Roadside Picnic‘s cultural impact is one I’m already familiar with. LeGuin, and an afterward by Boris Strugatsky on the hardships endured while attempting to publish the novel. It features a nice introduction by Ursula K.

It’s been a long time coming: while Gollancz in the UK has printed it in the last few decades as part of their SF Masterworks series, the novel hasn’t been printed in the US for twenty years. I’ve already dealt with Lem by reading his Solaris conveniently enough Roadside Picnic, the masterpiece of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, was reprinted with a new translation this year (by Olena Bormashenko). Aside from a handful of anthologies, Stanisław Lem and the Strugatsky brothers are the only names that resonate in American science-fiction histories. There was a lot of SF written in Eastern Europe-not a surprise, given the Soviet Union’s role in space exploration-but scant little of it made its way over the Iron Curtain. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around… Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind… And of course, the usual mess-apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow.

The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow.

Roadside picnic tale of the troika