New Wave Sci-Fi 75 (37)
By:
June 17, 2018
One in a series of posts about the 75 best science fiction novels published during the genre’s New Wave era (from 1964–1983, according to HILOBROW’s periodization schema). For Josh Glenn’s complete New Wave Sci-Fi 75 list, click here.
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Пикник на обочине (1972; Piknik na obochine; translated as A Roadside Picnic).
Near the (fictitious) Canadian town of Harmont, a five-square-kilometer “Zone” has been off-limits ever since unexplained phenomena occurred there some years earlier. After the incidents, universally assumed to have been an alien visitation, bizarre artifacts have been discovered. The novel’s title comes from an analogy proposed, by one of the characters, that the extraterrestrials may have just been on a “picnic,” and left trash behind. The United Nations has attempted to keep the Zone sealed off, but Red Schuhart and other “stalkers” sneak in to steal whatever they can find, for profit… despite the risk that they may pass mutated genetic material on to their children. Red smuggles “hell slime” out of the Zone, and sells it to arms dealers, because he needs money to care for his daughter, “Monkey,” a devolved humanoid. Once he gets out of prison, Red discovers that the bodies of those buried within the Zone — including his father’s — have become reanimated! So he embarks on one last mission, a quixotic effort to make everything come out right.
Fun facts: Roadside Picnic was refused publication in book form in the Soviet Union for eight years due to government censorship. The 1979 Soviet sci-fi art film Сталкер (Stalker), directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, is loosely based on the novella; the screenplay was written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
NEW WAVE SCI-FI at HILOBROW: 75 Best New Wave (1964–1983) Sci-Fi Novels | Back to Utopia: Fredric Jameson’s theorizing about New Wave sci-fi | Douglas Adams | Poul Anderson | J.G. Ballard | John Brunner | William Burroughs | Octavia E. Butler | Samuel R. Delany | Philip K. Dick | Frank Herbert | Ursula K. Le Guin | Barry N. Malzberg | Moebius (Jean Giraud) | Michael Moorcock | Alan Moore | Gary Panter | Walker Percy | Thomas Pynchon | Joanna Russ | James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon) | Kurt Vonnegut | PLUS: Jack Kirby’s Golden Age and New Wave science fiction comics.
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES (in progress) | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | NOTES ON 21st-CENTURY ADVENTURES.