This is the discussion post for the first installment of the hubski #scificlub.
We will also have discussion for the material for installment #2 here.
Discussion: Roadside Picnic
So I hope everyone found time to read the story. I'm going to include a couple discussion prompts here. You, of course, don't have to respond to the prompts and can just say whatever is on your mind about the story. However if you're drawing a blank hopefully responding to a prompt will incite some meaningful discussion.
Prompts
1. Roadside Picninc was published by the Strugatsky brothers during the soviet era, a time when it was notoriously difficult to publish anything without censorship. Indeed, Roadside Picninc was censored when initially published. So is there any subtext in the story relating to communism, soviet society, or the political landscape of the world at the time?
2. What's the deal with Red and the Zone? It's the most complex relationship in the story it seems. He seems to hate it but won't leave it. Why does he keep going back? Does he really need to?
Picking the material for the next installment
So let's include any suggestions for the next material here. Keep in mind that it should be free and/or short. I think for the first few installments we should stick to these requirements pretty strictly, unless there's overwhelming demand for something in particular.
Some suggestions still standing: (I'll update the list as the thread progresses)
Fantastic Planet - a French animated film. It's way out-there and pretty fun. I believe there are multiple sources online for watching it.
Blindsight - Free to download, but not exactly short. An amazing book though and it goes by fast. Very much loaded with material to discuss.
For a Breath I Tarry by Roger Zelazny - "perhaps one of the most lyrical science fiction stories ever written. It's available here."
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blackbootz flagamuffin kleinbl00 JakobVirgil eightbitsamurai mhr ando OftenBen plewemt elizabeth
'K. So where to start? Oh god. Is there. It's worthwhile to look at RP in context - rather than an isolated book about overwhelming technology from an uncaring, unseeing alien race, it's one of many books about overwhelming technology from an uncaring, unseeing alien race. RP was published in 1971. Two years previously, Robert Silverberg published The Man in the Maze. A year later, Arthur C. Clarke published Rendezvous with Rama. Even those don't exist in isolation - off the top of my head, Clifford Simak's "Big Front Yard" (1959) and Robert Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House" (1941) are seminal short stories about bizarrely alien technology and our reactions to it. So here's where it gets interesting. RP ('71) is all about alien technology that mostly kills people, found in a place that used to be home but now kills people, that tears people apart and destroys lives while intellectuals uselessly study it. If that's not a Soviet metaphor, I don't know what is. Compare and contrast - - "And He Built A Crooked House" ('41) is about an architect that accidentally assembles a tesseract, which he and his friends cheerfully explore. Heinlein lived in LA during the epic of Case Study Houses and the triumph of Greene & Greene. - "Big Front Yard" ('59)is about a yankee antique trader whose house is the site of an alien crash. They use parts from a television he's fixing to open a portal to another dimension. The aliens obligingly make the B&W TV color in exchange for using its parts and the yankee trader ventures forth into an intergalactic marketplace where alien races exchange ideas. - Man In The Maze (1969)is about a hero who lives amongst the first aliens we ever encounter and ends up broadcasting evil thoughts. He retreats to the ruins of an ancient civilization designed to protect its inhabitants using lethal alien force. When another, superior alien race shows up, an expedition attempts to lure him out to prevent destruction of the human race. - Rendezvous with Rama (1973) is about a research vessel out past the orbit of Uranus that is sent to investigate an alien craft cruising through the solar system to use the Sun as a gravity slingshot. The crew has a brief window to explore Man's first alien contact. The Western stories (even Maze, bleak as it is) are hopeful. They presume interstellar cooperation. There's a sense of fairness - even "the man in the maze" has his hubris and arrogance explored (it is, after all, a retelling of Sophocles' "Philoctetes"). Alien technology is alien, but it's alien and indifferent, not alien and "Witch's Jelly." The maze in MitM is designed purely for punishment and antagonism of other races, but it's logical. Rama presupposes a universal government and an international project to repel meteors and speaks of an international project to drain the Mediterranean for an expanding human race. "Yankee traders", innovative architects, pigeon-chested space captains, tragic heroes - this is the stuff of hopefulness. Roadside Picnic, on the other hand, is about the uselessness of The State, the naivete of science, the essential nature of the black market and the victory of cynicism over idealism. Red is basically a guy trying to make a living and it costs him everything. Buzzard is basically a sociopathic opportunist and he's the last one left standing. What's interesting to me is if you look up "Roadside Picnic" and "nuclear" you get a bunch of people writing about how the novel has taken on a "new resonance" since the Chernobyl disaster. Nobody, it seems, has pointed out what a catastrophe the Soviet nuclear program was prior to Chernobyl. Chelyabinsk was basically Chernobyl in 1957, except they kept the reactors open and kept fucking around with them. And while all this stuff was secret, Soviet military/industrial disasters were commonplace. I'd go as far as to hypothesize that the novel is a reaction to the Soviet nuclear program. Two years before it was written there was a nasty accident on a Soviet icebreaker. At the time, the Soviets were handing out little potbellied stoves full of cesium chloride for seed irradiation, and had thermocouples running off strontium-90 to power remote installations. There was quite a dustup in 2001 when hunters found one out in the woods, cuddled up to it overnight and gave themselves leukemia. Radiotherapy thefts were almost commonplace in the '60s. My parents were in Brazil when junk scavengers raided a hospital and came out with a bunch of Cesium 137. Large portions of Sao Paolo (if I recall correctly) had to be evacuated and screened because the thieves cracked open their stash and found glowing blue stuff that they painted their children with. Pretty sure that was '68. In a very real sense, the thieves were "stalkers." Seen in that light, Roadside Picnic isn't just a story that says "science is bad" it's a story that says "nuclear energy will destroy us body and soul and while our government is too focused on shiny baubles, our necessary human nature will let the contagion escape past even the meager defenses provided by the State to kill us all slowly." If I were an apparatchik I'd ban it, too. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union managed to take Russia from one of the world's largest grain exporters to one of the world's largest grain importers in the space of ten years. The USSR wasn't a socialist state, it was a kleptocracy run via oligarchy. Red is an ordinary citizen, thrust by happenstance into a bad situation that he attempts to make the most of. He has no real options and when he tries to work within the system, his only friend in the world is killed. The only opportunities available to him are illegal. There's no safety net for his family. The State can't even treat his dead with respect. Roadside Picnic is a Soviet version of It's a Wonderful Life where George Bailey doesn't have the resources to open a bank, the only people looking out for him are the ones trying to throw him in jail, where ZuZu is steadily dragged down into inhumanity for the crimes of her father and in which Donna Reed has to give hand jobs to her boss in order to keep food on the table. Clarence isn't a guardian angel looking out for George, he's an unthinking, unseeing and indifferent force of omnipotence that exists solely to kill George by accident in ways mankind has never conceived before. Red keeps going back to The Zone because it's the only thing he can do. USSR in a nutshell.So is there any subtext in the story relating to communism, soviet society, or the political landscape of the world at the time?
What's the deal with Red and the Zone?
Definitely has a lot to resemblance to Chernobyl. It's crazy how fiction predicts the future so accurately sometimes. His attitude towards the Zone is very much how a lot of people saw the USSR. There is this word in Russian "родина" which roughly translates to "motherland" that I find encompasses the general feeling I get from this story. He can't leave because it's his motherland that he loves to hate. It reminds me of this old russian joke: A little worm asks his mom "mom, is it nice to live in an apple?" "yes, it is" "is it nice to live in a cherry?" "yes of course it is" "then why are we living in shit?" "because it's our home, son" That's why Red can't leave. It's home.
You're definitely right about the story resonating with the soviet nuclear program. It does seem pretty plausible that there's a massive analogy with nuclear tech here. Not long before then, the effects of radiation were practically magic to us. Fun fact: after the Chernobyl disaster a lot of the language from the story (or maybe Stalker) was picked up: the area became the "zone", and those who went in to construct or repair the reactor sarcophagus became "stalkers".
SUGGESTION On the subject of alienation and humanity, I suggest a short story. My vote would be For a Breath I Tarry by Roger Zelazny, perhaps one of the most lyrical science fiction stories ever written. It's available here. Barring that, "completely alien aliens" probably started with The Red One by Jack London in 1918. It's not just free, it's public domain.
This was incredible read, thank you for recommending it. Interesting relationships and juxtapositions and what have you. kleinbl00 covered the Soviet stuff already so I won't bother to go into detail; suffice it to say that the best part of this story in my opinion was the conversation between Valentine and Noonan in the bar, about reason and the effects of a second 'rational' presence in the galaxy. I'm also a sucker for time-skip stories where you have to piece together what's changed.
We should read frankenstein it is a very different book than any film version
I wouldn't say i know enough about history to comment on the first prompt. I think Red keeps going back because it's the only hustle he knows, at least initially it's the best option for the level of financial security he'd like to have. Why do convicted drug dealers go back to the game after jail?
I think later on in the book, when he is taken care of financially, he returns out of a desire to understand the zone and diffuse his frustration about his current life situation, or maybe it's just had such a big impact on his life he feels attached to it. Despite not having much to say critically, I enjoyed the book. I've got a busy week ahead so I vote Fantastic Planet. I imagine ya'll are gonna have more eloquent responses. I'm excited to read them.
The Zone is what Red knows. It's the one true constant in his life. He grew up among stalkers, he knows stalkers, his existence is within a stalker economy, and once he's aged enough to want something else, he's banned from emigrating so he's pretty well stuck as a stalker. The allusions to skyscrapers going up to support a tourist economy were all about the diminished choices of locals in the face of top-down economics. In a command economy, "jobs" are things that happen to you. As the Khruschev-era joke goes, "So long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work."