4 and a half stars for my first, but certainly not my last, foray into Soviet science fiction, and the work of the Strugatsky brothers!
Thirty years be4 and a half stars for my first, but certainly not my last, foray into Soviet science fiction, and the work of the Strugatsky brothers!
Thirty years before the beginning of this story, aliens landed on six different locations of our little planet, but they didn’t stay long. The areas where they touched down, now knowns as Zones, are both fascinating and dangerous: unexplained phenomenon make it very hazardous for humans to go to, but the artifacts the aliens left behind make it inevitable that a few will try to get their grubby hands on it, even if they have no idea what the artifacts do. As one might expect, there is official scientific research done on those objects, but also a flourishing black market – which is where Red comes on. Red works at one of the facilities dedicated to the story of a particular Zone, located in what I believe to be Canada, though it is never located with any precision. He goes in and out of the Zone, brings back artefacts for scientists to play with, but also some that end up sold to some sinister individuals, who’s ultimate agenda we are not privy to. Red’s work is dangerous in so many ways: the Zone’s terrain is a constantly shifting and hallucinatory landscape, strange lights appear and vanish, and despite careful decontamination, the effects of being exposed to whatever is in there changes him, affects and transforms his child… After getting caught one final time, he decides to give up this treacherous work, but it’s not that easy to walk away.
I adore the idea that we, as a civilization, we’re just not interesting enough for aliens to hang about any longer than it took them to empty out their trash and bounce. It’s a nice raspberry blown in the face of humans’ self-importance – and tendency to litter. It also paints a not-too-shiny portrait of another nasty human tendency: to try and turn every piece of garbage we can get our hands on into something we can sell, no matter how dangerous that might be, both for us and for the person who ends up with the aforementioned garbage. I also love when science-fiction mentions aliens but then they are not really an active part of the story!
Even without trying to read any sub-text from this novel, it remains an absolutely amazing, dark and weird piece of science-fiction history that holds up as an excellent and very readable novel to this day. There are strong parallels to be drawn with Jeff VanderMeer’s “Southern Reach” trilogy (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), and I wonder if he is a fan of the Strugatsky brothers after reading this – because just like his infamous trilogy, this is a novel that lends itself to removing and examining its layers. My edition includes an afterword by Boris Strugastky, describing the rather convoluted process they had to go through to see this book published (committees, censors, boards, etc…): this makes it hard not to read into the griminess of the world of “Roadside Picnic” as a commentary on a dull and bleak world, where one worked very hard for ultimately very little. The transformation of the children by whatever the parents are exposed to in the Zone also feels like a strange metaphor about how an unfamiliar world can turn even the people closest to you into something you don’t quite recognize. I also couldn’t help but smile at the idea that in the mind of the scientists working at the Institute, the suits running the whole thing have no idea what they are doing and aren’t doing any work of value… I know Red is not really a sympathetic character: by his own description, he is kind of a bottom-feeder, but I saw someone who’s options for survival are very limited by the time and place where he happens to be. In order to live a life that feels decent and fulfilling, he has no choice but to go around the system – but will get crushed by whichever path he chooses.
Thank you Nataliya, for encouraging me to bump this one up on top of the reading pile! It exceeded my expectations in every way, and I look forward to reading more by the Strugatskys!...more
Something I find endlessly fascinating with dystopias and post-apocalyptic fiction is that very often, the authors show the readers what they are afraSomething I find endlessly fascinating with dystopias and post-apocalyptic fiction is that very often, the authors show the readers what they are afraid we, as a civilization, will lose, through the changes they imagine the world to have gone through. Reading “Mockingbird” showed me that Walter Tevis was afraid of losing intellectual curiosity and physical intimacy. Maybe I loved the book because I am also afraid of losing those things to a world that is turning culture into sound-bites and human relationships into commodities…
Written in 1980, there are clear echoes of “Fahrenheit 451” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and “Brave New World" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) in this work of philosophical sci-fi. I did a little digging, and Tevis was also sick with the cancer that would eventually kill him when he wrote this book, which is probably why the theme of death, both of wanting it and struggling against it, play such an important part in this strange story. Distressed by the rate at which literacy in his students was declining, he combined that sense of an approaching end with the idea of a world where no one reads, and voilà.
Several hundreds of years in the future, humans no longer know how to read, and no longer have children. All their needs are provided for by robots who keep the great machine of society running, albeit, very weirdly, and most humans pop pills like candies simply to make it through the day. In this bizarre future, Spofforth is the most sophisticated robot ever built, a Make Nine: fully conscious, highly intelligent, almost human, but programmed differently from the other robots of his make. He is the only one who cannot kill himself, as the others Make Nines have. Despairing of his situation, he accidentally finds a single human, Paul Bentley, who taught himself to read, and brings him to the “university” where he works. But Bentley soon meets a woman who has rejected the drugs everyone else is so eager to consume, and teaches her to read as well – with very surprizing consequences.
There is a lot to unpack in this book, but mostly, what I found there is Tevis’ deep love of art and culture and his sadness at the indifference with which it is often met. The robots think they are offering humans a perfect life by removing all effort and discomfort from their lives, but they also accidentally remove life’s very meaning by making them numb, leading them to a desperation they don’t even have words for anymore. Perfection ceases to be perfect if that’s all there is. But truly, what makes this book stand apart is that there is hope amidst the bleak settings the characters have to live in. If you have books, love and a cat, you can figure it out. Post-apocalyptic fiction is rarely soothing, but strangely, this book soothed me.
If you have only read “The Queen’s Gambit” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), do yourself a favor and check out more of this man’s work: it is completely different in tone and subject matter, but it touches similarly deep and authentic nerves....more
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