Subject: Book Review - Roadside Picnic / World's End

From: [email-masked] (Danny Yee)
Date: 11 Jun 1994 19:14:54 GMT

title: Roadside Picnic
        by: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
translated: Antonina W. Bouis
 publisher: Penguin 1979
  subjects: science fiction
     other: 160 pages
   summary: aliens litter Earth

     title: World's End
        by: Joan D. Vinge
 publisher: Tom Doherty Associates 1984
  subjects: science fiction
     other: 284 pages

_Roadside Picnic_ is the novel on which Tarkovsky's film _Stalker_ was
based.  Aliens have visited the Earth, leaving behind the Zones, places
of immense danger where incomprehensible technological wonders can
be found.  A frontier culture has developed around these areas, where
"stalkers" risk their lives in illegal expeditions to extract items.
This is a powerful but understated portrayal of mankind facing the
unknown.

_World's End_, a sequel to the Hugo award winning _The Snow Queen_,
has an very similar setting.  World's End is a localised area where
ordinary physics is warped and reality is somewhat unstable, and
where down-at-heel adventurers try to make their fortune prospecting.
In this case the plot is rather different, with the focus on the
individual quest of the protagonist to find himself and an ongoing
plot rather than the broader view of the Strugatskys.  Whether Vinge
copied from the Strugatskys' novel is not clear, but _Roadside Picnic_
is, in my opinion, by far the better novel.

%A 	Strugatsky, Arkady 
%A	Strugatsky, Boris 
%T 	Roadside Picnic
%I 	Penguin
%C 	Harmondsworth UK
%D 	1979
%G 	ISBN 0-14-00-5135-X
%P 	160pp
%O 	paperback, translated by Antonina W. Bouis

%A	Vinge, Joan D. 
%T 	World's End
%I 	Tom Doherty Associates
%C 	New York
%D 	1984
%G 	ISBN 0-812-52368-7
%P 	284pp
%O 	paperback

--
Danny Yee ([email-masked])
10 June 1994