Roadside Picnic cover art

Roadside Picnic

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Roadside Picnic

By: Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
Narrated by: Robert Forster
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About this listen

 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.
 Classics Dystopian First Contact Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Scary

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All stars
Most relevant
The book was amazing. Narrator was also really good! If you love the STALKER game series and want to know more, this is the book for you. It can be confusing at times, but at the end it pays off. Think about the name of the book ;)

Great book, hits like a ton of bricks.

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A classic piece of Russian sf with cynicism posing as realism and characters who exhaust their own selfishness and fear to find something more

The gritty road to wisdom?

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Great reading, increadible characterisation. I didn’t realize how much I liked this version of Red until I watched STALKER, and I couldn’t get over Red not being this same character, with this same voice.

I regularly think about the zone, and the possibility of becoming just a stop, just a roadside picnic, for any others out there. If you like a mystical, slow burn sci-fi with a rumble of philosophy beneath, do yourself a favor…

Impressively read, a classic for a reason

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Boldly and succinctly transported into another world without unnecessary filling in of back story, and beautifuly read too.

I can honestly say that I was taken by every word!

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Listened to the whole thing in pretty much one sitting. Great times to be had.

the silkiest reading voice

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