Guess what I just received in the mail? An actual hard copy of Roadside Picnic! I ended up ordering it from Amazon UK, since no American retailer seems to carry new copies and all of the used versions are selling for upwards of sixty dollars each.
First, a quote. This is from the very beginning of the introduction:
Good science fiction is good fiction
This assertion is one which must be made again, and over again, until
the general reader and the “serious” critic cease to associate science
fiction solely with girls in brass brassieres being rescued from the
advances of bug-eyed monsters by zap-gun-toting heroes in space armor. There
is as much of a spectrum of excellence in science fiction as there is in any
other field. Mickey Spillane is not Dorothy Sayers or Ngaio Marsh. Hopalong
Cassidy is not Shane or True Grit. And the best of science fiction is quite
as good as the best of any literature.
I sigh happily whenever I read it. I paraphrase it ad nauseam to family and friends. I hope that at some point I will actually make a dent and show people that this genre is just like any other genre. I don’t know if I will see a change in my lifetime. I still receive gentle scoffs and friendly, condescending smiles. It’s alright, though. Whenever I feel doubt I just go back and re-read this story and it reaffirms my belief.
‘Roadside Picnic’ is subtle. It is about aliens and first contact and the military-industrial complex. It contains rough men performing dangerous, deadly tasks in a mysterious environment. It discusses the definition of reason and whether or not it will even be possible to interact in any meaningful way with an alien species, an alien species that could end up being so foreign to us that they are actually harmful to our well-being, or vice versa. It deals with being given answers to questions that we have not even begun, as a species, to posit. It’s fascinating, and yet you never fully realize that it is a science fiction story. It does not beat you over the head with the metaphysical aspects or shove the philosophical portions down your throat. It never showers you with technical information or spouts fantastical scientific theories. It’s just a highly entertaining story that happens to be about alien contact and how humans will react to it.
I found the use of language in this story fascinating as well. Look at the swearing: I do not think that there is ever a truly filthy word in the entire story. The juxtaposition of relatively clean language, death, and futuristic concepts is jarring and also, in a way, timeless. The types of swears used in a story can sometimes give a hint to the time setting, but in this case nothing can be gleaned from them. I can read this story in 2008 and it does not feel out of place. It could have taken place today. It could take place thirty years from now or fifty years ago. It is a subtle and amazing choice and I wonder if it was deliberate or if it was somehow cleaned up in the English translations that I have read. Either way, it is something that I would like to internalize: if you can avoid the flags or markers of your time period then you can become timeless. This does not mean that all stories should be cleaned of cultural references, as sometimes the references are important to the overall tone. Removing the cultural references of the 1800’s from ‘Moby Dick’ would detract from the story, but in the case of ‘Roadside Picnic’ it is used to great effect.
If I ever write any more science fiction stories this is the kind of story I want to write. I want to write about what will happen in the future. I am less interested in the technology and more interested in the human reactions to future events. I am betting that the concept in ‘Roadside Picnic’ is not necessarily a new one, but it opened my eyes to previously unforeseen avenues of thought. That, coupled with the entertaining subject, makes it a complete success in my eyes. I could only be so lucky as to write some comparable in my lifetime.
I’ll end this by posting a link to a soft copy of the story that I found while surfing the internet at work a few years ago. If that link is down you can google for it and find a few copies floating around. Enjoy: English translation of Roadside Picnic
| Phil | Apr.08.2008 - 21:53:09 |
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