Roadside Picnic (Russian: Пикник на обочине, romanized: Piknik na obochine, IPA: [pʲɪkˈnʲik nɐ ɐˈbot͡ɕɪnʲe]) is a philosophical science fiction novel by the Soviet authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky that was written in 1971 and published in 1972.
Another English translation by Olena Bormashenko was published in 2012, with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and an afterword by Boris Strugatsky.
[3] The book has been the source of many adaptations and other inspired works in a variety of media, including stage plays, video games, and television series.
In Russian, after Tarkovsky's film, the term acquired the meaning of a guide who navigates forbidden or uncharted territories; later on, urbexers and fans of industrial tourism, especially those visiting abandoned sites and ghost towns, were also called stalkers.
[4][5][6] Roadside Picnic is set in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event, the Visitation, which occurred simultaneously in several locations around the Earth over a two-day period.
Neither the Visitors themselves nor their means of arrival or departure were ever seen by the local populations, who lived inside the relatively small areas, each a few square kilometers, of the six Visitation Zones.
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.
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.
[7]In this analogy, the nervous animals are the humans who venture forth after the Visitors have left, discovering items and anomalies that are ordinary to those who have discarded them, but incomprehensible or deadly to the earthlings.
The story revolves around Redrick "Red" Schuhart, a brutal and experienced young stalker who regularly enters the Zone illegally at night in search of valuable artifacts for profit.
It is widely rumored that incursions into the Zone by stalkers carry high risk of mutations in their children even though no radiation or other mutagens have been detected in the area.
"The Vulture"), the latter steps into a substance known as "hell slime" (“witches jelly” in the older English translation), which slowly dissolves his leg bones.
Guta has given birth to a happy and intelligent daughter, who is fully normal but for having long, light full body hair and black eyes.
They lovingly call her the "Monkey," Redrick meets with his clients in a posh hotel and sells them a fresh portion of the Zone artifacts, but what they are really after is "hell slime".
Redrick's old friend Richard Noonan, a supply contractor with offices inside the institute, is revealed as a covert operative of an unnamed presumably-governmental, secret organization working to stop the contraband outflow of artifacts from the Zone.
Believing that he is nearing the successful completion of his multi-year assignment, he is confronted and scolded by his boss, who reveals to him that the flow is stronger than ever, and he is tasked with finding who is responsible and how they operate.
Redrick knows one of them has to die in order to temporarily deactivate an invisible phenomenon known as the "meatgrinder" for the other to reach the Sphere, but he keeps that a secret from Arthur, whom he intends to sacrifice to it to make a wish to turn his daughter back to normal.
After they get to the location and survive many obstacles, Arthur rushes towards the Sphere and shouts out selfless wishes for a better world, only to be savagely dispatched by the meatgrinder.