast. So I don't have to sweat. I think that I should record the podcast half naked. I'm sure you all enjoy that charming vision.

But yeah, it's been pretty good trying to work and been doing a bit of reading and hanging out with a couple of friends. And it's trying to make the most of this summertime, I guess.

Nate:

Yeah, it was cool here for a while, and again, it's hot, but yeah, I've done a lot of reading and excited to talk about what we have going on tonight.

Gretchen:

It's also been very hot here. It's nice to hear, Nate, that you got a bit of a break from the heat. I don't feel like we've gotten that as much. But luckily I've been in an air-conditioned library for most of my time, so it hasn't been too bad.

Nate:

It does help, yeah.

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

Yeah, I've also jumped headfirst into the land of the modern smart device and got myself a new phone manufactured by Google Corporation. And yeah, I saw it's fully AI enabled that I'm a little scared. And yeah, perhaps that makes me think sometime in the future of the podcast, we'll have to get back to those kind of themes.

Nate:

Yeah, well, there's no shortage of those kind of stories.

JM:

Yeah, but it's amazing how much more I think Nate and I are kind of on the same page. I don't know about your Gretchen, but like I was very reluctant to use even use my old Samsung phone. And now I'm actually, I'm actually learning to get the hang of this thing because it's a lot faster and it doesn't crash unexpectedly or do really weird things like the Samsung used to. So I'm kind of kind of getting on board with it a little reluctantly, but it's getting there because there's a bunch of work related stuff. I need to use mobile for. It's kind of interesting, I guess.

But yeah, do we want to talk about the stuff we've been reading that before we get into that?

Gretchen:

Before we get to that, you can find Chrononauts on all major podcast platforms such as Spotify. We have a blogspot at chrononautspodcast.blogspot.com where you can read a number of texts and translations. You can also follow us on Twitter @ChrononautsSF and Facebook at facebook.com/chrononauts podcast or email us at chrononautspodcast@gmail.com. There we go, the spiel over and we can now talk about what we've been reading.

JM:

Yeah, and we'd be really happy if you left us a few words if you do listen, even if it's just to tell us how much you don't like our voices or whatever. Yeah, they said it's good for the algorithm and everything else, right? And it's good for our spirits.

Nate:

Feed the machine.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I still think there was one video that we got a comment on that was like, what am I watching or something? Which is, you know, glad that you commented.

Nate:

So yeah, I don't know about you guys, but I've definitely been reading a fair amount of stuff since the last time I finished up with "Barnaby Rudge" by Charles Dickens. And last time we recorded, I was about halfway through. And while I like it, I can definitely see why some people consider it his weakest as it's definitely very much early Dickens when he was still kind of winging it and not really planning out the major plot developments beforehand. And it definitely really hurts the story structure here as there's some pretty major pacing and just like structural issues. The subtitle of the book is "A Tale of the Riots of Eighty", and the first half of the book takes place in 1775 and then halfway through there's like a sudden time skip to 1780. And it just basically forgets about most of the characters and plot lines from the first half when we get to the real story.

The real story's awesome once it gets going at some of Dickens best writing and certainly Grip the Raven is one of Dickens best characters, which Edgar Allan Poe also thought and it inspired him to write his famous poem. That's not to say the first half is bad, but it feels like for the story we get it has way too much padding attached to it to really feel as satisfying as some of his later works, which are equally as long, but I think much better put together. I don't really like how he ended it at one point the plot gets to a crucial point where Dickens can only take it one way or another way, and he happens to take it in the way that I didn't care for. But I think what's interesting is that this is one of two of Dickens historical novels, the other being "A Tale of Two Cities", which fixes both of these problems, namely the pacing and the plot direction, and certainly that one is one of his best and a real testament to him as a writer that as good as that one is, it wouldn't make my top three of his novels. And as far as Barnaby goes now that I've read all of his major novels, I certainly wouldn't put it at the bottom. That one is still "Oliver Twist" and probably will be there. But definitely put it in the bottom third certainly, but I did enjoy all of his works.

After the Dickens, I read three feminist dystopias and started a fourth one, which in a way are all interesting reflections of those feminist utopias we did way back when. And I think all four, kind of three, have all been more or less enjoyable experiences. So first up I read "Ice" by Anna Kavan, which I thought was absolutely incredible. It's really dark and bleak. And Jonathan Latham's introduction to the 50th anniversary of the book sums it up much better than I ever could saying "Anna Kavan's Ice is a book like the moon. There's only one. It's cold and white and it stares back both defiant and impassive, static and frantically on the move, marked by phases out of reach." And yeah, it's a really nightmarish book. The introduction remarks that is hard to classify and states that it doesn't neatly fit into science fiction or fantasy. But since doing this podcast, I think we really should be using the term "weird fiction" more to describe things. And I think that fits this perfectly, or at least I would certainly have no problem at all calling this literary weird fiction. There's a lot of personal trauma in here as she definitely lived a pretty tragic life. Lots of metaphors about drug addiction. In her case, it was heroin, but I think you could definitely apply it broader than that, as well as abusive domestic relationships being committed to mental institutions. But they're never explicitly framed in this way, just described in, again, very dreamlike nightmarish symbolism and metaphor. There's really not much in the way of plot. So if you're expecting that here, you're certainly not going to find it. And while it's been a very unique reading experience, I think there are some similarities in some ways with some of the stuff we covered on the podcast. The difficulty level is pretty high, probably around "Faustroll" or "Aniara". And while it's pretty short, maybe like 150 pages, it's not really structured like either. Its imagery is very similar to the surreal parts of "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" or "Moonstone Mass", basically those stories we covered in the Arctic Adventure episode. But from that episode, I think if there's any one work that we covered that's closest to it, it would be "Arqtiq" by Anna Adolph. As that is also a weird dreamlogic-like tale, the major difference here being that Anna Kavan is an incredibly talented pro stylist. So if any of this sounds appealing to you, I can't recommend that you check this out enough. I absolutely love this one.

Gretchen:

I was going to ask, it did start giving me some "Arqtiq" vibes as you were talking about it. So I'm glad that you brought that up.

Nate:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's very strange and dreamlike and weird and just doesn't really have a coherent structure to the events. But yeah, her prose is incredible. This was the last work that she wrote. Apparently she wrote something like 17 novels or something like that. The introduction said they're of varying quality, but some of them sound pretty interesting. So I would definitely like to check those out.

JM:

That's really interesting. I hadn't heard anything about this or her until like, I think last year or something like that.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Then a couple of book talking people on YouTube were all of a sudden discussing this book. And yeah, like you said, it's what 56 years old.

Nate:

Yeah, the edition that I read was the 50th anniversary edition. So I think that came out in like 2014, 2015, something like that. It was published in the 60s only a couple months before she died.

JM:

Yeah. So, and yeah, I never, I was surprised that I'd never heard of it. And yeah, I mean, maybe that's just me, but it does seem to be gaining some traction now. And that maybe I didn't have before. And that's, that's pretty cool, especially if it's as good as, as you're saying.

Nate:

Yeah, I really like it, certainly. Again, if you're looking for a more traditional plot, it's probably not going to be that appealing. But if you like weird surrealistic fiction, I think you'll really find a lot to enjoy here.

After that one, I read "The Passion of New Eve" by Angela Carter. And yeah, this one. This was certainly a different experience. If this was written today, it would definitely be considered transphobic and racist. But since it was written in the 70s, I think if we're being very charitable, we can call it insensitive at best. Certainly ridiculous, over the top. And she overseps her boundaries a lot more than once. And as far from being in any kind of good taste whatsoever. Plot-wise, this bears the most similarities to those 19th century utopias and that the main character goes from place to place. And we get a tour of the various societies. And one of the segments very much reminded me of the Hollow Earth Utopias. Each society we visit is very, very thinly veiled social commentary. Definitely nothing subtle about this. But the major difference here is that I think we can almost all agree that reading those 19th century utopian novels is pretty boring. And of all the negative adjectives you could apply to this book, of which there are many, boring is certainly not one of them.

JM:

Just really over the top?

Nate:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's just really a lot in all directions at once. If you ever find yourself asking, is she going to take it there? The answer is almost always yes, she absolutely is. Definitely very gross and intense at times, but she's also a really good prose stylist and is often pretty funny. So while I did enjoy this overall, it's definitely a massive yellow flag, cautionary warnings and content warnings for pretty much everything, including tons of sexual assault, which is like throughout the entire novel. But if you want something batshit crazy and totally out there, this will definitely deliver on that front.

Gretchen:

I'm not too familiar with that work, but I definitely read a couple of Angela Carter things. So I'm familiar with like, she is a great writer, but that does sound quite intense.

Nate:

Yeah, apparently she's got a lot of well acclaimed books, including this one. And but yeah, it's just really out there. And yeah, not really in good taste whatsoever.

Then I started reading Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower", which I thought was going to be more of a standalone work, but apparently Butler wrote it and the sequel kind of intended as one work. So after I finished that, I started reading "Parable of the Talents". And I'm about 40% of the way through that, certainly enjoying it so far. I'm not really sure where it's going to go, but yeah, definitely looking forward to it. Definitely again, very graphic and grim, but not really like in the way that the Angela Carter was. Certainly the most grounded in reality with these three dystopias, but I'd imagine I'll have more thoughts when I finish up. But in nice contrast to the Earthseed books, YouTube just randomly started recommending me a bunch of videos about starseeds, which has been a very pleasant, if not altogether, different experience.

JM:

I will say that I really do enjoy Angela Carter a lot. And the Butler, I don't know too much about that, but it does sound interesting too.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I definitely have enjoyed the Parable duology. I really need to read more of Butler as, I mean, that's why we covered "Kindred" before is because I adore that book. I'd like to try out, I know she has a bit more that's a little more fantasy rather than just science fiction that I'd like to give a try to. Definitely like the stories I've read by her have been wonderful.

Nate:

Yeah, I was looking at the works on Goodreads and they all seem pretty well-acclaimed except for the very last one that she wrote, which was, I guess, like more of like a vampire type thing. But the Patternist books seem well-acclaimed. What was the other one? The Xeno....

Gretchen:

Xenogenesis?

Nate:

Yeah, Xenogenesis. Those books seem very well-acclaimed. So yeah, I definitely like to read those at some point, perhaps on the podcast. I guess we'll see what we want to do for the future.

But yeah, "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Talents" are both really good. At least "Parable of the Talents" I've really been enjoying so far. It's always fun with these near future dystopias where the real world year is passed in the book. So I think the book starts off in like 2024 or something like that and "Parable of the Sower" that is, and goes into 2025. So it's like, yeah, I know what day that is. But yeah, very good. And yeah, again, I would definitely like to read more of Butler at some point. So yeah, that's what I've been up to in reading.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I haven't read as much recently. I believe the last that I had mentioned here was Honore de Balzac, which I really loved. But after that, I did read James Baldwin's "Go Tell It On the Mountain", which I did enjoy. Before that, I'd only read "Giovanni's Room" and a couple of nonfiction pieces by Baldwin. Really interesting to read that and has a lot to say about religion. Really interesting to see the different perspectives that each character gets, similar to a Faulknerian sort of giving each character kind of their own perspective in a way. I did enjoy that book.

After that, I did read a short story collection, "The Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories" by Pamela Zoline, which is an author I would like to cover at some point on the podcast. I really did enjoy the stories that I read in that work. They would definitely fit for our podcast at some point.

Nate:

Cool.

JM:

Yeah, I'd like to check that out.

Gretchen:

I haven't read anything since then, but I did just get, I went to, because even though I have so many things I already should read, I did visit a bookstore recently and found a newly released Leonora Carrington called "The Stone Door", which was just released by New York Review Books, I think in the past couple of months. So I'm thinking of starting that because I'm always looking to read more of Carrington.

JM:

Cool. I'll just talk about a couple of books, I guess. One is another classic. You read for me again, the first time in a long while though. And it was a little different because I finally read the completely unexpurgated "Picture of Dorian Gray" with all the removed text reinserted back in, which was an interesting experience to me because I chose not to read the introductory material first. And after doing that, I really had a hard time determining exactly what it was that would have been removed. I think it's always been a book that I like and I really enjoyed it this time too. But I guess I will say if you're expecting, if you read the book before and you didn't get one of the new Harvard University endorsed/co-produced, I guess, modern editions of this book and you're expecting some kind of revelation of more sexuality or something like that or more blatant. It's really not. It's still the same book, although it seems like there are quite a lot of revisions after they're explained in the very extensive introductory material. I kind of get it. But yeah, it's an interesting example of, I guess, the gulf between our centuries, so to speak, because I was reading this and I'm thinking, oh, what did they remove? I couldn't remember the experience in my early 20s enough to say, oh, OK, that's different or whatever. But yeah, it's a classic story. And despite what I said above, it is pretty intense in the psychology and stuff like that. And I really appreciate that. And it's, yeah, of course, Oscar Wilde's only novel, I believe.

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

Yeah, it's short and it's powerful and it's got a bit of that Gothic horror vibe to it for sure. It fits in very well, I think, with stuff like "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" from around the same time period. Only it's a lot more decadent, I guess. And the implications are certainly heavy enough to have ruffled some Victorian English feathers, I suppose. And it's definitely worth the read.

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

And I'm sure most people probably are at least aware of it. So there's probably not a great need to explain anymore. But yeah, great classic.

Gretchen:

I will say that one of my co-workers and I were talking, his favorite book is "Dracula" because he likes, like, Gothic fiction. I was saying to him that he should read "Dorian Gray" at some point.

JM:

Yeah, absolutely.

Nate:

Yeah, it's definitely great. So I think we're unanimous on that one here.

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

So the other book I read was an interesting journey to this because I've been watching a lot of his movies lately. So I was hearing that David Cronenberg had actually written a novel called "Consumed" back in 2014. So I decided to read it and, well, it was an interesting experience for sure. Ultimately, I don't really think I liked it very much. And that's mostly because of the way it turned towards the end. And I will say, though, I'm still thinking about it because, yes, it was very, it was very Cronenberg-ish. It had a lot of his things, a lot of medical, psychosexual and technological things all tied together in this kind of suggestions of deviance and interesting portrayals of technology and how we use it as a medium between ourselves and the people that we interact with. A lot of stuff about photography and interesting detail that suggests that Cronenberg is a bit of an old technophile. And I make a difference between that and a newer technophile because there's something really special about a guy born in like the 1940s, looking at all this new technology and figuring out and observing things about it that younger people might not actually, they might just take it for granted, right? It's sort of the point where it's a little, it could be a little annoying, but I realize he's doing it on purpose, like whenever he talks about a piece of tech, whether it's a camera or a computer or a car or a 3D printer or a weird sex toy, he's got to have the exact make and model number and everything. And it's just hilarious, like I've seen this before in books where it's done completely unselfconsciously and that's really like takes you out of a story when you're reading some like thriller novel or detective novel or something and you get all the like manufacturers, models, numbers and stuff on the guns and the special monoculars and everything like that. You really need to know that it's a P140X or something like that. It cracks me up, but in this book you can tell he's doing it sort of on purpose. I mean, it's called "Consumed", right? And it's about this philosopher couple living in Paris and how the woman turns up dead and cannibalized and all these photos of her body parts are being sent all over the internet and the husband disappeared. So it makes it seem pretty obvious what happened, but the book takes some very strange turns. And for the most part, I was really having a good time with it. It was surprisingly funny at times, but Cronenberg can sometimes be like that in his movies too. There's some pretty hilarious stuff in Videodrome, even though it's such a like dark and twisted movie, right? But towards the end, it's this funny thing started to happen. And it seemed like the book was it started involving North Korean agents and international kidnapping and stuff like that. And I don't know if you guys have you guys feel about him and how he kind of transitioned to making more "normal" movies in the 2000s. But it's really interesting to me because this is almost like a microcosm of that because the way the book was starting out, I was expecting something more like a Videodrome. And the way it turned out towards the end was almost more like "A History of Violence" or "Eastern Promises" or something, which are like, they're still pretty intense in their way, but they feel a lot more mainstream than his like crazy body horror movies of the 70s and 80s and even something like the "Naked Lunch" adaptation from the early 90s, which I think is one of the craziest, most insane films that I'm aware of. His film stopped being like that, although his most recent one is actually remake of a very old film. I guess it's more more in the old Cronenberg style, but I haven't seen it myself.

Gretchen:

But I've been meaning to see it.

JM:

Anyway, the book did take a turn into weird, like kind of boring political thriller territory. But the funny thing is, when it was starting to do that, he just ended it. Like the book ends very abruptly, and it's very like, oh, okay, like, he's not really going to go there. It's like he got tired of the book because he realized it was turning too normal and he just like stopped. Although everything is kind of wrapped up and explained, the fate of one of the major characters is left completely up in the air and unexplained. And like, it's really funny because I was having a discussion with a friend about the book we just read for the podcast and they were saying that they thought the ending was very unsatisfying. And I'm like trying to explain, no, it's actually really good ending. And then I read this book and I went to them and I'm like, yeah, I know how you feel now. I mean, that was kind of deflating. It's also really funny because I think that technophilia backfires on him a little bit because in the end he's talking about like international spies and agents using Skype to communicate with each other. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, they would be using some kind of encrypted platform. They wouldn't be communicating on Skype, right? Like it's just, I don't know. It's weird because it does start to, as I went on, I started to notice some of the things about it that were bugging me that didn't bug me at first because I really enjoyed the way the book seemed to be going and the mystery and also the interaction between the characters, which was sometimes really funny. Yeah, and ultimately, I feel like he dropped the ball with it and maybe he was even aware of doing so because he just kind of shrugged his shoulders and walked away from the book. And it's weird because I guess it sounds like I want to have my cake and eat it too because I'm like, don't become a boring, everyday political thriller, but I'm also like, but please wrap up satisfactorily like a normal book. But yeah, I just, I don't know. Ultimately, I was kind of disappointed with it, but it was a very interesting and at least the first half of the book was really good. So yeah, that's it really. I think that's all I want to talk about for now.

But yeah, we've gone on enough. We did a really interesting book for the podcast too. So why don't we start talking about that? A lot of cool things I think we'll have to talk about for this one.

(music: echoey piano)

Strugatsky brothers biography, non-spoiler discussion

Gretchen:

The Strugatsky brothers were born eight years apart, Arkady in 1925 and Boris in 1933. They enjoyed science fiction at a young age with Boris creating his own comic strips at the age of eight. However, their science fiction literature career would happen only a while later into their life after both had established their own separate careers. They too were separated from each other quite young. At some point during the 1941-44 Siege of Leningrad, Arkady and their father and author himself and a journalist left while Boris and their mother remained behind. Arkady studied English and Japanese using these linguistic skills as a translator and editor on works such as those by Kobo Abe and John Wyndham. Meanwhile, Boris entered the Leningrad State University in 1950 and became an astronomer and computer engineer. 

They began their collaborative work in sci-fi in the late 1950s. Arkady claimed that it was due to a bet. In 1958, when he made sarcastic remarks about some very feeble SF book, we were challenged. "It's easy to criticize", they said, "but just try writing one yourself". We did try and the result was "The Land of the Crimson Cloud". Around this time, a new wave of Soviet science fiction was rising. With the death of Stalin and the USSR under the new leadership of Khrushchev, rules which dictated the shape of the genre, such as the insistence on setting stories near the present rather than in a far-flung future, were beginning to relax, allowing for more imaginative texts. Alongside this greater freedom of expression was the advances made during the space race, providing rich inspiration for and strong interest in sci-fi. Arkady has also stated that Sputnik also played a role in the beginning of their career, though Boris later contested this statement.

Either way, over the next several years, the Strugatsky's creative output was prolific, with a peak of half a dozen novels written between 1962 and 1965. However, following this period, the Strugatsky's began to decline as they were faced with political objections and criticism. Especially in the 1970s, the brothers found it hard to get books published with only magazines and seemingly a select few accepting their work. This was made even more difficult after an incident in 1972, where one of their texts, "The Ugly Swans", was leaked to the Western press. Despite expressing protest and indignance about this leak in the press, they still spent some time blacklisted.

In 1974, Boris also had a direct encounter with the KGB as a witness in what is known as the Kheifets case, an experience he wrote about later. Despite this, the Strugatsky's work was still recognized by science fiction fans, including those outside of the Soviet Union. During the 1980s, they ventured to the West for the first time in their lives for a major science fiction convention where they were greeted warmly. However, by the 80s, Arkady's health started to deteriorate. He and Boris planned to wrap up their series of books set in what they called the Noon Universe, which they began near the start of their writing career. But Arkady passed before this, dying in 1991, mere months before the fall of the USSR.

With the death of Arkady came the death of the Strugatsky's. Boris making clear that their collaboration was a necessary part of their work and only writing anything following his brother's death under a pen name. Boris himself died about two decades later in 2012. Before his death, he was known for being critical of Vladimir Putin signing open letters against the jailing of figures such as the members of the punk band Pussy Riot. The work we're covering tonight is "Roadside Picnic", published in Leningrad's magazine Avrora. It is considered one of the Strugatsky's most notable works, serving as inspiration for Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Stalker".

In the afterward of the 2012 English translation by Olena Bormashenko, Boris claims that the concept of the novel formed in 1970, though it wasn't until after creating an outline while they were writing the first pages of the initial draft that the brothers coined the term "Stalker", or as they pronounced it, "Stullker". The term was inspired by the character of Stalky from the reckless bunch by Rudyard Kipling, a childhood favorite of theirs. Besides having to make edits to the work for censors to approve it, "Roadside Picnic" also didn't receive publishing as a novel until 1980, a year after "Stalker"'s release and three years after the English publication of the novel.

Of course, I chose this book because "Stalker" is one of my favorite films, as I mentioned even in the episode before this when talking about choosing Roadside Picnic. So I think it's very hard to talk about it without thinking of the film as well. I'm sure that you, Nate, also had a similar experience. I don't know, J.M., if you will, have also had as much experience with the film.

Nate:

Yeah, that was definitely how I came into this story, and I think how a lot of people encounter "Roadside Picnic", at least in the West.

JM:

Not me, so...

Gretchen:

J.M., I feel like you can give a more unique experience of this book than Nate and I.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, I saw "Stalker", like, for the first time, I guess the last time I saw it before doing this, was roughly 15 years ago on a tiny TV in my old apartment, and I had to watch it in, like, three or four sittings because it's almost three hours long like I did with rewatching it for this time here. But, yeah, I mean, Tarkovsky is consistently cited as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and for good reason, I've seen four of his films, and I think they're all masterpieces. "Solaris" is definitely another good one and potential candidate for the podcast, both the Lem story and the numerous adaptations of that one, which there, I think, are at least three. But, yeah, this one is, yeah, just, Tarkovsky is a very incredible filmmaker, and "Stalker" is a very incredible film. But I like how different it is from the book. It's like with "Blade Runner" and "Do Androids' Dream of Electric Sheep", or I don't know what another good example of it is.

JM:

That's pretty much a really good example because both directors are considered very top class in their field. Oh, you know, you could say a lot about those Ridley Scott's films nowadays and how they're not really as good as they used to be, but people have strong feelings about the adaptations and versus the source material, maybe. And especially, I might say that Philip K. Dick definitely has his fans, and really hardcore fans, but I think there are probably more people who are familiar with the film and might not necessarily take to the things that are in the source material. There's a lot more background and stuff like that in the source material that the film just threw out. And that's kind of the case here as well, and whether you think that's a good or bad thing, it depends, I guess, on your perspective. For me, it's neither really, I appreciate both, but I came to the book first, and I don't know, I guess as far as Tarkovsky goes, I had my exposure to his films in the 2000s, and I really enjoyed them. I always leaned more towards "Solaris" as far as the science fiction adaptations go, and I think it's just partially me. And yeah, I mean, we'll get to it when we talk more about the film, I think, but not everybody can sit through a film like this, and I have to be in a very, very particular mood, and I'm also missing a lot of the detail being a non-seeing person and also having to try to read the subtitles. It's a lot of work, and there was a certain point in my life where I enjoyed doing that sort of thing a lot more than I do now, and I know I think I'm not really in a place where I can really sit down and concentrate on a film like that as much, but I do appreciate its power, and I would like to talk about that when we get there, I'll probably leave it mostly to you guys, but I did watch the film again or try to, and I'll relate some discussions that I've had about Tarkovsky in general and stuff,

The book I really liked, the first time I read this, I've read this book before, this is probably the third or fourth Strugatsky book that I've read, and I've enjoyed them all, and this one I read initially in the older English translation, which was a little different than the one that we read, and I read the older translation and I enjoyed it, I guess, I think I got more out of it this time around, and I don't know if it's again because it's a reread and because I knew what to expect, or even because we concentrated on the newer translation. It did leave me with a lot to think about actually, and I actually feel like I got more out of the book this time and was more connecting with it.

It is kind of funny sometimes, some of the things that they do in the book, and it wasn't a bad thing, but it did make me chuckle, and maybe that was what they're intending. The whole background of the book and everything is this like, I don't know, I picture this kind of hicky Northern Ontario, Canada town, and it's just all these Russian guys' idea of what that might be like, and all the silly names and the barroom brawls and the womanizing and stuff like that. It's a little bit over the top, but in a way that I found quite enjoyable as somebody who's used to reading old detective novels and stuff like that, gangster stuff and all that. I don't know, I liked it, I thought it was fun, but I can see why "Stalker"'s film is so much more brooding and serious, and this was a lot more, I guess, on the surface at least, I think beneath there's a lot more going on and a lot of, like, yeah, a lot of what's explicit in the Tarkovsky film is certainly implied in the book, but on the surface it's got this real hard-boiled, especially when read around, kind of hard-boiled, pulpy style almost. And yeah, it seems like a bit of an affectation, and that's why I was eager to read this translation, because when I read it first, I actually remember questioning, wait, like, this book was written in Russian, how is it really like this? I don't really understand, and I guess I'm still a little uncertain about how much the translators were adding, or, like, how many, what the kind of wording that Strugatsky has actually used in the Russian text, but it was a cool experience anyway, so.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah, I liked the book a lot, glad that we covered it.

Gretchen:

I do remember talking about "Roadside Picnic" a while ago, like, before I decided on it with you JM, and I do remember you mentioning the translation you read, just kind of, like, getting this sort of noir-esque sort of vibe from it, thinking, yeah, maybe that is just how the translation is, and then reading this translation, at least the newer translation here, and getting that same vibe and thinking, oh, maybe this is just part of the text. Yeah, I also don't dislike that at all. I think that there's something really interesting about the seedy, underbelly sort of feeling that you get from this text, and even though, as you mentioned, JM, and I agree, there is a lot more going on under the surface, and there are these, like, still philosophical kinds of questions that are being asked, and, like, this political sort of commentary that's happening as well. I think that you get that, especially as the novel continues. I feel like each section you dive a bit deeper into these questions, until you reach, like, the final section, which has this really interesting, as we said before, this interesting ending to the book that I also would like to talk about, of course, once we finish the summary, if you'd also like to talk, Nate, about the translation and, like, the way the publication worked, that would be interesting to hear.

Nate:

Yeah, so it's been translated twice into English, kind of at least 20 or so different languages that it's been translated in.

Gretchen:

Yes, I believe I've heard that it is the most translated out of all the Strugatsky's work.

Nate:

Yeah, so just going down the list, in addition to the two translations in English, it has German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Moldovsky, Greek, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Czech, Estonian, Ukrainian, Polish, Slovak, Bulgarian...

JM:

Did you get a Japanese translation?

Nate:

Yes, there's a Japanese translation, there's an Esperanto translation, there's a Turkish translation, there's a Catalan translation, there's a Korean translation, a Chinese translation, Persian, Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, and a few others too.

Quite a few, definitely very popular internationally, but the two in English, the initial translation was done by Antonina Bouis in 1977, and the recent one is from 2012 by Elena Bormashenko. And they're not, I wouldn't say substantially different from one another, the Bouis has, I don't know, some of the sentences aren't maybe as tight as they could be, and the Bormashenko definitely plays up the pulp prose style a little bit more. And it definitely adds a lot of profanity to the novel, which I don't believe is in the original publication.

JM:

Yeah, and they change the names of some of the artifacts and stuff like that. The things like that, it's called the Hell Slime, in the new translation, and then the other one, it's called the Witch's Jelly.

Nate:

Oh, right, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, you probably will get some things like that here and there for the traps and the zone weirdness. But yeah, I only compared a couple paragraphs, and in particular how they handled the profanity because I was curious if that much profanity appears in the original. And I looked in the original publication in the Aurora magazine where it was serialized over four issues, and that text is slightly different from the book edition that I have of it. I have the 2019 publication in the AST Complete Strugatsky anthology series, which spans a total of 14 volumes. This one also has "The Kid from Hell", "Space Mowgli", "The Dead Mountaineers Inn", along with the same afterward piece that appears in the 2012 translation, which I was trying to trace the provenance of. And I just think the Strugatskys or I think Boris might have written that in 1980 or either 1991. The fantlab record for that particular piece isn't super clear to me, but from what I can tell the original version of the novel was published in Russian by at least the early 1990s. So again, I don't know what the deal with the profanity is. I think the Bormashenko translation just might have added that in as a translator decision in order to make it more pulpy and make the characters a little bit seedier than they appear in the original novel.

Gretchen:

I had only gathered that it was because Bormashenko was working from like a draft before the censors had asked for edits for the magazine version. But it could also be that she did. I'm sure that there is a possibility that she played into it by adding a bit more profanity and some more slang and stuff like that.

Nate:

Yeah, that was the impression I got too based on this, like how the afterward is like placed after the text. And there's no attribution of when Boris wrote that in context with what. I mean, if you didn't look into it, you get the sense that yes, he wrote this specifically for the 2012 edition in English, but that's like not the case.

JM:

Yeah.

Nate:

So I don't know. I believe the unexperniated edition has been published in Russian for some time and I believe, again, I'm not sure, if the version that has is in that 2019 anthology is the uncensored version. But I only compared those two texts, the original magazine publication and the book that I have. So there may be another version floating around out there somewhere though. I think it would make sense for the complete anthology to have the original versions, especially if they're going to have the commentary in them too. So I don't know, a bit of a strange mystery there with all the textual differences as it can be. But yeah, the seedy culture of the stalkers and the environments that they're hanging out with, I think it's just like a really awesome touch that the movie completely does away with more or less. And I just really like that we get to see more of that society and that world that they live in and operate in any why.

JM:

Yeah, I enjoyed that aspect a lot. It was interesting to me because I'm guessing the serializations in the magazine corresponded with the chapter.

Nate:

That's right.

JM:

I can't really call them chapter, but part sections.

Nate:

Yep, that's right.

JM:

So I can really feel the fragmented nature of this story and how there's pretty large time jumps in there. And I don't know, I think it worked reasonably well in this book. There were times when I kind of wished that there was a bit more, I don't know, a bit more showing and not telling kind of thing because it's just like we had to catch up to what was happening with the characters now kind of thing. But then I appreciated the narrative was pretty tight then. I don't know, it didn't go on too much about certain things. Like, I don't know, Nate, you were last episode we were talking about Vance and "The Languages of Pao" and how you didn't really think that the one woman character in the book was treated with that much respect. Maybe. And I kind of argued that. But then in this one, I kind of maybe felt the same thing was happening a little bit. And also, I don't know, just as the, there's certain ways that I feel like, again, it might be a bit of an affectation because it might be like, yeah, these characters are rough. Right. Like this is a rough place.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

It's a little bit Wild West ish. And this is just how they are. Right. And it's like, I got it. It works. And there were a lot of things about that that were amusing because like, they're tiny little details that were put in there that made it clear that the book was supposed to take place in Canada. And like, I read a lot of reviews of the book and people couldn't figure out where it was supposed to be or they thought it was a fictitious country or whatever. Yeah, it's not, I don't, you know, it's not something that's like, it's just, it's just pretty subtle. It's kind of funny because just feeling like, yeah, maybe I've been to a few towns that are a little bit like that. And at the same time, yeah, it was like the Strugatsky's version of that. And it was a little bit funny, but I don't know. I liked it. And yeah, the, it definitely seemed it was more profanity of this version, as opposed to the previous one that I read. The Bouis translation.

But yeah, is the fragmentation. I think it's funny because the first part was the only one written in first person. And then that kind of went away really quick. And I guess I had misremembered the first reading because it was so long ago. It was probably 2003 or something like that. When I read this book, I'm guessing somewhere somewhere in the early 2000s anyway. And I had remembered the whole thing being in first person, pretty much from Red's point of view, but of course it's not like that at all.

Nate:

Right.

JM:

And I actually liked the way each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the story and almost has a different tone to it. Depending on which chapter, which I guess calling them chapters is a bit disgenuous and more like sections or story fragments, I guess. They each seem to have a little bit of a unique tone to them. So I did kind of like that actually. It's just kind of, and this was a really interesting way of telling the story because yeah, we don't really, it leaves a lot more questions than answers. We don't find out who the aliens are. We don't find out if there was a purpose behind it all. All we ge get really is mysteries. A lot of things are left up in the air and not explained and that could definitely frustrate somebody. I definitely had a discussion with somebody who was maybe a little frustrated with it for that reason. I think just the fact that we're not given many answers, I mean, you know, it kind of leads me to questioning, what do we want to get out of a book like this? Do we like it more if it makes us think about things? Or do we like it more if it's a tight story where everything is resolved and wrapped up neatly and like you get an answer to all the things you've been wondering about? And yeah, I mean, I think one of the powers of science fiction could be that it could excel at the former kind of story. And I think this is that. I mean, I think that yeah, there's a lot of vagueness kind of at times. There's a lot of unanswered questions that you would probably be asking yourself. But and as the essay I read "Towards the Last Fairy Tale" by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr, it basically said the ending is off the page. Like it's not even there really. It's another debate I had was whether the ending of the book was a positive ending or not. And that's up in the air too, I guess. They left it really ambiguous in a cool way that I actually quite like and makes the book seem a little less.

All right, I mean, you know, we were talking earlier about how the book has a bit of a pulpy style. And I guess with that would come certain expectations. And I look at something like Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye", for example, which is pretty much a complete subversion and I guess deconstruction of the tropes of pulpy detective fiction from a guy who's been doing it for a few decades by then almost a couple of decades anyway. And he just doesn't really do what you expect out of a detective novel. And if you want to pin down the story, it's kind of difficult. It follows all of the tropes, but it also doesn't follow the plot tropes. And so it's a really interesting way of looking at the entire thing. And I think with the book, they start out with something and even at the very end, you almost think it's going to go a certain way, but you realize you're at the end of the book. So I mean, what comes next, like some crazy revenge fantasy or something like that? Is that what we're going to see?

And no, we don't get that. We instead get a question of what you would do if you could have your wishes fulfilled. What is this going to do? Is this guy like somebody we've spent some time with and we know that he's kind of rough and we know that he's like really angry and with good reason, maybe. And yet we also know that he's got some loyalties and he's maybe a good person at heart, even though he's just kind of murdered somebody. But anyway, we'll get to that, right?

So yeah, I mean, okay, if you're going to look for completely lovable, identifiable characters, this book might not be for you either. Everybody's a dick pretty much. And the one woman character who I guess could be considered a central character is almost portrayed as this saintly person who carries on in the face of adversity and her difficult husband and everything like that. And the other woman character who's not really in it very much is pretty much this like complete opposite of that and is portrayed in a very bad light at the end. But I think that's just Red being really angry, right? But also the fact that this other character, this Burbridge, the Vulture or the Buzzard, who he's called in the other translation, is a pretty hateful person. And what he wishes for is also kind of hateful, I guess, except the sum character is nothing like that. And he seems to be innocent and almost angelic, I guess, in a way. We'll get to that too.

So anyway, it was a really good book. I liked it a lot. Definitely happy to have re-read it because it's gone up a little bit in my estimation since last time, I think.

Gretchen:

As I mentioned about always kind of having "Stalker" in the back of my mind when reading it, it is interesting to me to almost exist in this really interesting place between compared to "Stalker", "Roadside Picnic" is so much more material. It's so much more like tangible with like what it's doing. And because of that still pulpy aspect of it there and because of this centered on to like, oh, it's not just like this one intangible object that everyone is after, but there are like other tangible objects that people desire and that people want. So it has that to it, but still, as you say, there is a vagueness. There still is left this like ambiguity there. And it's really interesting how it kind of manages to balance those two parts of it.

Nate:

Yeah, I think what's interesting about it being more spelled out than the film is it allows the social commentary to rise more of the surface as my read of this one was definitely commentary on contact with the West, both in terms of technology transfer as the Soviets stole most of their high tech stuff initially and with... 

JM:

Exploitation.

Nate:

Yeah, right. And cultural artifacts. I think the most widely cited example of this is those American rock and roll records that were bootleged overhead transparency sheets that could be played just a handful of times before they'd be illigible and disintegrate. But people would go through these great risks to themselves to get this stuff over and distribute it both in terms of the official government espionage angle and people just like bootlegging American stuff behind the backs of the censors, which I thought was a cool angle that again, the film more or less totally omits focusing more on the metaphysical angle, which again, we'll talk about when we get to the film. But it kind of reminded me superficially anyway of Frederik Pohl's "Gateway" in that sense where there's these group of high risk, daredevil prospectors trying to strike it rich bringing back treasures from an alien environment at incredible risk to themselves. And while "Roadside Picnic" was written before "Gateway", it wasn't translated in English until afterwards. So it's almost certainly that Pohl did not read this when he was thinking about that.

JM:

I thought it was also a neat call back to a fun way of looking at that early science fiction stuff like the almost Gernsback science fiction, like as Ray Bradbury would call it the doodad, or as Jack Vance said, gadget fiction.

Nate:

Yeah, right. Yeah.

JM:

It's like, oh, there's all these neat technological toys that nobody has any idea what they do like wouldn't it be fun to imagine playing with the rattling napkins and the shriekers and like, what do all these things do right. It's just, it's fun. I mean, it's, it's pretty much seems like a lot of them are very dangerous. But I mean, that's to be expected right to so it was a fun addition to the book, I think that really kind of put it in line with that science fiction tradition, but also was a bit more sophisticated about it than gee golly whiz, but you can also kind of imagine a video game where you're just like picking up all these strange objects and you have no idea what the hell they do. 

Nate:

Avoiding the hell slime.

JM:

Yeah, yeah. And then there is a stalker video game to right so I kind of imagine it's been.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I was going to look more into the video game and I just didn't end up doing so I got more focused on the film and just so I can't talk too much about that. But yeah. 

Nate:

I didn't look into that either. They did do a pilot episode for a TV series that was never finished called "Roadside Picnic". That does look more in line with the book than the "Stalker" film. But again, I haven't seen any of it and I don't know if it's ever been released publicly.

JM:

Well, they do seem to be remaking some of the Strugatsky adaptations like in the 80s, there was the "Hard to be God" adaptation and there was a newer one as well, which is supposed I think Nate, you said you've seen that one.

Nate:

No, I actually haven't seen either the 80s one, which I want to say was like a German/Russian co production, I think.

JM:

It was in Russian for sure.

Nate:

Yeah, but I think they might have used a German film crew or a German something. I don't recall what the details was what it was but it's one of those movies that I've been wanting to watch for like 15 years and just have not gotten around to yet.

JM:

Right.

Nate:

I understand it's more abstract and weird than the more recent production. But again, I haven't seen either. It'd be interesting to check out. I also have that book in Russian that I got at the same place that I got the Strugatsky anthology from, which is RBC Video in Brooklyn, pretty cool Russian language book and video store and they have an entire wall dedicated to the Strugatskys so definitely the most popular author within...

JM:

I'm not sure there isn't anyway anywhere near as close to classic science fiction popularity among Soviet authors in the West, in this genre, compared to the Strugatsky.

Nate:

Yeah, or within the Russian speaking community to so it's yeah interesting how that works out and yeah definitely part of that new post-Stalin wave of where yeah you can actually write science fiction again you don't have the censors on your back in the intense way that they did basically starting with the 30s that we talked about when we covered all those 20s Soviet short stories from the magazine scene and just how quickly them those magazines got killed in like 1930/1931 and the science fiction scene was greatly reduced and its quality and scope for like 25 years.

JM:

But the story did get commented on by the critical establishment more than a little bit and of course, Tarkovsky's film version also.

Gretchen:

His last film before his exile.

Nate:

Yeah

JM:

But not because of the science fiction content necessarily. I think the technocratic side of the USSR was more than in favor of especially utopian type socialist science fiction. Certainly, from what I've read, even though I'd read some Strugatsky books before I didn't really follow any kind of chronological path from the essay where I was reading the authors definitely posit a chronological path of the Strugatsky's from utopian adventure fiction to, well, this basically and and other later material that's a little more on the skeptical side of things perhaps complex in terms of not necessarily, even though the early work is praised, there's a lot of talk of like the what was the word they use is a type of novel that was popular in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist period, where basically it's about solving a problem to do with like a project that's being worked on or something like that. And it's like, you know, here's a project, things aren't working right we need to bring somebody into boost the morale and fix the sabotage or whatever other problems are going on, and basically rally the workers to get this thing done.

The early Strugatsky stuff is kind of a commentary on that almost it's it's more than that that was definitely, it sounds anyway I'm sure there were interesting variants every now and then but it sounds like a pretty formulaic type of popular fiction that was kind of unique to the time and place almost. And this is, again, this is informed by the science fiction, I guess that they had read in the past probably some of which was Western because I do remember stuff like "I, Robot" for example, as mentioned that that was printed pretty early on in Russia and certainly pre golden age classics and definitely HG Wells that we talked about before very popular. 

Gretchen:

I do remember them mentioning that Wells was typically a print in like some of the magazines that were around.

Nate:

Yeah, there's a couple other Western authors. One of those Heinlein stories was translated into Russian, "And He Built a Crooked House".

Gretchen:

I don't know as much about the 50s I do remember I think it was from a piece from the 80s where they said, along with the Strugatsky's it was Bradbury was typically.

JM:

Oh yes "The Martian Chronicles". That was one that was mentioned as well that that was very popular.

Gretchen:

Yeah I wasn't sure I knew that was like later. I wasn't sure if that held true for decades before like the 80s or so.

Nate:

Yeah, Bradbury seems popular everywhere more or less.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

There was a mention of a magazine that ran a poll in a Russian magazine that ran a poll of the most popular authors.

Gretchen:

Yes.

JM:

By far the Strugatsky's were on top but there were a few books by Lem, something by Ivan Yefremov and Asimov and Bradbury were also on the list as the token Western contributors.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I think that was that's what I was thinking of. I think it was the same that you're thinking of was the same piece.

Nate:

But yeah I mean the Strugatsky's and their contemporaries it was definitely a wave and there's a lot more stuff that comes out during the 60s and 70s as while the censors never really do truly go away it definitely gets relaxed compared to how it was under Stalin. So I think some of that other stuff would be definitely worth checking out going down the road. I read an anthology of stuff from the 60s that was like "Russian Science Fiction 1969" even though 1969 was the year that they just like assembled it.

JM:

I think I might have seen that I might have read some stuff from that anthology a long time ago.

Nate:

Yeah, it's a bit mixed in quality but the good stuff is good and I'm sure we could find a couple other novels to bring in from this time period because it'd be interesting to explore it as a follow up to what we covered in the 20s.

JM:

Oh so you mean this anthology is actually in Russian?

Nate:

No it's an English translation of Russian stories.

JM:

Okay.

Nate:

So the Russian stories were from like the I think the earliest one was from like 55 or so but most of them were 60s.

JM:

I remember reading something like that a long time ago. It might have been that one or differently.

Gretchen:

Was it called like "Red Tales" or something similar to that?

Nate:

No there's an anthology called "Red Star Tales" which is like a survey of Russian science fiction in general dating back to the 1800s but also has like a lot of stuff. This one is just called "Russian Science Fiction 1969". It was published in the 60s and definitely has like some dusty translations that really aren't the greatest which is kind of unfortunate about those translations done in the 60s and 70s of some of the Russian works. I don't think Bouis is a bad translator but some of those sentences yeah it could definitely use a bit of tightening up but she also did a lot of the other major Russian novels. So she did "Professor Dowell's Head", she did "Heart of a Dog", a whole lot of other stuff. So she's a good translator but some of those other translators in that anthology are definitely of a lesser quality.

JM:

Yeah I've definitely seen that like you know compared to the real earlier the literary Russian classics you know and stuff they don't seem to be getting the same kind of attention.

Nate:

Yeah definitely not which is kind of a shame because yeah there's some really cool stuff to come out of that world.

(music: pulsing sweeps)

spoiler summary and discussion

Gretchen:

"Roadside Picnic" opens with an interview with Nobel Prize winner Valentine Pilman, known for developing the Pilman Radiant. This concerns the positioning of the six visit zones, the points on Earth where extraterrestrial life made contact 30 years before. While the aliens and the purpose of their visit are still a complete mystery to humanity, Pilman claims that the fact they visited at all, the proof that Earth is not the only planet confirmed to sustain intelligent life is already a significant enough discovery, one of the greatest in human history. 

The interviewer asks him about his thoughts on the potential of the technological discoveries found in the zones and stalkers, people who sneak into the zones to smuggle out the mysterious objects left behind, things Pilman himself has less knowledge and interest in. 

We switch then to a man named Redrick Schuhart, a laboratory assistant who works at an institute studying one of the zones in a town called Harmont. He previously did some time in prison for being a stalker and still goes stalking in the zone to make extra money. One of the scientists he works for at the zone, Kirill Panov, has been studying empties, an object of two copper discs with nothing in between them, but feels discouraged by his lack of progress. Red, to cheer him up, tells him he knows where to find a full empty in the zone with something of substance between the discs and will take him there. 

Along with them, they decide to take Tender, another lab assistant. The institute enforces the rule that two people do work in the zone while another watches. Before their expedition, Redrick is ordered to meet with the Chief of Security, Captain Herzog, who warns him that he knows about his resumption of stalker activities. This is a conversation that makes Redrick wary of going into the zone even on official business, but he ultimately goes in with Kirill and Tender, especially in the face of the former's resolve. 

The zone itself looks like a fairly normal industrial area only abandoned. They make their way through the play quarter and blind quarter, places name for the effect they had on former residents during the visit. Tender starts to be affected by the zone himself, babbling through chattering teeth, and Redrick tries to settle him, then keeps him in check before he tries to return the way they came. They reach a part of the zone where there's a bug trap or an area with crushing gravitational force, which Redrick tests by throwing nuts and seeing it get pulled down into the ground. Avoiding the trap, the three made it to the garage where the full empty is with less trouble. 

Redrick enters the garage and Kirill follows, but the latter moves his back into silvery strands that look like a cobweb before Redrick can warn him. Kirill doesn't notice, and the cobweb vanishes, so the two continue with hauling the empty out. They make it out of the zone, and people at the institute celebrate the retrieval of this new arrival, but Redrick, after a generous drink from his flask to calm him down, ducks out of the excitement to visit the Borscht, a local bar. 

The bar owner, Ernest, buys objects from stalkers, which they call swag, to sell on the market. Along with him in the bar is an immigration agent attempting to convince Harmont residents to move, as well as Gutalin and Richard Noonan, the former man who believes the items in the zone are satanic and should be destroyed, and the latter a businessman supplying equipment to the institute.

JM:

Yeah, I definitely felt that by the end that I wanted to hang out at the Borscht.

Gretchen:

Yeah, especially at the beginning. The beginning sounds like a pretty bumpin place.

JM:

Yeah, that is, yeah, the Borscht at the beginning and not the sellout Borscht at the end.

Gretchen:

It has to be kind of a little grimy, you know, to be enjoyable.

Richard tells Redrick that Kirill is dead, and that, along with a raid on the Borscht looking for stalkers, prompts him to swear off that life. However, he ends up running into Guta, a woman he's been dating, who tells him that she is pregnant with his child.

The narrative jumps to five years later, with Redrick once again back in the zone as a stalker, no longer working at the institute. He's with Burbridge, also known as the Vulture, whose legs have become rubbery, no longer functional due to one of the zone's dangers, the Hell Slime, and they are waiting for a patrol car to move so they can leave. Burbridge begs Redrick not to leave him behind, promising to tell him the location of the Golden Sphere, a legendary device which grants people's wishes. 

Eventually, the patrol car leaves and the two make it out with their swag. Redrick gets Burbridge to the Butcher, a doctor who deals with zone-related injuries, then returns home to Guta and their daughter with the loot.

JM:

Yeah, this is the second book in a row where we had a character called the Butcher, huh?

Gretchen:

Yeah, very popular nickname, it seems. 

JM:

Yeah, the names in this book were just great. One of my favorites is coming up later, I'll mention that, maybe it's yours too. 

Gretchen:

I might have it down if it's the same one I have it written down. Honestly, just so I could say it. 

JM:

They really seem to go way, way out of town with these old school badass names.  It's funny because I just watched the Star Trek episode, "A Piece of the Action", and I could totally imagine all the characters names like that. They didn't quite, but it would have been totally fitting.

Gretchen:

Yes, and speaking of nicknames, Guta and Redrick refer to their daughter as the monkey, as she is covered in fur. The children of stalkers frequently seem to have such unique characteristics. Some of their neighbors look down on her, but she still plays with other children in the area. Redrick takes inventory of the swag, then heads out to make a deal on them.

He encounters Richard beforehand. Richard tries to convince Redrick to work for the Institute again, wanting to get him some honest paying work, and Redrick tries to arrange for them to meet at the Borscht. Redrick meets with two men, Raspy and Boney, who are especially interested in rings he and Burbridge found, and I can definitely see those two names being in "A Piece of the Action". That duel of Raspy and Boney is pretty good. And they pay Redrick a bundle of cash for the ring, and tell him to keep them a secret from other buyers. Redrick visits Burbridge's house and meets with his daughter Dina. Burbridge has a lot of pride and affection for his children, but when Redrick delivers the news about his fellow stalker, Dina's insistence that he should have left Burbridge for dead and had everything for himself proves to him they do not hold the same depth of feeling for their father. 

Redrick takes a cab and ends up at the Borscht, where Ernest and several men bring him into a room where a police officer is waiting. He realizes he's been set up. He does manage to escape the room and evades the authorities in order to make two phone calls. He calls Guta and tells her he'll be heading back to prison, and then Richard to ask him to provide for Guta with money from one of the objects he didn't show Raspy and Boney. A porcelain container he's leaving hidden near the phone booth. After this, he turns himself in.

The next section of the novel focuses on Richard three years later. He meets with a General Lemchen, and it is revealed that due to his efforts, many of the major gains of stalkers have been liquidated, that many of them are either in prison or retirement and that there hasn't been much of an underground market for swag anymore. However, the General then tells him that while this appears to be the case, it is because Richard hasn't been observant enough. Missing new stalkers and new items for which Burbridge, on whom Richard thought he was keeping closed tabs, seems in part responsible for. Richard heads to a club five minutes where a former stalker named Hamfist Kitty now works.

JM:

Yes, sir. Hamfist Kitty. 

Gretchen:

Really great name. 

JM:

That guy is dangerous, man. Yeah. But there's really funny too, because yeah, he's such a, he's only in this one scene, but he's just such a pathetic character, like sniveling, piddling, small-time, whoremonger with this horrible, syphilis spot or something on his nose that he keeps applying this ointment to. And Richard, who seems to be this perfectly calm and level-headed person until that just beats the crap out of him for no reason. Yeah. That just like, what? Wow. Okay. Hey. Right. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

He beats the crap out of him and Hamfist Kitty is like basically on his knees, sniveling and being like, oh boss, I'm doing my best. Yeah. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. You would expect someone named Hamfist Kitty, I feel like to be a little more like defensive in that position. 

JM:

But yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I don't know. I don't think my kitty would take that kind of beating.

Gretchen:

But yes, Hamfist Kitty is employed by Richard to bring him any zone swag he finds on the market. And he shows him the meager supply he's found, after which Richard does beat him up and accuses him of playing both sides, working for Burbridge as well. After claiming his innocence, Hamfist is asked by Richard about picnics, which Burbridge arranges, and the businessman realizes they're a front for stalkers to enter the zone. He then heads to the Borscht, which has changed since Ernest was arrested. It's not as cool there anymore. I don't know. I don't know if you'd want to hang out there as much now. 

He meets with Valentine Pilman there. They discuss the visit theories around what the intentions behind it were. 

JM:

And this part of the book was the other part besides the very opening chapter and the very end that I remembered most from the first reading of the book. And I thought this chapter was really interesting. It was really interesting to hear the other side of this and hear one of the Institute scientists actually talking about what had happened and what might happen. And there's still so much they don't know. And this is interesting portrayal too of somebody who seems to be quite smart and has had a Nobel Prize and all this stuff and is apparently very knowledgeable about this. But the more alcohol he gets in him, the more he's like, yeah, we really don't know shit. That's hilarious and sad. And like, it was really interesting. I definitely pictured him as the professor in "Stalker", pretty much like that. That's what I had. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, I was saying to Nate earlier that I watched "Stalker" last night, so it was fresh in my mind for the recording. And yeah, when I was watching it, I was thinking like, I feel like the professor was pretty inspired by Pilman. Yeah, this is an interesting part and reminds me of, the Bormashenko edition, the translation comes with Ursula K. Le Guin giving like a forward to it, where she does talk a bit about how "Roadside Picnic" does what some sci-fi does and more focuses on like normal people rather than like scientists, which is what hard science fiction people, especially at that time, would have wanted more of. So it is interesting that this is really the only time we get that kind of insight into like what the scientific community is actually thinking about. 

JM:

Yeah. And really, like it's kind of almost like one of these science fiction books where you can take from it and you can be like, oh, well, you know, there's so many ideas that could be behind this, right? And we don't actually know which one it is. So here's a bunch of, all right, like, I'm going to entertain this Richard guy with all these possibilities that I've heard about and what I believe myself, or maybe I don't really believe it. But since you need some kind of hands on thing, even though I'm the scientist, here, I'll give it to you. You know, this was just a roadside picnic. These aliens were just stopping by for a few minutes and they left a whole bunch of trash. And now it's for us to pick it up and figure out what it all is. 

And this is really funny too, because like one of the things that they're always looking for is empties. And every time I saw that, I was, I couldn't help but picture beer cans in my head. Like he describes what they look like. Yeah, they are round, container-y looking things. So yeah, but I just like, because here, we can take back our empties and we get 10 cents for every empty. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. Those were the drinks at the picnic, you know.

Nate:

Yeah. Alien Steel Reserve. 

JM:

Right, right. Some of the stuff they might have left behind is basically like dangerous waste, right? Probably like the hell slime and stuff like that. Most likely, but again, we can only speculate, right? Yeah. Maybe, I don't know, maybe that was a nice, sunny jacuzzi bath for them. I don't know. Who knows, right? We don't know. Yeah. And I mean, it could just be, I guess again, like, why do you get into science fiction? Is it because you like to question stuff or you want cool aliens and spaceships and explosions or do you want all of you above? But yeah, definitely the questioning is, I've always thought it's one of the most interesting aspects, you know, it's like, and obviously the writers are doing that in general. And the Strugatsky's are kind of inviting you to play along with them and speculate. They're not telling you what to think or what to surmise, but the title "Roadside Picnic" is very innocuous. You just saw that book on a shelf and that title, you wouldn't really know what to expect. It doesn't necessarily invite you to pick it up and read it either. Or as "Stalker", I don't know, the first time I heard that name, I thought it was some serial killer movie or something like that. 

Nate:

So yeah, I mean, it's strange, I guess maybe unfortunate as being English speakers and how it's translated in English, because they use the word stalker in Russian, like not the Russian word for stalker, but the English word. So I mean, it reads different to a Russian reader than it would for an English reader.

Gretchen:

Yeah, as the Strugatsky's have said, like they coined the term "stalker" in Russian with this book. So, you know, it isn't, yeah, it is sort of unfortunate that we just kind of assume that it's the same thing that it is in English. 

JM:

But I don't think it necessarily means something different in English. I think it just, it's a word with a few different connotations to it. And I mean, yeah, when I see the word stalker in the book, it makes perfect sense to me. It's like, you know, a hunter, a tracker, somebody who finds things, right? But also, yeah, there's this now, there's, I guess we have this like, dangerous sexual predator connotation to it or something like that. But it's, that's only one possible meaning, I suppose. And it doesn't clash for me necessarily at all. But it's kind of telling about me that not knowing anything about that movie and seeing it listed a lot as a favorite film of many people, I'm like, Oh, what is that some kind of descendant of "Psycho" or something like that? No, of course, it's not like that at all, right? And it makes sense. Once you see it. And once, yeah, I mean, we talked before about that magazine from the 20s, what basically translated as the Tracker or the Pathfinder.

Nate:

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. 

JM:

And that like, also suggests to me what the stalkers were doing, right? 

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, I guess it just has like to a Russian reader, it would have a more otherworldly sense not being a native Russian word, just as like, if we use the Russian word for stalker, like следопыт, like the name of that magazine, it just wouldn't register what that is in English. And it would just kind of feel like, I don't know, alien in a way. 

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

Awfully distant in a way that a lot of the names and places feel to me. I'm actually curious, JM, about what you mentioned before about the subtle hints of it being Canada, because I was also trying to place the location. I mean, it didn't feel quite English or quite German, but kind of like somewhere halfway in between, but also not Dutch either. 

JM:

So yeah, so they talk about, there's a few different things that point to it, one of which is they talk about money having the Queen's portrait on it, but also eventually that gets replaced with greenbacks. And I think that that's again, a commentary on like the capitalist exploitation. And now there's like black market in US dollars, because I mean, that's what they basically have in Cuba and stuff like that, right? And had for a long time. And I don't know, I guess it's just kind of like, again, it's why they chose to set it in Canada, I can't really say. I mean, there are supposedly five or six other zones and they could have set it in any one of them. But I guess they also wanted to be able to make a commentary on capitalism, which I'm sure, you know, I mean, this is definitely a part of the book. It's not the only part. It's not just this dismantling of capitalism that would please the communist censors. But that's certainly a part of it, right? And criticism of capitalism is pretty justified. It doesn't come across heavy handed or anything like that. 

But yeah, we're basically, that's kind of funny, you know, at the time we're living in now, where like, a lot of half joking speculation that Donald Trump's administration is going to want to annex Canada and stuff like that. And there's some interesting connotations to all that, I think. Then yeah, it seems like as far as trading in zone tech and zone stuff, which is pretty much the whole reason for Harmont's existence at this point, it's US dollars that reign supreme.

Gretchen:

Yeah. And as we had mentioned, "Roadside Picnic" gets its name from Pilman's theory that he tells Richard, which is that the visit was the equivalent of a group of humans having a picnic in some meadow or field off the side of the road. The debris left behind from such an excursion, gasoline puddle, old spark plugs, scattered rags and the like, are looked upon by the animals in that field the same way humans look upon the objects from the zone. This would mean then that the extraterrestrial beings were indifferent to humanity's existence, rather than trying to leave them some sort of gift or anything the other theories propose. Pilman also brings up the bizarre effects living near the zone has had on people. He talks about the statistical anomalies of incidents such as the barber who immigrating from Harmont and setting up in a new town had 90% of his clients died by unrelated freak accidents about the exponential increase in car accidents, gas pump explosions, natural disasters and other phenomena in that same area with the arrival of the barber. There is no scientific way for them to explain this type of occurrence. 

JM:

The professor doesn't know where Detroit is, which I think if you were living somewhere in Ontario, you probably would. But on the other hand, it's pretty much also a given that like the zone has become a place of international interest. So, you know, we have our Russian Kirill, we have, yeah, like, yeah, the captain, what's his name, and we have the people, the Swedish guy, like, you know, people, all sorts of different nationalities seem to come to this place because they're the Maltese, of course, which is his actual gangster name. So, basically, the area around the zone has attracted all these people from all over who want to get in on a piece of the action, basically. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, Pilman now drunk gets a lift from Richard, who goes to Redrick's afterwards, as he has at this point returned from prison. He sees the monkey when he enters the apartment, as well as Redrick's father, one of the numerous people who have died and had their corpses resurrected by the zone. Guta then greets him and tells him that her daughter has been deteriorating, no longer able to understand what is said to her. 

Redrick is speaking with Burbridge, both of whom see Richard after their conversation, and the latter is leaving. Redrick tells Richard of his plans to move to a cottage like Burbridge, no longer able to emigrate, his plan to do to Harmont residents being banned from doing so. 

JM:

Yeah, so they close the borders too. Yeah, people can't leave, right? 

Gretchen:

Yeah, the difference between the immigration officer first, trying to convince people to leave, and now the borders closing on them. 

JM:

Yeah, it's like, oh, actually, we can't let them do that. Yeah, yeah. 

Gretchen:

And Richard feels distaste for the zone, observing the effect it has had on the Schuhart family. The last section of the novel returns to Redrick, who is back in the zone with Arthur, Burbridge's son. 

JM:

The contrast between the daughter and the son is to me kind of strange. Like I said, the son seems almost like angelically innocent. He's the sacrifice, basically. And the daughter is like, not to put too fine a point on it, but like, you know, at the end of the night, Red's calling her basically a slut and saying that she's like completely egotistical. And sex with her means nothing because she'll do it with anybody, you know, like, it's pretty harsh, right? And it's just like, well, that's why is it like that? It's weird. It's weird. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. Even besides the sexual aspect, just the conversation that he has with Dina is sort of like, oh, you have no concern for your father after finding out that his legs don't work anymore. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

She does seem just like, in all cases, very selfish and very unconcerned with people around her. And of course, we can't think too highly of Red either because he's having sex with this other woman when he's married to Guta, who's like waiting for him to make his meals and everything like that and looking after the child and not going off and abandoning him when he goes to prison for five years, right? The movie "Stalker" doesn't at least make that very clear that she's not happy about any of this. The book is kind of just like, oh, yeah, you know, isn't that sweet? She's making him a fish dinner. Like, yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah. I think it's interesting the difference between Guta in the novel and like, even though we don't get her name in the film, Guta in the film, where like, at least we do get the moment in the film where I feel like it's, she's not talking to anybody else. She's talking directly to the camera, kind of about her situation. And you don't get that with like, obviously, a lot of the characters in "Stalker" have monologues and moments where they're talking about their thoughts, but they're usually directing that to one of the other characters. But I felt like in the scene where we get the figure kind of talking about like, oh, I want to be with him, because even though it's like a hardship, there's still like moments of happiness without the sadness, I wouldn't have happiness. It feels like she is getting like her own monologue to the camera, like to the audience. 

JM:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I still think she still is the same sort of characterization as the waiting wife. And when will my husband be back? I can't say that it's still the best representation, but I just thought that was an interesting thing that the film did. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

But yes, Arthur, who again seems to be a little better than his sister, had begged to be taken on this trip, which is to get to the Golden Sphere, as Burbridge had promised Redrick he'd give the location of. Despite multiple offers from Burbridge before, Redrick accepted the map at this point due to a hope, or perhaps even a certainty of a miracle. He finds that Arthur has brought a gun to the zone and convinces him to lose it.

Arthur tells him it only has one bullet in it in case anything happened to him like what happened to his father. And Redrick tells Arthur not to worry about that. Redrick himself knows that Arthur won't really make it out of the zone anyways. He is going to be the required sacrifice for the Golden Sphere. However, Redrick starts to feel sorry for Arthur and that along with instinctively saving him from one area of the zone where the atmosphere suddenly turns scolding and left them feeling burned, has him faltering in his resolution to sacrifice him. He decides, though, to rationalize his actions as saving Arthur for the grinder, the last trap before the sphere. He cannot survive that on his own. 

They find themselves powering through another dangerous area where they have to wade through muck, keeping low to avoid thunder and lightning, almost losing their bearings in the process. Redrick feels his spite towards Burbridge and all of the others who have kept him down rise in him and feels an addictive delight at surviving this trip and seeing Burbridge's reaction to Redrick letting his sacrifice's son.

They arrive at the sphere and Redrick allows Arthur to run towards it. He's shouting out his desire, happiness, free and for everyone when he is abruptly cut off, the invisible grinder lifting him off the ground and twisting him, killing him. 

Turning from the scene, Redrick really starts to consider what he wants, what he'll wish for, and considers how things ought to be or how he thinks they ought to be. Eventually, frustrated, he approaches the golden sphere, saying, "I'm an animal. You can see that I'm an animal. I have no words. They haven't taught me the words. I don't know how to think. Those bastards didn't let me learn how to think. But if you really are all powerful, all knowing, all understanding, figure it out. Look into my soul. I know everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I've never sold my soul to anyone. It's mine. It's human. Figure out yourself what I want because I know it can't be bad. To hell with it all. I just can't think of a thing other than those words of his, happiness, free for everyone, and let no one be forgot." 

JM:

Yeah, I mean, I remember the first time I read that. I did kind of think he's not going to tell us what happened. That's it. I guess I was not really unhappy with it. I was commenting earlier about how I felt about the Cronenberg book. And yeah, I mean, I think especially this time the ending struck me as being very good, very effective. Not just the ambiguity, but the fact that I think it is kind of a hopeful ending in a way. And I think that like, we spent all this time, and especially during this last chapter, where Red seems to be kind of going off the deep end a little bit. And, you know, he knows he can get to this thing, and he doesn't want Burbridge to have it. He wants to help monkey, but he also wants revenge. You know, he wants like, he wants the bastards to suffer for all the indignities and everything like that. And yet, just before Arthur dies, he seems so happy and he's shouting out the thing that he apparently wants. I mean, does he really? Is that really what's in his heart? I don't know, maybe it is. 

I spent the whole chapter kind of wondering, like, I mean, with Arthur kid, what's he like? Is he selfish like the other one? But no, apparently not. You know, he just seems to be this innocent white eyed kid, basically, is like, just, just, I don't know, you could picture him being a fan of Gernsback-era science fiction, pretty much. He doesn't seem to have any malice or selfishness in him. And then I feel like in that last moment is when Red has his kind of epiphany, right? He suddenly questions what he's doing there at all. He's kind of ultimately saying, okay, you can see into my heart, apparently, you're whoever you are, you aliens, you ball of magic freedom, whatever you are, you can tell what I'm really feeling. I don't have to sit here and spell it out to you. You tell me what it is. And all we can do is repeat the words that you just heard. And they're not even his words. Ultimately, it seems like his words, or his previous thoughts, is like, this stalker, this man, he's been loyal. He's had his friends, he's had his family, the world's kind of done him wrong in a lot of ways. And yeah, maybe he's not perfect. He's done a lot of shitty things. Maybe maybe he just did one by leading this poor kid to his death. But yeah, I mean, he doesn't have to be like that. And he ultimately at the end seems to realize that can the wish be fulfilled? Or is it just going to lead to more disaster? I don't know. You know, some people probably have different interpretations of that. 

The I didn't read the piece Stanisław Lem wrote about this. But the essay that I did read mentions that. And the writer of the essay seems to think that the ending is more hopeful than Lem does. And I think that ultimately, I kind of felt the same way, like Red's redemptive moment almost like it's not like he's been terrible throughout, but he has been neglecting a lot of things he has been so consumed and increasingly, I guess, consumed with his desire to fix things for himself at those close to him, which ultimately means damage to somebody else, right? It means like somebody is going to suffer so that he and his brood, I guess he could say, are more successful and can climb to the top. And it almost seems like he starts out the chapter and that's what he's been thinking. It's like he's been drinking for months and hanging out with Burbridge. And like, every time those two hang out, it's like, yeah, there's no love between them. But you can tell that this the Burbridge and maybe, I don't know, bad implication, perhaps the daughter as well, as a negative influence on Red in a way. It's not like Burbridge is dominating him necessarily, but maybe just the two personalities coming together is a bad scene. And not just because, I mean, they're not friends. They probably would sell each other out in a heartbeat, right? Except Red can't do that for some reason. He can't bring himself to when Burbridge got injured, he helped him out. And we're not sure if the reverse would be true, but it's definitely heavily implicated that that guy would have just left him there to die. And so we're supposed to conclude, I think, that Red is the better man and possibly the most honest of the stalkers and the one who would never sell somebody out on purpose. And that's a good thing. I mean, that's like to fit the code of these Wild West type figures that we've been seeing through the entire book. That's not the thing that you do, right? 

And so, and yeah, in the end, he's like, he's giving himself up. And even though, yeah, you watch "Stalker" and you can kind of see the more metaphysical side and that everybody says, you know, Tarkovsky was a very spiritual, even religious person and all that. And you can see all those themes in some of his films. And maybe that's not 100% there in the book, but I think it's still kind of there in that ending where it's almost like, yeah, giving himself up completely to the zone to like, you know, this is allowing himself to have faith. And they say, this is kind of a double-edged thing. Like, I don't always feel good about it. But like, if you're an alcoholic, you're probably familiar with the 12-step program and all that. And one of the things that they tell you that you need to do is basically admit that you're unable to solve your problems by yourself and give yourself up to a higher power, a divinity of some kind, something higher than yourself, that will be able to assist you through these very trying times that are ahead. And I feel like that's the kind of moment that Red is experiencing. I'm not sure if that's what they call the moment of clarity, but it's close to that. 

I found it very effective. I found it like, and even as the ending, being more explicit and, you know, having like maybe a final chapter where we get to see Red living in his cottage with Guta and what's happened to Burbridge the Vulture and what's happened to Noonan and what's happened to Hamfist Kitty, although I'd love to find out what happened to him. But I think that would have kind of made the book a lot more normal and not stand out as much somehow. I'm really happy now with the way the book ended. And I'm glad he didn't really go beyond that. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

You could argue that, yeah, we could we could have got a little more concrete things about the aliens and stuff like that. But we also didn't need that. That story has been told in a lot of other media and a lot of other times. So it's not like every story needs to be that kind of story. This is a different kind of story. This is a very human story. It does lead you to think about things. And I do wonder if a first contact that we have might be kind of like this, you know, in some ways where we can't really figure out what's happened or what it means that it's over so fast to that we're just left to pick up the pieces. And it's not like we're in Star Trek world where we can follow a ship's warp signature to find out where it went. It's like, they're gone. And we may never hear from them again. And the fact that they were here. How much does that really mean to us? What does it mean to our faiths and our future prospects and our technology and all this other stuff? And the Strugatskys are really taking this all these questions and making you think more deeply about them, which I think is really, really well done and incredible in this book. So, yeah.

Gretchen:

I agree. I really enjoy the ending as well. I do like that ambiguity there. And I think what's really interesting to your point JM, about the goodness of Red. I mean, one of the first things we see that there are these like moments, his motivation in the beginning for getting the full empty is to completely help Kirill. There's one moment when Kirill asks him about the price and Redrick is like, that's not the reason why I'm doing it. He feels almost offended that that's what Kirill brings up. The idea that he's doing it for any monetary value and not for Kirill himself. The instinctive saving of Burbridge, not because of the Golden Sphere, but just to save him and to save Arthur. And I think it is interesting to see that balanced with his other actions that he does do for money, which of course is what a lot of the commentary here is based on, is people striving for happiness for money. And because of that, because money is the source of happiness for people outside of this Golden Sphere opportunity, that's why someone always has to be unhappy when another person is happy, which is a point that Redrick himself brings up before his request to the Golden Sphere. I don't know, I think that it is a very like interesting way of contrasting that.

JM:

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Although you could say maybe I guess Red is kind of our main character, and he's the one that seems to be really going through a journey. Yeah, I really feel that the influences around him, right up until the end, right up until Arthur, Arthur dying in the meat grinder, influenced the way he is. And his character has changed over the course of the book. And generally, generally is becoming less hopeful and less like, sure of himself, more perhaps devastated by circumstances. But then yeah, in the end, he has this like almost like turnaround kind of thing, where he has an epiphany of sorts, and he feels responsible, I guess, but also like he can't handle the responsibility. Yeah, I think he feels bad too, about what just happened, what he's just done like a machine, you know, for this entire chapter, just like wading through green puke, and like yelling at this poor guy, and mind you, I mean, the kid did come along of his own volition, but it's like, he still seems really innocent, you know, he's like, probably Burbridge, goaded him onto it, basically, right? And I don't know, I'm not sure if I read into it, right? But it almost seems like Burbridge was like, yeah, you know what, I don't need both my kids, you take this one, something bad happens to him, well, you'll still get the thing for me, right? Like, it's almost seemed like that was what was going on there. 

It's like at first Red was totally going along with this. And he's like, yeah, I'm going along with it. But for my own reasons, you bastard, right? And by the end, it did seem like he had really changed his tune a little bit about all that. And like, it's just interesting because he has such a tough, cold exterior, but inside, you know, he's like, he's really hurting down there, you know, and it's like his heart is really hurting and stuff like that. And that's why he's like, drinking so much and stuff like that, and sort of keeps coming back to the zone and knowing that, oh, there's a good chance that it'll kill me one day, right? And like, what's it doing to my insides, right? I don't know. He's a very conflicted character, and we're supposed to see that and also maybe feel conflicted about him as a person, obviously, as well. Because yeah, not everything he's done is very nice, to say the least, but such is life, I guess. 

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, I really like this in general. And yeah, definitely the perfect ending for this novel. Yeah, it was a cool experience reading this one for sure. And I liked that they went into this stuff from a different angle than the film took, which was definitely much more in that metaphysical, metaphorical direction, rather than a lot of these character moments and personality traits. And I guess overt political commentary that we get with the novel and how it presents these themes and how this whole world is pieced together, and it's a really weird and cool world that I'm glad we got to see a fair amount more of here. 

JM:

What was your favorite of the gadgets on display?

Nate:

I don't know. The empties I thought were pretty cool, for sure. 

JM:

Yeah, yeah. 

Gretchen:

I would love to know what the bitches rattles do. That name, I keep thinking about that name. I want to know what they do. 

JM:

Yeah, yeah. The shrieker sounds like a really good prank to play on your shitty neighbors. Yeah, apparently, like, it's like an ultrasonic thing, I guess. It's basically a flash bomb, but it's sound instead of life. 

Nate:

The Hell Slime is also a pretty cool name for trap.

Gretchen:

Yeah, and you said it was Witch's Jelly in the earlier translation? 

JM:

In the first one, yeah. So that I think is the Hell Slime. Yeah, so I don't know which name is closer to being whatever it was called in Russian. 

Nate:

I looked it up in the original Russian text and the word is closer to Witch's Jelly than Hell Slime, at least in the magazine publication.

Gretchen:

I guess Hell Slime does have a pretty fun ring to it. 

Nate:

It does, yeah. They both have nice imagery that they evoke. 

JM:

Yeah, I definitely like the brutal, disgusting evilness of Hell Slime. Yeah, maybe again, it has to do with that profanity thing. It does seem like from the afterward written by Boris there that a lot of the stuff that the censors objected to had to do with that and also alcohol consumption and suggestions of immorality. So interestingly, it wasn't any political stuff they were really criticizing. Although, I mean, I guess apparently it was shortly back before probably actually during that time, like the late 60s or something, I did read there was a lot of concern in Russia at that time around the nation's alcohol consumption and that it was getting collectively out of control and they had to do something about that. So all the depictions of drinking and stuff in the book were seen as problematic. And yeah, I mean, I guess that makes sense, perhaps. 

Gretchen:

It does sound like some of the censors were really at the whim of whatever big fad it was in society of, oh, well, we got to promote that alcohols bad right now. Like that's the really in thing to do right now. 

JM:

Yeah. It is interesting to me both seeing this and commentaries on, especially "Solaris", from the Tarkovsky version, that is what the censors really objected to. And in that one, of course, it was all they talk about God. They didn't like that. And they didn't like things getting too personal, either, I guess, because it was not something that could appeal to the populists that they wanted something, something that could appeal to the populist filmgoers. And I guess sometimes Tarkovsky just wasn't that. So that's just as true here in the West, right? So I don't know. 

The Strugatsky's don't seem to have met with a huge amount of resistance, like Nate said, there's a lot more relaxed by then. 

Gretchen:

This novel especially would definitely align with the ideas of the state, because I mean, it is very anti capitalism. Look at the immorality of the West and immorality that capitalism causes, which I mean, yeah, I definitely think that's a message that I can agree with when faced with how this Strugatsky's here handle it. So I could see why they wouldn't really object to that part of this novel. 

JM:

And I did read that, even though it seems like they were greeted generally with favor, I did read that they were kind of uncomfortable with some of the scrutiny they were under. When you see something in Russia, like in the Soviet Union, like the municipal film appreciation society, or something like that translated in in English, and like, it sounds kind of innocuous. But then the more you read about it, you're like, oh, this is like a nationally funded political body. And they actually can tell you pretty much straight up, whether your film or your book or whatever is going to get published, right? It's not even so much that they have the power to say no, it's that they like pretty much dictate what's right and what's wrong to be put out there and disseminated to the public.

I feel like even if the attention you're getting is positive, when organizations like that are talking about your work and discussing you as an artist and stuff like that, it could make your skin crawl a little bit, just to even be exposed to the kind of attention, right? And yeah, I mean, I'm in favor of things like nationally funded art things and all that, I think it's a good thing. But I don't think, obviously, I don't think they should have a direct say on what can and cannot be considered true or or something that should be put out there, you know, be having the power to just basically throw your work into the dust is too much, right? 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

Yeah. It seems like that's perhaps something that bothered them. And even though we were getting into, yeah, like an even more relaxed time and yeah, it would have been interesting to see Arkady died in 1991 or something. 

Gretchen:

Yes. It was two months before the fall of the Soviet Union. 

JM:

Right. So basically, they never got to see, I guess, what would happen in the I mean, it would have been interesting to see what a post-Soviet Sturgatsky work would have been really like between the two of them. 

Nate:

But things are definitely chaotic in the publishing industry after the Soviet Union collapsed. The magazine that this was originally published in Aurora, basically survives until this day. And from the history that I was reading about the magazine, it seems like they were very unique in that they were able to stay afloat after the USSR collapsed because all their funding and basically support was from the state. And now they didn't have that anymore. And they had to survive in a capitalist landscape. 

JM:

And I imagine that was the same for a lot of art and entertainment institutions, right? 

Nate:

Yeah. And apparently a lot of them folded. 

JM:

I mean, you have like Mosfilm producing all the Sturgatsky films and so many other Russian films. 

Nate:

Exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah, all of them. Yeah. 

JM:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much all of them. Yeah. 

Gretchen:

I know also, J.M., you had mentioned the Lem article, the critical work that he had published about "Roadside Picnic". And I did read that. Yeah. And it is very interesting because he spends a very good amount of time trying to posit his own theory about what the extraterrestrial life was doing with the visit. Basically, he comes up with this theory where the aliens were trying to gift humanity things, except that the cargo they had sent, like broke up in the atmosphere and the ship collapsed in six parts that where the zone eventually landed. So it was just very interesting to see Lem get very focused on that particular part of the novel. But yeah, he does not care much for the ending. He seems to take it as this regression of science fiction towards fairy tale from what I understood. 

Nate:

Well, I think it was kind of part of what they were getting at with the word "stalker" to begin with, this kind of, yeah, fairy tale-ish, Brothers Grimm, type feel to it.

JM:

Interesting. Like the big bad wolf. 

Gretchen:

It is interesting to me how in both the novel and the film, nicknames are so prevalent, even more so in the film, because you don't even learn the name of the stalker. 

Nate:

Or anyone else. 

Gretchen:

You don't learn the names of the writer or the professor. Yeah, everyone is like unnamed. So it does have sort of that fairy tale, like folkloresque quality to it because of that.

JM:

Yeah, "Towards the Last Fairy Tale" essay, it basically talks about how the entire novel career of the Strugatskys kind of has this fairy tale resonance to it almost, and that it reaches the apex for them, at least in Roadside Picnic. And Lem seems to say it's a subversion of that, but they don't agree. They think that the wishing ball is the ultimate of the supernatural assistants that you find in fairy tales. And that, yeah, I mean, it's still a subversion in the sense that usually in the end of fairy tales, right, the supernatural assistant is definitely used to gain some kind of advantage in the real world. That's kind of the way that I think a lot of readers would hope that this book would go. And that, yeah, Red would make his wish and he would get home and his, I guess, loving wife would still be his loving wife, but all his enemies would be powerless. And I don't know, maybe the monkey would be able to put her arms around him again and say, Hi, daddy, I'm so glad that you're home. Let me tell you all these cool things that happen. And it doesn't quite go like that. And I think that it's a testament to okay, they are maybe breaking the mold a little bit here, but they're not really just turning it on its head. It's not like this completely bleak and angry subversion, even though that's what Red is kind of aiming at until the last minute. 

(music: noisy drone)

"Stalker" film discussion

JM:

I didn't really think about that aspect so much until I read that. And I'm like, Yeah, I can kind of see, I can kind of see that. Maybe "Stalker" has a little more of that because of, I guess, the sort of, I mean, I'm not saying this in a negative way, but the sort of generic quality of the characters and that they're not even given names, they're just named after their professions, basically, and they represent things. 

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

It's very symbolic, whereas I'm not sure there's the book is very symbolic, right? I don't know. 

Gretchen:

I do think that Tarkovsky definitely wants more of an allegorical feel to stalker. Yeah, it may be more parable-esque than a fairy tale necessarily. Just because I think that he's, he has more concern with the spiritual nature of it. It is interesting that the Strugatskys still did write the script for "Stalker". They said that they wrote like nine scripts before Tarkovsky. 

JM:

Yeah, so Arkady had something to do with that, right? 

Gretchen:

I think both of them did.

JM:

Okay, I definitely saw Arkady's name in the opening credits. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, there is this really fun, it's like about four page article. And I believe it was written by Arkady where he talks about working with Tarkovsky. And they said about nine versions of the script. And the penultimate one, they started shooting, which sounds very different. They mentioned there's a character in it named Alan, who is supposed to be Redrick. And then the film was damaged and they had started all over again. And that's why there's two parts. If it was two parts, they could get extra money so that they could remake the damaged film. There is a really interesting little excerpt here.

This was from, believe Arkady said this, and not Boris. It seems like Arkady is the one that has a lot of material and like articles that he's written.

He said, "Andrei Tarkovsky was cruel to us, uncompromising and damned rigid. All our modest attempts at creative mutiny were mercilessly suppressed. Only once I think did we succeed in changing his mind. He agreed to delete from the film the time loop we had invented for him. A monotonous repetition of a tank column that had perished in the zone. It repeatedly crossed a little half destroyed bridge. For some reason, this trick fascinated him. He clung to it to the last and only with a strong joint effort could we convince him that this plot device was trivial and had been done a thousand times before.

Finally, he agreed. But I think only because he liked our general idea that there was to be as little as possible of the fantastic in the zone. Only a permanent expectation of something supernatural. A maximum of suspense fueled by this expectation and nothing more. Green plants, wind and water."

Nate:

Yeah, that's what you get. Which I think is a pretty cool approach to this story. Again, it's a lot different from the book No Hell Slime Here, really though. You did get like a kind of wavy set of coals at one point. I don't know if that qualifies as Hell Slime. But yeah, definitely a lot more metaphysical and metaphorical and spiritual in general. Tarkovsky is obviously a master of filmmaking and this is definitely no exception for sure.

I forgot how good the sound design and music was in the film. So that was nice too.

JM:

It was really, really awesome for sure.

Gretchen:

Yeah, JM, I had mentioned that during the break where the soundtrack is incredible. I was actually, when I was writing up my notes and reading some of the articles for it, I just had that playing on YouTube in the background because I just think it's such a great score. I think it's called "Meditation" is the one that plays several times throughout the film. Really great, really great music. And yeah, the sound design in general is great.

JM:

Yeah, and the way it kind of merges music with the sounds of the landscape and machines and trains and water and all this different stuff that's sort of blurring the lines between what's, I mean, obviously the most prominent pure musical thing is that Moog synthesizer or whatever it is that's doing that theme repeatedly in the movie. That's very, very simple, but very, very haunting. But then yeah, there's all these industrial sounds and stuff like that that are incorporated into that. And it makes very good use of stereo mixing as well as I was listening to it on headphones and really noticed that. And I mean, I guess probably original home video owners of this movie might have not picked up on all that, but I'm assuming the original cinema release was probably in stereo at least. Really cool manipulation of sounds through the different almost three dimensional space, aural space, it's a really interesting way to go about it. And yeah, there's a lot of the movies almost silent, right? Except for those sonic additives. And it certainly pulls you in to the atmosphere.

This film, and "Solaris" have to be some of the most divisive films that I'm aware of. Just in terms of the fact that like, to some people there are cinematic masterpieces and to some others, they couldn't think of a worse way to spend an evening than to watch one of these films. And I don't know, I guess I can kind of see, like it just, obviously, I kind of want to lean more into the former camp, but it is a lot of work to watch these movies kind of in a way, especially if you're not understanding the language. And that's not a barrier for everyone. But for some people, yeah, the length, the fact that, besides the fact that they're just long, there's long scenes where it seems like not really very much is happening. And people are used to things happening. That's kind of what keeps their attention.

Both back then and nowadays, the censors told Tarkovsky that he should make the film faster. And apparently his response to that was something like, no, I think the beginning should be slower so that the people who walk into the wrong theater can't have time to leave or something like that.

And like, I've had all sorts of comments like, I mean, I know how much Gretchen loves this film and I've definitely encountered other people who love this film and "Solaris". And yeah, I mean, I'm definitely really felt emotionally impacted by "Solaris", especially when I watched it before. But like, these are the kind of movies that I watch. I would watch maybe once. And even though I should come back to it, it just like even, I tried to watch it for this podcast and it was a bit of a struggle, honestly, for me. Even though I can appreciate the power of it and I can appreciate the atmosphere and everything like that.

And yeah, even the dialogues between the characters is really fascinating and good, even though it's translated and the translation doesn't seem perfect at times. But like, I've got the sense of all that. But I mean, I'm not gonna err on the negative side. I mean, I've heard people say things like, these films put them to sleep. Somebody I talked to once said watching "Solaris" was like being stuck in a drab Soviet-era waiting room for hours and hours.

But on the other hand, I understand, I think I understand what makes these films great. And yeah, I mean, it's very difficult for me to talk about film on a level with some other people, but I want to be engaged by stuff like this. And I definitely feel the philosophical power and the fact that he dared to go so metaphysical with something like this, it was actually really cool. I do think it's kind of funny at times because like, they're talking about how dangerous the zone is and like every five minutes, the stalker has to remind everybody how dangerous it is. But like, literally, we don't really see any traps or anything like that in the film. If I'm not mistaken, like it's very implied, but you don't really see anything, nothing too much. There's no Hell Slime. I guess you get the meat grinder, but it's, I don't know, it's not the same meat grinder in the present book.

Nate:

No, it's definitely not. It's more like an open well rather than like a crusher.

Gretchen:

Yeah, which is such a great design. I mean, I love every, the cinematography throughout the film is incredible. But I love, it is very much like metaphysical and kind of the psychological, one of the few times that we really see the zone doing some sort of trap is the moment when the writer tries to walk his own way and he's immediately called back. And it's not either of the characters that call him back.

JM:

But it still seems more like more suggested than actually...

Gretchen:

Yeah, yeah.

JM:

I don't know, it's just one of these things, right? You feel, I don't know if it's a culture divide or if it's just like, this is how Tarkovsky does things, I guess. But I just kind of feel like, like if this movie is gonna be remade as "Roadside Picnic", they're definitely gonna show some of these traps. I mean, like why would they not? Right? It's just, you know, cinematic.

Gretchen:

I feel like if I had looked into the Stalker video game, I'm sure they would have utilized stuff like the hell slime and...

JM:

Absolutely.

Gretchen:

That's a fitting medium to do that sort of thing.

JM:

And again, I think it speaks to the audience expectations, like I was talking about that in reference to the book and how the book doesn't really give you what you expect. The movie, even less so, right? I was like, you know, you're actually, if you read a brief, not a full summary, like what we do with the books on the podcast, but if you read like a brief description of what the movie is, you'd probably say to yourself, wow, that sounds pretty exciting, right? Like they're going into this deadly zone with all these traps and everything like that. And like, there's gotta be some, you know, real tension there. And I guess there is tension, but it's definitely more attention of the three characters and how they're feeling about things and how they're interacting. And wow, suddenly one of them's got a nuclear bomb, right? This is like...

Gretchen:

Yeah, I will say that if there is one moment that to me I could count as sort of unintentionally funny, it is their reaction to him having a bomb. They take it honestly very well.

Nate:

Yeah. I mean, I guess they've made it that far, you know? I mean, what's a bomb gonna do?

Gretchen:

Yeah, I guess it's like they've already encountered so many dangers that I suppose being a little numb to that is understandable.

JM:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you can't be too hurt on "Stalker" because unlike the book, it has a really cute dog in it, right?

Nate:

Yeah, yeah, the dog is really well-behaved. He does do a lot of cute things. Yeah. Bird is pretty cool too.

JM:

Yes.

Nate:

There's some weird editing techniques on that. There's also like another part where there was like a strange blurring effect and some of the stuff. But yeah, again, it's subtle with what the zone is doing and it's strangeness. I mean, really a lot of the atmosphere and mood comes from these scenes that Tarkovsky is setting up with how he's framing the shots and how he has certain things like move from one side to the other. It's just fascinating to watch and how that all plays out.

Gretchen:

Yes. It is Tarkovsky utilizing the cinematography to show the effects of the zone in very subtle ways. There's this one part when they first reach the zone and stalker tells the professor to go first and then the writer and then he goes. And the next shot you see, I think it's the professor is in front and then him and the writer. Like they somehow managed to like completely shift. And it's like, of course, it could just be interpreted as maybe this is a little while later, but I like to think that it was almost like consecutive that that happened and they somehow just managed to switch places in some weird inexplicable way.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Like a blink or something like that.

Nate:

Yeah. It's something a cool part and you almost get the sensor going around in circles at some times and feels very much in the language of silent film and the way he's composing the shots and how the characters interact with one another. Almost like there could be no dialogue whatsoever and it would still manage to accomplish.

JM:

Yeah, but then you'd miss all these really interesting things like just random tirades about, not really random, but about stuff like how our weakness is true strength and hardness and strength is in fact weakness that all that cool stuff would be gone, right?

Nate:

Yeah. The dialogue is good between the characters and how their inner selves and true natures propel themselves through this maze of the writer being wrapped up in his worldly reputation and riches wanting to be not only an accomplished writer, but one recognized and seen as a great, whereas the professor is more of a destructive force and you feel that play out not only with their actions, but how much time they take up in the narrative. I mean, the professor is mostly in the background not saying too much whereas the writer is constantly moving around and nervous and just kind of spilling out his inner feelings to the other two a lot.

Gretchen:

I think it's interesting in that way how like characters sort of misjudge each other and there's always sort of this coming back to like, oh, well, the way that they first appear not how they are by the end of the film or how you see them by the end of the film.

Nate:

Right.

JM:

Yeah, the writer character definitely makes me think of young artists, kind of tight people who sometimes get so self-conscious about what they're doing and start feeling like everything they've done is worthless and it's very, very angsty, but I think it's very well done as well. It feels quite real, I guess.

I feel like I don't really understand the stalker character the way I understand Red at the book almost, but at the same time, maybe that's on purpose. He's a little bit more enigmatic, not quite as, I don't know, not quite as coarse on the exterior, but he's also just as driven, the two scenes with his wife who I don't know if she has a name in the movie.

Nate:

Yeah, I don't think so.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I don't think, as Nate says, nobody does

Nate:

Well, just the monkey.

Gretchen:

Yeah, although that also is perhaps a title. I mean, that's the nickname in the book. Her real name is Maria.

JM:

It's only mentioned once, but if you catch it, yeah. I think also the way she is portrayed there is really interesting. Like she's only in a couple of scenes at the beginning and at the end. And at the beginning, she's very angry. And at the end, she's not the woman in the book, but she's more quiet and more resigned, but also clearly loves her husband despite everything. And here it seems like more patient and forgiving and less angry.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

It feels very classic Russian somehow. I don't know, like something, it's a person character you'd find in a Dostoevsky book or something like that. I mean, it's interesting because that was clearly an influence on Tarkovsky.

Nate:

Oh, sure.

JM:

It wasn't this movie, but with "Solaris", Lem was really mad at Tarkovsky as he's like, it's like you've written "Crime and Punishment" in space. And like, you know, it's like. Yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah. I was about to mention actually "Crime and Punishment" because doesn't, I can't think of, it's been a while since I've read it. Doesn't the main female character, she like waits, there's like the epilogue where she waits for Raskolnikov like three years to come out of prison.

Nate:

Sonya, I think her name was, right?

Gretchen:

Sonya, I believe so.

Nate:

Yeah, it's been a while since I've read that one too. Another one that I have in Russian and in English, so I'll have to do the Constance Garnett side by side and then see how that goes at some point. But yeah, you can definitely see a bit of Dostoevsky's religiosity coming in through on the film in this. There's some pretty unsubtle shots of the portrait of Christ and the religious documentation being like under the water and the mud and stuff like that. Definitely comes through a fair amount though, even though the film is so open-ended and abstract, you could really apply it to any kind of religion and spirituality, I think, not just Christianity.

JM:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah, like it definitely, Tarkovsky was inspired by like the Christian faith, but it doesn't have to necessarily be Christian.

JM:

What do you think of the monkey suddenly manifesting telekinetic powers at the very end of the film? Did that come out of nowhere or was it an interesting addition?

Nate:

Yeah, I thought it was a cool touch and nod to the original, not in the form of like weird animal mutation, which seems to be byproduct of the stalkers in the zone and their activities there, but more of a subtle mental mutation that is present in the stalker's children here.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah, it's a very weird choice though, because like you haven't seen her till now, you kind of got the impression there's something strange about her. She comes out, she suddenly narrates a poem, and then you see what she does with the glasses or something and she's like, why is she narrating this poem? What is that signify? It's interesting though, like I kind of got chills during that entire thing the first time I watched it, right? It's an interesting touch,

I guess I kind of interpreted it as maybe there's hope for the future outside of the modality of the world, that maybe the professor inhabits, for example. I mean, he was a cool character, but maybe at the end you're supposed to kind of refute his worldview almost. And I think maybe, I don't know, like in the book, for example, there's these implications that, well, we don't know what the mutations of the zone will lead to and we were kind of frightened of them, right? And even Red and Guta are, I mean, you can say they're kind of frightened by the monkey and her transformation into something they see as being not human anymore. Whereas here, I guess monkey is very human and she understands poetry, but she also has something special that the zone has given to her. And maybe this is the future.

And I don't know, apparently, most people are walking contradictions, so Tarkovsky frowned on science fiction. He didn't like it. He said he didn't like it. I said it was like comic book frivolity and just absurd, but he made two classic science fiction films. And also he believed in things like ESP and flying saucers and stuff like that. And I'm always very puzzled by reading or hearing about people who like believe in UFOs and stuff and yet scoff at science fiction. To me, it seems weird, but there you go. You get people like that, right? To me, I haven't read or seen any UFO accounts that are quite as fascinating as the most fascinating we thought out science fiction stories, but maybe it's just because most of the people who tell these kind of tales are not, I guess, not writers on the level of Strugatskys or Tarkovsky, maybe, I don't know.

This is kind of interesting to me that apparently, I guess you can dismiss an entire genre and yet work in it effectively. Probably Tarkovsky would probably say, oh, my films are not science fiction. They're spiritual quests into the inner depths of the soul.

Gretchen:

Yeah, metaphysical allegories about God.

JM:

Yeah, yeah. But don't say it's symbolism. Tarkovsky says there's no symbolism in "Stalker". It's just life, right? Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don't.

Gretchen:

I am glad to know that despite apparently Tarkovsky suppressing them with an iron fist, it does seem like the Strugatskys were pretty happy with the final product of "Stalker", which is, again, more than can be said for Lem. Definitely does not like "Solaris".

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, the film is definitely different than the novel, but I think it works incredibly well. I mean, beyond the masterful cinematography aside, and yeah, it's just unique and it leaves an impression on you. It interprets the stuff from the book differently, like it's no longer the Golden Sphere, instead it's a mysterious room we never see and the characters never enter, but it works as this powerful mirror of the true nature of the self.

Gretchen:

It is interesting too, because I feel like due to "Stalker" being on my mind, I kind of assume that's how the sphere works in "Roadside", but it doesn't necessarily have to work that way either. It could just be like stating one's wish rather than, I mean, Redrick says, like, look into my soul, look and see what is in there and make that the case. Perhaps that wasn't necessarily how it works. I mean, Burbridge seems to have wished for his children.

JM:

So correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no actual conversation equivalent to the chapter in the book with Pilman, how he talks about the roadside picnic and all that.

Gretchen:

No.

JM:

There's not really, right? So in the film, to me anyway, the zone seems more planned. I don't know if you guys, like, it seems more, and again, maybe that fits in with the possible religious implications in the film or that Tarkovsky was feeling, but it seems like the zone in the movie is more orchestrated. It doesn't contradict itself, whereas in the book, it fits the concept of the roadside picnic in that all of that just seems like random stuff thrown around, right? And that's why especially you have to be careful because, yeah, like, there's no pattern to it, so you just have to feel your way around and use intuition and use your senses to the maximum of their ability. It says things like, people can only get there, if they're desperate, not if they're good or bad. None of that stuff matters if they're lost.

And it kind of makes me think of a thing, and then, you know, like the Bible, which I didn't mention in the, there's a whole story around this, but I got this new reading device that I bought from somebody in the United States, and when I got it, it had 32 different English translations of the Bible on it. I've been doing some Bible reading, just out of curiosity and comparing different parts of the Bible, and it's been interesting. This is a doom band called The Place of Skulls that Victor Griffin was in that he had for a while, and they have a song about Jesus. And in the song, it goes something like, he never came for the righteous man, but for the lost, he gave it all. And there's one of the Psalms that also says something similar. Actually, no, it's not one of the Psalms. It's something in the New Testament, and it's one of the letters. I think it's in like Timothy or something like that. And he's basically explaining, I think it's the apostle Paul, and he's basically explaining that the law, as in like the law of Israel in the Old Testament, was not made for people who were naturally and morally on the right path. It was made for other people, everybody else. And there's kind of a bad side to that, because it's like, I don't know, it's one of the most contentious parts of the Bible. And yes, it is in the New Testament, and where most translations basically put homosexuality alongside rapists and murderers and slave traders and stuff like that. So yeah, it's not very comfortable, but the very essence, I guess, of what that side of Christianity says is that, it's the people that really need the most help are the ones that are the ones that are turning to the light. As Trouble says in their song, "Run to the Light".

Then that, for me, is what the feeling that I got from the room in "Stalker", what they say about it, and that only certain people can make it there, and your particular goodness or badness or anything like that doesn't really have that much to do with it. It's something else, it's some quality in you, a desperation perhaps, a desire to find the answers when you've lost your faith and stuff like that.

Gretchen:

I think that also ties in with what you have with the stalker's idea about weakness and like pliability and sort of to be strong and to be hard is not the way to be weak. It's very the meek inheriting the earth sort of thing where it's sort of the ones that are downtrodden and the ones that are lost and the ones that don't have that hope are the ones that will be helped.

Nate:

It's about facing your true self and your innate discomfort with the world around you and not putting on this kind of facade to deal with it. Yeah, it's definitely interesting commentary and characters are certainly more archetypes than actual people, but the way they interact with each other and how they come to these realizations at the end through their actions and these experiences throughout the film and what that makes them trigger inside themselves and realize about their own natures I think is again, really good take on the construct of the novel's golden sphere.

JM:

Cool, yeah, maybe a little bit less enamored of certain qualities of the film, but that's all on me. I mean, I certainly, I'm glad this film exists and I'm really, I do appreciate the things about it that I think I can appreciate. It's really cool that this is one way to interpret "Roadside Picnic". It won't duplicate the setting or the old school gangsterish dialogue and names and stuff like that. I personally feel that that's part of the charm of the book as I read it in both translations and I'm a fan of that kind of stuff. What can I say, like, you know, the noir, it just works for me, it's fun and it adds this thing to "Roadside Picnic" where, yeah, "Roadside Picnic" is actually, it does kind of cover some of those metaphysical themes that "Stalker" does. It's not quite so, I don't know, yeah, I don't really get all those religious implications. I wasn't really thinking about the Bible when I was reading it and stuff like that.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I feel like the metaphysical aspect again is sort of balanced with like the more political, like social aspect of it, which really fits with like the vagueness versus the more solid aspects of it.

Nate:

And it's cool that Tarkovsky did include some of that social commentary in the film in itself. I mean, the very obvious use of the sepia filter for the city scenes and the kind of drab police state that they live in at the beginning, which is again, a part of the novel as well. I guess not exactly the main focus of the commentary that the Strugatskys were going for.

So a couple of quick things on the film that I just wanted to mention real quick. I remember saying that when we covered "Journey to the Center of the Earth" way, way back, that'd be cool to see like a Tarkovsky adaptation of that film. And in some ways you do kind of get that with "Stalker" of all these like tight scenes through flooded caverns and all that stuff here. You could see that working well with the Verne story and less of an adventure mode.

But in complete contrast to Stalker, I didn't realize that the Stalker's wife played the lead character in this one film that I had watched a while ago and really liked called "Office Romance", which was shot around the same time, which is like, again, the total opposite of "Stalker" and that it's like this happy, cheery, heartwarming, romantic comedy.

JM:

Wow. I was wondering why she had top billing in the film. She actually literally is the first cast member in the film.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

And I was like, wow, okay. I mean, she's not in the movie that much. She had some star credit as well.

Nate:

Yeah, no, she was in a lot of movies apparently, but yeah, I watched this one "Office Romance" that was shot around the same time. As "Stalker" and she plays like this strict but stern bureaucrat who heads up like a government statistics office or something like that. The male romantic lead is this kind of like clumsy guy down in his luck that works at a lower position. And yeah, it's a really good, funny movie. That's like the total opposite of this, but she's great in both roles, even though they couldn't be more different from one another. That's another one that's like almost three hours long. Again, shot in two parts, I guess, due to how the Soviet Union set up the film industry with the multi-part films or whatever, for whatever reason might have been advantage. But yeah, if you want something different from the same actress, definitely check that one out because I like that film a lot.

JM:

The first time I was ever exposed to anything to do with "Stalker" was actually, an odd link was the, it was a band from Norway that were called Virus. And it was basically the second incarnation almost, I guess, in a way of this sort of weird black metal band called Ved Buens Ende and the drummer switched to guitars. And he was the vocalist and they put out this album called "Carheart" and I think 2000 or something like that. And it seems like that and the band as a whole was quite influenced by the movie "Stalker". And they had a track on the album called, I think it's a track called "Bandit" or something like that. And it's almost an instrumental, but it has this long sample in the track from "Stalker". And it's the wife berating stalker at the beginning of the film. Of course, it's all in Russian and I didn't understand a word. And after that, she's crying. And I have to admit that I didn't know what was going on in the sample and I thought that the noises she was making were a very different kind of noise. I thought she was expressing ecstasy. And I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. It's one of those. And yeah, you watch it, it's something completely different. But yeah, I was just kind of thrown by that because like, oh, here's that sample. Oh, okay, she's just angry and crying because she's really upset. And it's like, yeah, all right, I completely misread that.

Good band Virus, if you like. What is it, somebody described the one says, Voivod meets the Talking Heads or something like that. Really cool band that definitely lots of "Stalker" references in the vibe and the lyrics and the aesthetic and stuff like that.

So yeah, well, this was a really cool discussion, really quite a lot to get into with this story. And I had a feeling there would be quite a bit. So I'm glad that this was picked and that we have been able to share our thoughts. And yeah, I know "Roadside Picnic" of quite popular book these days has been talked a lot about online and elsewhere and certainly more read now probably than it's ever been in the past. Thanks in part to that 2012 English translation. I think most people nowadays are getting that. And cool, it was definitely a good one. And yeah, hopefully we've given you the audience, the people gathered around our zone, a little insight into how we felt about this and maybe giving you a new perspective.

We do have something a little more, I don't know, maybe a little more lighthearted coming up next. We're turning to the old school pulp milieu a little bit and we're gonna be talking about some early space operas and that kind of style. We're gonna call it Sword and Planet because yeah, that's generally the type of stories that you saw in Planet Stories. And at least one of our tales that we will be talking about actually can be found in Planet Stories in some capacity. I think we'll be reading the book published version. That's what I would recommend anyway, but we'll certainly talk about that a little more as it comes up.

But we're gonna be talking about three authors that we have actually discussed on the podcast before. And the first one will be Edgar Rice Burroughs and the "Princess of Mars". And of course, this is the beginning of the long running Martian saga. I've not read any of the other books, just this one. But as far as stuff that we've done on the podcast, I think this might be a little bit of a first... Well, no, I mean, we did the "At the Earth's Core" That's also a series, I guess. But this one goes on for many, many books and we're only gonna be talking about the first one at this point. Who knows if we wanna do more. Burroughs is obviously a very influential writer to many of the, especially US authors who grew up in the tens and 20s and 30s and so on. Yeah, somebody who is still quite well-read today, I think. Maybe more so than the other authors we'll be talking about, which is a shame.

Because we'll be returning to C.L. Moore and that is Catherine Lucille Moore and her first published story, "Shambleau", which it's a Weird Tales tale. And it was, I believe, the first thing she ever published. She's pretty much well-formed right out of the gate, I would say. It's one of her Northwest Smith series of stories. So he's kind of like this Han Solo-ish character who waters around the solar system and gets into all sorts of trouble, but mostly in the stories encounters space vampires of one kind or another.

And we'll also be returning to Leigh Brackett and it gives me a great pleasure to introduce you guys to the wild, rollicking romp that is the "Enchantress of Venus". And I read that for the first time not that long ago and I thought, yeah, like we have to do, this has to be on an episode where we really cover this kind of stuff. And we spoke very highly of "No Man's Land in Space" before, but she was just getting started at that time. And she definitely rises to the height of her powers in the later 40s and 1950s. And we might actually just kind of bring back a certain background bit of information there because I've certainly been reading a little more into her ever since we talked about "No Man's Land in Space" and read a couple more things and read a bit more about her. And yeah, this is really interesting, all the stuff that she's done and what she got involved with. So I'm really looking forward to getting into those things next time around.

Gretchen:

Definitely looking forward to returning to CL Moore and Leigh Brackett.

Nate:

Yeah, it'll be a fun discussion for sure. And it'll be interesting to see how these develop over time. As I know, CL Moore cited "Princess of Mars" specifically as a big influence on her writing. So we'll see how she takes that and how she maybe improves on it in a lot of ways. At least I suspect that's how we might view it, but I guess we'll see when we read the books.

JM:

Yeah, we'll be moving back and forward through time over the next while. I definitely, the next thing I have planned is another older book from the 1930s. So it will be in a different style. Again, not so much the pulpy style, but yeah, we are Chrononauts and we do move in time a lot. And now we're pretty much free to explore any period. So we'll be doing a mix of heavier works and more perhaps rompy kind of works and exploring different generations in this fascinating genre that we pilgrimage through.

But for now, I just want to wish you all happiness. Happiness for everyone, free. No one will be forgotten.

Good night. This is Chrononauts. 

Bibliography:

Cordasco, Rachel - "Fantastic Fiction: The Strugatsky Brothers in 1962" https://seattlein2025.org/2025/07/11/fantastic-fiction-the-strugatsky-brothers-in-1962/ 

The Guardian - "Boris Strugatsky: Russia mourns death of sci-fi writer – even Vladimir Putin" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/20/boris-strugatsky-russia-sci-fi-writer

Howell, Yvonne - "Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky (August 28, 1925-October 13, 1991)" Science Fiction Studies, volume 19, issue 1 (1992)

Laboratory of Fantastika - "Roadside Picnic" entry https://fantlab.ru/work569

Lem, Stanislaw, Elsa Schieder and R.M.P.- “About the Strugatskys’ ‘Roadside Picnic,’” Science Fiction Studies, volume 10, issue 3 (1983)

Riley, John - "Boris Strugatsky: Acclaimed writer of science fiction" obituary (2012) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/boris-strugatsky-acclaimed-writer-of-science-fiction-8424590.html

Science Fiction Encyclopedia - "Strugatski, Arkady and Boris" https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/strugatski_arkady

Simon, Erik - “The Strugatskys in Political Context,” Science Fiction Studies, volume 31, issue 3 (2004)

Strugatsky, Arkadii, Vladimir Gopman, Mark Knighton, and Darko Suvin- “Science Fiction Teaches the Civic Virtues: An Interview with Arkadii Strugatsky,” Science Fiction Studies, volume 18, issue 1 (1991)

Strugatsky, Boris Natanovich, Erik Simon- “Working for Tarkovsky,” Science Fiction Studies, volume 31, issue 3 (2004)