Potluck & Book Discussion: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Let’s just go crazy and make whatever kind of dish, drink or dessert you wish to share!! And let’s discuss our November book Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
🔅About our Book: Roadside Picnic is a philosophical science fiction novel by Soviet-Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, written in 1971 and published in 1972. It is the brothers' most popular and most widely translated novel outside the former Soviet Union. As of 2003, Boris Strugatsky counted 55 publications of Roadside Picnic in 22 countries. The book has been the source of many adaptations and other inspired works in a variety of media, including stage plays, video games, and television series. The 1979 film Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, is loosely based on the novel, with a screenplay written by the Strugatsky brothers. Later, in 2007, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, the first installment of a video game franchise taking inspiration from both the book and the film, would be released as well. The term stalker became a part of the Russian language and, according to the authors, became the most popular of their neologisms. In the book, stalkers are people who trespass into the forbidden area known as the Zone and steal its valuable extraterrestrial artifacts, which the stalkers sell. In Russian, after Tarkovsky's film, the term acquired the meaning of a guide who navigates forbidden or uncharted territories; later on, urbexers and fans of industrial tourism, especially those visiting abandoned sites and ghost towns, were also called stalkers.
🔅About our Authors: Arkady Strugatsky and his brother, Boris Strugatsky, are the most famous and popular Russian writers of science fiction, and the authors of over 25 novels and novellas including The Doomed City, The Inhabited Island, and Roadside Picnic. Their books have been widely translated and made into a number of films. Arkady Strugatsky died in 1991.
Their early work was influenced by Stanislaw Lem and Ivan Yefremov, but later would develop their own, unique style of science fiction writing.
Their best known novel was translated into English as “Roadside Picnic”. Andrei Tarkovsky adapted the book for the screen into a movie called “Stalker”, released in 1979.
Other adaptations of their work include “Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel” (1979), “The Sorcerers” (1982, and based off “Monday Begins on Saturday”), and “The Ugly Swans (2006).“Hard to Be a God” was adapted twice, once in 1989 and again in 2013. Arkady was born August 25, 1925 in Batumi to a Jewish art critic father and a Russian Orthodox teacher mom, but the family would later move to Leningrad. In January of 1942, Arkady and his dad were evacuated from the Siege of Leningrad, however Arkady was the sole survivor in his train car, since his dad died upon reaching Vologda. In 1943, he was drafted into the Soviet Army, training first at the artillery school in Aktyubinsk and later at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, which he graduated from in 1949 as an interpreter of Japanese and English. Until 1955, he worked as a teacher and interpreter for the military. Starting that year, he started working as a writer and editor. Starting in 1958, he began collaborating with his brother Boris, which lasted until October 12, 1991 when Arkady died at the age of 66. In 1964 Arkady became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers. Besides his own writing, he translated Japanese novels and short stories, as well as some English works with Boris. Boris was born April 14, 1933, and stayed with his mom in Leningrad during the siege of the city during World War II. In 1950, he graduated from high school and applied to the physics department at Leningrad State University, however studied astronomy instead. After he graduated in the year 1955, he worked as a computer engineer and astronomer at the Pulkovo Observatory. In 1960 he took part in an astronomical and geodetic expedition in the Caucasus. In 1964, Boris became a member of the writers’ union of the USSR, and became a full time writer in 1966. Starting in 1972, he acted as the head of the Leningrad seminar for young speculative fiction writers, which would subsequently become known as the “Boris Strugatsky Seminar”. Boris also established the “Bronze Snail” literary prize. After Arkady’s death, Boris penned two novels and published them under a pseudonym. He died in St. Petersburg on November 19, 2012 at the age of 79. He was an agnostic.