Picnic by the wayside
Roadside Picnic ( Russian Пикник на обочине , Piknik na obotschinje ) is a 1971 incurred science fiction - novel by Strugatsky Brothers .
content
In six places on earth - the so-called "zones" - there is extraterrestrial technology that an extraterrestrial civilization left there after a "visit" of the earth and which is still partially functional. This technology causes various and sometimes very dangerous effects that people still do not understand even years later; therefore the areas were cordoned off and guarded like restricted military areas and the trade in the artifacts made a criminal offense. Despite their dangerousness, the extraterrestrial artifacts are in great demand and are now being used more and more in everyday life on earth, for example as jewelry or power sources, which makes them a valuable contraband. The book describes life episodes of some residents of the city of Harmont, which lies on the edge of one of these zones. The various interests - science, military, personal pursuit of profit - shape life in Harmont in general and the lives of the characters in particular.
The main character of the novel is Roderic Schuchart (in the original: "Redrick", in Russian "Рэдрик" , in short "Red"), a "treasure digger" (original: "Stalker", in Russian "Сталкер" ), one of those men who illegally under Use their lives to penetrate the zone, collect artifacts there and sell them on the black market . After more and more robots carry out salvage work in the zone later in the novel and the number of traditional smugglers continues to decrease due to consequent persecution and fatalities during the "salvage" of the artifacts, Schuchart goes into the zone one last time to find the golden ball ”. This sphere is said to "fulfill all wishes". At the end of his journey, the main character deals more and more with her life and wishes and reveals her self-alienation. In view of his contradicting emotions, Schuchart finally has to realize that he cannot formulate a wish of his own and wishes, with himself in the unclean: "Happiness for everyone, free, no one should leave here humiliated."
style
The book is largely written from the perspective of the treasure hunter Roderic Schuchart. It is kept in a realistic descriptive style, but Schuchart's thoughts are presented especially in the last chapter. This in itself is a break with the previous style and the otherwise concentrated and professional behavior of the treasure hunters, so that it alone creates tension and points to a development and the end. Occasionally, observations are also described from the perspective of other people, thus illustrating the meaning of the “visit” and the “zone” from a scientific and philosophical perspective. Here, too, an authorial , omniscient narrator is avoided and the observations remain excerpts of the world from the perspective of a few residents. In this way the reader shares a certain ontological uncertainty with the inhabitants of the world, who can only speculate.
About the visit
In the book itself, some theses about the visit are presented. One favored from the smuggler's perspective, to which the book title also refers, is: The beings have landed and flew away again, left their rubbish on earth and probably not even noticed humanity as such - analogous to a picnic by the wayside , where strollers leave their rubbish lying around and insects and crawling animals find no recognizable use in it, but it brings unwanted dangers for them. Another thesis is that the zone can be an experiment in which the treasure hunters and local residents are nothing more than white mice in a maze.
reception
Stanisław Lem interprets the narrative as “the starting point for a thought experiment of 'experimental historical research'” and in this it is very similar to his work Solaris . Lem's explanation for the zone goes against the idea of a picnic. He analyzes the nature of the zones and comes to the conclusion that they must be accidents. According to his interpretation, unmanned spaceships were wrecked on earth and lost their cargo. However, protective mechanisms have ensured that the artifacts remained in sharply defined areas.
In addition to this mind game, Lem also describes religious aspects of the book and the zones. Criticism from his side is mainly exercised on the subject of the “golden ball”. This object fulfills desires, can only be reached by overcoming numerous dangers; one of them requires a sacrifice to let another person pass. According to Lem, the basic structure of this corresponds to a fairytale narrative and thus contradicts the random character of the distribution of useful and harmful objects in the “zone”. In narrative terms, however, the “golden ball” is only the logical essence, compression, realization and materialization of what the artifacts in the novel are for people and the hopes they evoke. Of course, it develops theological character in the process, which, however, is already present in a weakened form. The path to the sphere itself becomes a parable for life (in the zone), it is marked by trials, suffering, the loss of humanity and the insight into one's own alienation. In the end there is the ball and the desire for redemption, but it remains to be seen whether the painful existence of the zone and the failure of society can be justified.
"A fable about the desperation of the intelligentsia of the sixties, who were faced with the complete elimination of the reform movement." "
The French translation was awarded the Prix de la SF de Metz in 1981.
Use in other works
The movie Stalker
Andrei Tarkovsky shot the Soviet film Stalker in 1979 based on the motifs in the book . The script for the film was again written by the Strugazki brothers. The film relates only very vaguely to the original book. The “golden ball” has been replaced by a fabulous “room” that supposedly fulfills all wishes. The “stalker” (synonym for the “guide”) leads two men - a writer and a scientist - through the zone to this room for a fee. If you want to compare the works, you can only see a film adaptation of the last chapter of the book Picnic by the wayside in the film Stalker , and none that are true to the work. A single philosophical / psychological aspect is picked out of the book, which actually tells a straight story, the question of the unconscious, and mixed with hundreds of trains of thought, associations, poetry recitations from the off and impressions of submerged industrial landscapes. From the start, the three men discussed this legendary room. What if a villain or madman gets into this room? What does the existence of such a place mean for humans? Do people even know their secret, unconscious desires and can they really become happy by fulfilling them?
A first (later heavily modified) variant of the script was printed under the title "Die Wunschmaschine" in the 2/1984 issue of the magazine "Soviet literature", later reprinted in the anthology "Lichtjahr 4" (Verlag Das Neue Berlin, 1985) and in Franz Rottensteiner "Polaris 10" (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986).
The computer game series STALKER
In March 2007 the game Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl by the Ukrainian developer GSC Game World was released . The plot is relocated by Harmont to the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2012 and is only indirectly based on the book and film.
The game is a combination of first person shooter and role-playing game and provides its own explanation for the creation of the zone , which appeared in the framework of the game in 2006, around 20 years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident , for initially unknown reasons: The The role of the golden ball is played by a monolith (similar to the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey ), which is located within the " sarcophagus " of the disaster reactor and can also fulfill all wishes. However, one of the seven alternative endings of the game also reveals this explanation as a deception.
The series was continued in the STALKER universe with Stalker: Clear Sky and Stalker: Call of Pripyat .
The Metro 2033 Universe
In the science fiction novels of the Metro 2033 universe by the Russian writer Dmitri Gluchowski , the treasure hunters known as “stalkers” play a central role. However, they are not searching for extraterrestrial remains here, but rather the remains of the lost human civilization on the surface of the earth.
The film Я tоже хочу
The Russian film Я тоже хочу (“I want too”) by director Alexei Balabanow from 2012 is a reinterpretation of Stalker : Three unequal seekers enter a contaminated zone where wishes are fulfilled.
German editions
- German first edition: Picnic by the wayside. Utopian story , translated by Aljonna Möckel, illustrations by Günter Lück, Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1975 (paperback edition in the SF Utopia series 1983)
- Issue for the FRG: Picnic by the wayside. Utopian story , translated by Aljonna Möckel, with an afterword by Stanisław Lem , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981 ( Fantastic Library , vol. 49; 14th edition 2008) ISBN 3-518-37170-3 .
- A text version, which was supplemented by Erik Simon after the uncensored and uncensored original version, was published in 2010 in the six-volume work edition: Werkausgabe - Second Volume , ISBN 978-3-453-52631-0 , pp. 7–232.
Individual evidence
- ^ Arkadi and Boris Strugatzki: Picnic by the wayside . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-37170-3 , pp. 189-215 .
- ↑ Istvan Csicsery – Ronay jr .: The last fairy tale: A picnic by the wayside and the fairy tale paradigm in the science fiction of the Strugatzkis . In: Polaris 10 - An SF Almanach dedicated to A. and B. Strugatzki . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / Main 1986, ISBN 978-3-518-37748-2 , p. 112-152 .