Arkady And Boris Strugatsky Puns

When I first played the game back when it came out, I thought: "Wow this is like a Strugatsky book adaptation", but then I saw no one mention the similarities. I came to this sub and waited and waited, but nothing, I felt like I'm taking crazy pills. Besides a tweet from one of the writers mentioning "Roadside Picnic" (not even the book I was thinking about but one you should definitely read) I found nothing, and I felt sad.

Anyway, it was selfish not to tell you about it this whole time so here are two books I am 100% sure are the foundation for Control even if Remedy will send me a pretty letter saying "NO!"

Monday Starts on Saturday

From goodreads:

>When young programmer Aleksandr Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry, where research into magic is serious business. Where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?

This book is Control. The setting of the institute, the characters and the tone are so similar, it's fun to read and think about how it inspired certain aspects of the game. You can't convince me someone made a game like Control and hasn’t read this book, and I'm sure that if you enjoyed Control, you'll enjoy this too.

The Snail on the Slope

>The Snail on the Slope takes place in two worlds. One is the Administration, an institution run by a surreal, Kafkaesque bureaucracy whose aim is to govern the forest below. The other is the Forest, a place of fear, weird creatures, primitive people and violence. Peretz, who works at the Administration, wants to visit the Forest. Candide crashed in the Forest years ago and wants to return to the Administration. Their journeys are surprising and strange, and readers are left to puzzle out the mysteries of these foreign environments. The Strugatskys themselves called The Snail on the Slope “the most perfect and the most valuable of our works.”

This one I wasn’t sure about when I first played the game because the setting is similar to "Monday Starts on Saturday". But then I reread it and got chills when the director of the Administration says: "Hello. My name is Ahti". I mean.. come on!

The similarities between these books and Control are also thematic. They all explore the edge of what we can know and how we deal with what we can't figure out. If you liked what Control was doing and are looking for more like it, I think this is as close

As I continue with my beginnings into reading science fiction, and with the libraries reopened in the U.K., I picked up SF Masterwork title I had seen mentioned in a YouTube video.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky is a look at how humanity deals with the aftermath of first contact. The kind of first contact where the aliens came, stayed briefly and left without actually making first contact (despite everyone being aware they were here). In their wake the alien visitors have left their mark and tech behind in areas known as ‘Zones’, where highly dangerous alien tech and strange warped physic defying events lie. Despite the danger these zones are attractions for scientists and scavengers (known as STALKERS) which explore the zones and retrieve the alien tech to better understand just what happened and why these aliens visited and left without any fanfare (and sell for profit, naturally).

The story follows a single stalker in just one of the zones. It’s more of a human story with the sci-fi elements light, wrapped in this wonderful drab Russian outlook and dry humour. It’s a fast read, a few hundred pages, split into four tidy chapters that progress through the years.

The crux of the story, and the title, are wonderfully explained by a character halfway through, comparing a roadside picnic to the visitation of the aliens. With one of the scientists musing the reason first contact was never made is perhaps it was nothing more than a roadside picnic for the aliens. They were on their way elsewhere and just like humans on a journey stopped by the side of the road to have something to eat and left all their litter behind. They didn’t even notice the wildlife in the area or think about the dangers their rubbish might pose.

I loved this.

When I think of sci-fi, I often think of huge grand events with Earth and humans are the focal point. Yet, in this story the aliens don’t even notice humanity and treat Earth as nothing more than a lay-by on their journey. Leaving their junk behind, which is magically and dangerous to the wildlife (humans) who find it.

The main character Red is a young, yet highly experienced Stalker. Now reformed he works for a research lab, putting his skills towards helping humanity understand the alien artefacts (rather than selling his finds on the black market). He’s an interesting character that seems to constantly fall short of his aspirations due to various setbacks and self-inflicted flaws.

I really liked how t

Seriously. That book was fantastic.

So glad S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is coming to Game Pass on Xbox!

If you've read the novel, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the book vs the game!

I've also seen it as The Dead Mountaineers Hotel. It was written in Russian so I imagine that would explain alternative title. I listened to the audiobook around a year ago and still think about how incredible it was. I'm a sucker for mysteries that involve people getting snowed in, so this book was right up my alley. I'm curious as to what anyone else who has read this book thought about it.

Also never realized til today but there is a direct reference to the book in Metro 2033 (game).

Fiction by Strugatsky brothers is well known to contain myriad of allegories and hidden meanings concealed in the text. This style of writing serves double purpose – on one hand, they use figurative and symbolic meaning to express their artistic and philosophical vision while avoiding attention by the Soviet censorship, on the other hand, this way of constructing a story under a thick disguise becomes their signature literary style. In turn, reading of Strugatsky fiction becomes a process similar to cracking a code, while keys that are cleverly hidden throughout the text need to be discovered by a careful reader in order to truly understand the novel. The Snail on the Slope is no exception – rather, it proves to what extent Strugatsky brothers stretch this technique in order to exercise their creative freedom and avoid Soviet censors.

On the surface, The Snail on the Slope appears to be a Kafkaesque satire aimed at depicting the absurdity of bureaucracy, akin to The Trial. However, after finishing the first two chapters of the book I realized that many of the aspects depicted make no logical sense. This prevented me from going further into the story, since I felt like I am missing an important piece of substance that the authors intended, but I am clearly not seeing. I slowly began to realize that there is a lot more to The Snail on the Slope than The Trial aimed at Soviet administrative monstrosity. I remembered The Doomed City – another novel by Strugatsky brothers, which similarly employs an allegory as the main storytelling technique. In the latter, the general narrative, although fantastical, is more or less consistent in its realm, respectful of the rules established and keeping them in tact throughout majority of the text. However, at some points throughout the story, it disintegrates into an illogical episode inconsistent with the rest of the narrative, by which Strugatsky brothers invite the reader doubt the legitimacy of the story and search for a hidden meaning which would explain these cracks in the narrative. These chaotic interludes offer clues to the underlying allegory of the text. If the reader is careful and possesses sufficient knowledge of the context, he is capable of identifying the clues and applying them to the rest of the story. The Snail on the Slope employs similar technique, however, these chaotic interludes are not segregated from the rest of the text as distinct episodes, but rather run parallel to the nar

In a near-future, unnamed part of the world, an alien race has visited the Earth... only they had no interest in establishing any contact with humans. They came, they stayed a short while, and left almost immediately. Perhaps they didn’t view humans as worthy of interaction. Perhaps their decision was far beyond our psychological capacity for reason. Perhaps Earth was just a pit stop on their way to the next destination. But what they left behind has changed the fate of humanity forever.

Before leaving the planet, the visitors touched down in six areas of the world. These six areas are referred to as Zones, and they are as big as cities. Inside these Zones are akin to an alien junkyard; a trash heap. Trinkets and baubles and remnants of nonsensical life forms are left in its wake, tempting the brave and foolish to enter the Zones, steal what remnants they can, and sell them off to the black market for profit. These foolish men and women are called Stalkers, and have introduced to the world such alien artifacts as perpetual batteries, plasma-filled energy tubes, deadly hell slimes, even a mythical Golden Sphere that is rumored to grant human wishes. The dangers of traversing these Zones are too numerous to count, but our main character Redrick has a penchant for staying alive. Not only staying alive, but thriving in the Zone that has eclipsed his hometown.

Redrick is a criminal, an upstart, a man chased by the police for actions that we are not privy to. We are treated to his arrogance, his impatience with his peers, and his disgust for his lot in life. He hates how the world has reacted to the Visit, and he is constantly drawn to chaos. He is pushed and pulled by those in power, yet feels the most alive while daring death (and much worse) with each excursion into the nightmarish Zone. He views the world as scum, being run by profiteers who step on each other to work towards whatever power-crazed goals they have in mind. Yet Redrick continues his black-market business, even trains others to do so, as it’s the only thing he knows how to do well. But the requests for a retrieval of certain items starts to weigh heavily on Redrick’s conscience: what good could any of this truly do, if released into the world? Should any of these things be toyed with? The consequences of Red’s decisions start to pile up higher and higher, risking his family, his life, and perhaps the fate of the world itself.

Written in 1972, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic

Introduction

No author has influenced my reading habits, my thoughts, my belief system, my understanding of good and bad, and my understanding of what good prose is, as Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, known to the world as the Strugatsky Brothers. This Author Appreciation post covers briefly their biographies and their bibliography. Additionally, at the end I share my own thoughts on their work - general thoughts, as well as my reactions to some of their books.

TL;DR This post is verbose. If all you want is some pointers on where to start, here is a short list of books that have been translated into English and will all be excellent starting points/great reads.

• Hard to Be a God (1964) (adapted for screen x 2, published before you were born, standalone, but not hard mode): humans try to speed up the development of a medieval world on a newly discovered planet. Things take a grim turn.

• Monday Begins on Saturday (1965) (adapted for screen, published before you were born, non-western setting - hard mode, hopeful fantasy - hard mode): the Institute of Wizardry and Magic recruits a computer scientist to work on their newly acquired supercomputer.

• Roadside Picnic (1972) (adapded for screen/TV/video games, published before you were born, hopeful fantasy- hard mode, standalone - hard mode). Years after a momentous if minute visit of an alien civilization to Earth, a special group of people called Stalkers venture into the quarantined and dangerous Zone - the place where the aliens landed - to bring back alien tech. For one such Stalker, visiting the Zone becomes much more than just an adventure.

• The Ugly Swans (1975) (adapted for screen, published before you were born, protagonist is a writer - hard mode, standalone - hard mode). A writer exiled from the capital to his old hometown witnesses a modern re-enactment of the story of the ratcatcher of Hameln.

• Definitely Maybe (1977) (adapded for screen, published before you were born, standalone - hard mode, non-western setting -hard mode, takes place entirely within one city - in fact - entirely within one apartment building). Something or someone keeps preventing a physicist from concentrating on ground-breaking research. Things escalate when he realizes, he is not the only one in this situation.

• The Doomed City (written 1977, published 1988) (takes place in a single city - possibly hard mode, hopeful - hard mode, standalone - hard mode). A mysterious group of

So, after reading Hard to Be a God I got interested in reading the rest of the novels in the noon universe, however the english versions are out of print and as such are very expensive (if it was possible to buy them, I would be), after managing to find a PDF of the first book, Noon: 22nd Century, I decided to reformat the text into a workable ebook so I could read it on my kindle - I thought I'd post a link to the file here for anyone else interested in reading it - I will likely over the next few months be doing the same for the rest of the books and update this post with the links...

NOON: 22ND CENTURY https://drive.google.com/file/d/16_CiSMf7hhekVvDV4BfusH1Hq89djGcV/view?usp=sharing

I was born in 1991 in the Soviet Union, so me and Arkady were alive together on this planet for a very short time - but the worlds and stories he crafted with his brother are easily the most personally important things I've ever read. Moreover, one of the larger reasons that I'm glad to have been born in Russia is that I was able to experience all of their books fully.

I've read most of the prominent western science fiction and I love a lot of it (probably Isaac Asimov and William Gibson most of all), but there is something very special about the Strugatsky brothers. Their books were formative - at one point I realized that my place of employment felt suspiciously like the Institute from "Monday Begins on Saturday". Regrettably, my coworkers didn't know Russian, and the quality of English translations I found was incredibly poor, so I couldn't even recommend to book to anyone.

Maybe their books can't even survive translation at all without being completely altered. I guess what I'm saying is, if you're currently thinking about learning Russian for some reason, know this - a potentially profound cultural experience is waiting for you at the end of that incredibly difficult journey.

tl;dr It's a 25 year anniversary of death of the most prolific Russian SF writer; you probably can't experience his work fully. Bummer.

What happens if aliens visit Earth, but don’t stay? What if they just stop here on their way to their final destination? In this book by Strugatsky brothers the alien visit is identical to a roadside picnic. The book deals with an aftermath of such short intrusion.

So, aliens visited Earth for some unknown reasons and left, leaving some mysterious artifacts and probably some waste products. No one knows for sure what they are and what or how they do it. The only thing common people know is that they are valuable. People who are hunting for this artifacts and selling them on the black market are known as Stalkers. The job is dangerous and illegal, mortality rates for them are sky-high and even if some survive, the Zone, as they call the place, does something to them. Nobody gets free from the it. People who were present near the zone of alien intrusion can not migrate, because mysteriously appearing disasters follow them.

Our main character, Redrick “Red” Schuhart, is a Stalker. He goes into the Zone, despite the peril to his health, to obtain alien artifacts and sell them on the black market. There are four chapters in the book and Red is PoV character of three of them. He’s a tough, no-nonsense type of guy with a lot of experience of delving into the Zone.

To be honest, characterization was not my favorite part of this book. What I really loved is the idea of this book and the atmosphere that it sets. We, as a race, were so insignificant that aliens just stopped by, left their waste and went along their journey. I loved the speculations about the Zone and it’s artifacts in the third chapter and it’s by far my favorite.

All in all, this is a great “first contact” type of story which reads easily but contains some philosophical ponderings. I loved the concept and the tone this book sets and the conclusion was satisfying.

Hi,
after I watched the movie "Stalker", I wanted to read the book, so I got myself "Roadside Picnic". Then, I read that there was another novel, called "The Desire Machine", but I only found that it was printed in the "Soviet Literature Monthly Magazine #2 -1984". Does anybody know how I can read this ?
Links:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?395466

EDIT: So it is indeed real, I should have explained the title of the post a little more, it was just that I wasn't 100% sure if it was a real text because I couldn't find anything sure about it, but /u/t184256 linked a Russian version of it with more information about it.
Also, /u/heebiejeebies_turtle is going on a quest to find and scan the "Soviet Literature Monthly Magazine #2" which supposedly include the translated text.
/u/heebiejeebies_turtle found and scanned the text ! I'm not sure if it's fine to post a link to it yet so I'm waiting for an answer from the /r/books moderators.
>In /r/books the onus is on the poster to prove that they are distributing a piece of writing legally. If you can prove that then go ahead, but based on the publication date it's likely a no.

I cant post the link here, but I'm sure you can find it easily if you look in the comments of this thread, or feel free to ask me directly if you want.

Today’s Daily Deal is The Dead Mountaineer's Inn by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, narrated by Keith Szarabajka.

I was wondering if anyone had an opinion on it? It sounds interesting.

In the book there's is a Magician named Mr. du Barnstocre. His niece has a large motorcycle named after some mythical steed. I believe it's from a Greek myth. Please help

Please read the book, post discussions or links about it, and comment on others posts!

Please tag all post titles for this book with [picnic], so that the book's icon will show up next to the post.

As always, feel free to continue discussing previously selected books.

Also if you've read April's selection (The Stars My Destination) you can rate it by clicking on the link in the survey section of the sidebar.

I enjoyed the book overall and plan to watch the film adaptation, Stalker, some time soon. I read the new translation put out by Chicago Review Press, as I'd heard it was far superior to the older translation that came out in the U.S. AMA

Jacket summary:

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.

Wow! I have never been one for detective novels, but this one was written so cleverly and with such a good sense of humor, that I find it awesome and one of the better reads that I have had in a while!

I find that the way they wrote Glebsky, he's the perfect narrator. He is as confused as the reader through all the strange twists and turns that the investigation takes, all while adding his personal, and often hilarious insight. Truly awesome.

In some respect, I feel like the last 25 or so pages may have been a little bit of a lazy way to end it...but not really. They did it well enough, and creatively enough, that I found it very satisfying, if not a tad hasty. Plus the epilogue crushed me inside a little bit.

I will be looking into more Strugatsky brothers novels in the future! Every man wears the face that he deserves...

Fiction by Strugatsky brothers is well known to contain myriad of allegories and hidden meanings concealed in the text. This style of writing serves double purpose – on one hand, they use figurative and symbolic meaning to express their artistic and philosophical vision while avoiding attention by the Soviet censorship, on the other hand, this way of constructing a story under a thick disguise becomes their signature literary style. In turn, reading of Strugatsky fiction becomes a process similar to cracking a code, while keys that are cleverly hidden throughout the text need to be discovered by a careful reader in order to truly understand the novel. The Snail on the Slope is no exception – rather, it proves to what extent Strugatsky brothers stretch this technique in order to exercise their creative freedom and avoid Soviet censors.

On the surface, The Snail on the Slope appears to be a Kafkaesque satire aimed at depicting the absurdity of bureaucracy, akin to The Trial. However, after finishing the first two chapters of the book I realized that many of the aspects depicted make no logical sense. This prevented me from going further into the story, since I felt like I am missing an important piece of substance that the authors intended, but I am clearly not seeing. I slowly began to realize that there is a lot more to The Snail on the Slope than The Trial aimed at Soviet administrative monstrosity. I remembered The Doomed City – another novel by Strugatsky brothers, which similarly employs an allegory as the main storytelling technique. In the latter, the general narrative, although fantastical, is more or less consistent in its realm, respectful of the rules established and keeping them in tact throughout majority of the text. However, at some points throughout the story, it disintegrates into an illogical episode inconsistent with the rest of the narrative, by which Strugatsky brothers invite the reader doubt the legitimacy of the story and search for a hidden meaning which would explain these cracks in the narrative. These chaotic interludes offer clues to the underlying allegory of the text. If the reader is careful and possesses sufficient knowledge of the context, he is capable of identifying the clues and applying them to the rest of the story. The Snail on the Slope employs similar technique, however, these chaotic interludes are not segregated from the rest of the text as distinct episodes, but rather run parallel to the nar

Is Arkady and Boris Strugatsky brothers' work worth reading? They are considered the best russian sci-fi writers. Can somebody confirm this?

Fiction by Strugatsky brothers is well known to contain myriad of allegories and hidden meanings concealed in the text. This style of writing serves double purpose – on one hand, they use figurative and symbolic meaning to express their artistic and philosophical vision while avoiding attention by the Soviet censorship, on the other hand, this way of constructing a story under a thick disguise becomes their signature literary style. In turn, reading of Strugatsky fiction becomes a process similar to cracking a code, while keys that are cleverly hidden throughout the text need to be discovered by a careful reader in order to truly understand the novel. The Snail on the Slope is no exception – rather, it proves to what extent Strugatsky brothers stretch this technique in order to exercise their creative freedom and avoid Soviet censors.

On the surface, The Snail on the Slope appears to be a Kafkaesque satire aimed at depicting the absurdity of bureaucracy, akin to The Trial. However, after finishing the first two chapters of the book I realized that many of the aspects depicted make no logical sense. This prevented me from going further into the story, since I felt like I am missing an important piece of substance that the authors intended, but I am clearly not seeing. I slowly began to realize that there is a lot more to The Snail on the Slope than The Trial aimed at Soviet administrative monstrosity. I remembered The Doomed City – another novel by Strugatsky brothers, which similarly employs an allegory as the main storytelling technique. In the latter, the general narrative, although fantastical, is more or less consistent in its realm, respectful of the rules established and keeping them in tact throughout majority of the text. However, at some points throughout the story, it disintegrates into an illogical episode inconsistent with the rest of the narrative, by which Strugatsky brothers invite the reader doubt the legitimacy of the story and search for a hidden meaning which would explain these cracks in the narrative. These chaotic interludes offer clues to the underlying allegory of the text. If the reader is careful and possesses sufficient knowledge of the context, he is capable of identifying the clues and applying them to the rest of the story. The Snail on the Slope employs similar technique, however, these chaotic interludes are not segregated from the rest of the text as distinct episodes, but rather run parallel to the nar