Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Translated by Olena Bormashenko
193 pages
Published 1972; English translation published 2012
Read from March 28 to March 31
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
I've
really slacked off my reading pace the last couple weeks, haven't I?
This book was a good, brisk read, and brief, yet it still took me four
days. Unconscionable.
Anyway, this book has seemingly been
popping up everywhere lately... or at least several times on io9. I
never expected my library to actually have a copy, so when I saw it on
the shelf, I just had to grab it. Comparisons to Chernobyl are
unavoidable, even though the original publication anticipated that
disaster by fourteen years. The early descriptions of the Zone were
eerie in that light, reminding me of footage from the robot cameras sent
into the Sarcophagus. I wonder how much of that atmosphere was in the
original text, and how much was massaged in through translation.
Other
than that, I think I failed to see what was so magnificent about this
book to justify such a brouhaha. It's a solid sci-fi book, quite
enjoyable and vivid, with occasional absolutely chilling moments, but
nothing earthshaking. Maybe I'm just a dull critic. Or maybe Red's climactic rant against vultures and how good people can't win against corruption seemed more daring and pointed when it was written, in Soviet Russia, during the Cold Frickin' War. Context can't be ignored.
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