Roadside Picnic - The Little Book that Could?

Some books seem to have an amazing influence on the cultural landscape. I’ve been thinking of late about the novel Roadside Picnic (also known as Stalker) by the Russian authors Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky. This book, if you’re not aware is set in ‘Canada’, which is a cleverly masked Russia, to get around Soviet censors of the time and it clearly fits in the horror/science fiction genre.

A rough timeline of books, films, and games that seem to be either obviously directly influenced or seem to be partially inspired (marked by asterisk) by the Russian novel, I’ve compiled runs as follows;

1972 Roadside Picnic published in Russia

1977 Roadside Picnic English translation

1979 Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky (move adaptation, with script by the authors)

1986 The Chernobyl accident occurs here

2002 METRO 2035 Book* (first in a series)

2007 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl Computer game

2008 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky Computer game

2009 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Computer game

2010 Monsters* film directed by Gareth Edwards

2012 Stalker RPG by Ville Vuorela (Burger Games, Officially licenced by surviving author)

2012 Vyohyke (‘Zone’ Finish low budget film directed by Esa Luttinen, on YouTube subtitled)

2012 ‘Zona Konflikta’ (Zone of Conflict) skirmish board game with 23 Miniatures (Russian only??)

2014 Annihilation* Book Published by Jeff VanderMeer (first in Southern Reach trilogy)

2015 METRO 2035* Computer Game

2017 AMC Pilot for Series ‘Roadside Picnic’ (never picked up, trailer on YouTube)

2017 A Prayer to Saint Strelock by Patrick Todoroff (Novelette)

2019 Strange Treasure by Patrick Todoroff (Novelette)

2019 Ostatni Samotnik (‘The Last Loner’ Film Polish, trailer on-line)

2020 Zona Alfa Wargame (Osprey Games)

I'm sure I've missed something out in this list!

Of course there are problems establishing a timeline like this, as you can be sure that some creators haven’t read the original novel and might be merely have been influenced by the descendents of the original.

Another trick you can do is pull the timeline backwards through time and see what works seem to contain the same rough concepts but are before the establish 'start' of the 1972 novel .

Two works that come to mind are the novels Rouge Moon (1960) by Algis Budrys involves something aliens that have left behind, but this instance it forms a nightmare maze on the moon, and also worthy of mention is The Crystal World (1966) by J.G. Ballard, which is a longer less scientific redraft of the concepts he used in an earlier short story, where (in both) an expanding radius in the jungle is slowly turning things into crystal. Although both theses novels are striking, I think they do not have the strength of Roadside Picnic, which seems with the possible value of the artefacts left, is able to bring in more human desires such as greed for treasure, wanting exploit the resource found around, and also longer consequences of such a dangerous area.

Roadside Picnic was an influential book when the English translation came out and it rightly regarded as important by the SF community, but the question I've often asked myself, and I ask you reading this for your thoughts on this, but would we have had all these other versions, variations and imitations, and works inspired by it, if the images seen by the world after the 1986 Chernobyl accident of the rusting, abandon soviet buildings hadn't seeped like contaminated water into slowly into the water table of the cultural zeitgeist?

How much also, has it influenced the activity of urban exploring? As empty factories and building with a patina of abandonment covering them like a shroud seems to be part of the same ascetic.

One thing is for sure, with the skirmish wargame coming out in 2020 we can be sure this haunting novel and the terrible accident are still overshadowing us and their influence look like it will linger on for some years to come.