I chose this post as it gives details on Roadside Picnic that show why its content is a product of the Thaw period of Soviet SF. With its discussion on unknown futures and criticisms of governmental practices, the novel would not even be a consideration during the Stalin years. The post makes clear The Strugatskys’ vision of a post-contact world which prompts those discussions.
The Zones in the world of the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic are post-apocalyptic wastelands that mark the remnants of the Visit – the inciting incident prior to the start of the novel in which aliens briefly came to Earth. There are numerous Zones alluded to around the world, but the one which Redrick Schuhart, one of our protagonists, frequents is located on the outskirts of the town of Harmont. The Zone, a kind of uber-dangerous archaeological dig site, is populated with strange relics left behind by the aliens during the visit; these relics are recovered “legally” by the industrial military complex operated Institute, and “illegally” by stalkers, who sell off their recovered “swag” to private buyers. As illustrated by the conversation between Noonan and Pillman in chapter 3 of the novel, the Strugatsky brothers, like Lem, are curious but unsure just what contact with aliens would look like. Pillman distastefully outlines the world of pseudoscience within the novel by explaining to a perplexed Noonan that some scientists hold that the Visit has yet to actually occur, and the strange relics are a means of studying humans to decide if they are ready to make “real” contact. Others hold that perhaps the aliens are hold up in the Zone, carefully and continuously studying the perilous attempts made by humans to study their technology, and that the Visit is an ongoing phenomenon rather than a singular event in the past. In my view, the investigation of the Zone is itself the contact; my analogy is that of paleontologists digging up dinosaur bones. Though they are long dead and gone, is piecing together bit by bit behemoths through recovering their bones not a form of making contact with those same creatures? Whether stalker or Institute lab assistant, intrepid Harmontians risk life and limb in the pursuit of knowledge. Red certainly made contact, as evidenced by the silky golden hair coating his daughter, The Monkey, from head to toe. The Vulture, Old Man Burbridge, I’m sure would argue that he made contact when the aliens’ remnant hell slime claimed his legs by dissipating the bones wherever the slime touched. The Strugatskys, like Lem, and like me, know that there is no simple answer to the question of contact. It is both ephemeral and perpetual, noticeable and invisible, boundless and singular. Contact is not a question of where and when, but a question of intelligence. And as Pillman outlines, who knows what intelligence aliens possess?