This is an on-line English translation of the book that inspired the film that inspired the game that is STALKER.
Russiansifiction.com - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Roadside Picnic
http://www.cca.org/cm/picnic.pdf - PDF Version.
I advise anyone who has any like of science fiction, literature (this manages to be both) or just great storytelling to read this.
I know it's the 21st century and reading isn't quite so popular these days; but try giving your brain some exercise! :)
whats it about? Chernobyl?
The central idea is that some aliens stopped on Earth for a little while - the "roadside picnic" of the title - and left a load of litter behind.
Just like you or I may drop litter with no concern for the environmental impact, that's what the aliens did on earth. The litter is artefacts and the side effect of the alien spacecraft landing on Earth is The Zone.
The plot's not exactly STALKER, but then neither is the STALKER movie. They're all related in some ways though.
Both the book and the film predate the Chernobyl disaster.
The film did use the idea of a zone caused by a radiactive disaster (and the Wish Granter) but that zone was based on the Mayak disaster, which was less well known, but creepier in some ways since nobody really knew why that area was suddenly off limits.
Mayak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thanks mate!
Sphere (Dustin Hoffman, Samuel Jackson) ripped the core idea from this book!
The book and movie are very different, but both have excellent qualities. Glad I saw and read them finally, before I start modding CS (if I ever get it). ;)
FourAces;4570497Sphere (Dustin Hoffman, Samuel Jackson) ripped the core idea from this book!
The book and movie are very different, but both have excellent qualities. Glad I saw and read them finally, before I start modding CS (if I ever get it). ;)
Sphere was originally written by Michael Crichton, who also wrote the original Jurassic Park and the first Episode of ER (among others; he turns out a couple of books every year or so and a lot of them have ended up as films and TV series).
He was writing about weird alien side effects long before the Strugatsky's wrote Roadside Picnic. He wrote the Andromeda Strain in 1967, which was made into a film in 1971, which was a brilliant film. Sadly it was remade as a TV series last year and it completely sucked giant balls.