History Literature / RoadsidePicnic

''Roadside Picnic'' has been loosely adapted to film in 1979 by Creator/AndreiTarkovsky as ''[[Film/Stalker1979 Stalker]]''. Both the book and the movie have inspired the ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' game series. A licensed TabletopRPG (based on the book) called ''Stalker: The Sci-Fi Roleplaying Game'' published by the Finnish Burger Games was released in 2008, with an English translation released in 2012. And the concept of "stalkers" and "zones" spread far beyond the Strugatsky brothers, appearing in series like ''Franchise/{{Metro}}'' and ''TabletopGame/MutantYearZero'' and even being embraced in real life by scavengers around UsefulNotes/{{Chernobyl}} ([[LifeImitatesArt and its Exclusion Zone]]) and similar areas. [[LifeImitatesArt You really can hire a stalker to sneak you to Pripyat illegally.]] The 2017 light novel ''Literature/OthersidePicnic'' heavily inspires the work, albeit [[SpiritualAntithesis it is executed differently]].

''Roadside Picnic'' has been loosely adapted to film in 1979 by Creator/AndreiTarkovsky as ''[[Film/Stalker1979 Stalker]]''. Both the book and the movie have inspired the ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' game series. A licensed TabletopRPG (based on the book) called ''Stalker: The Sci-Fi Roleplaying Game'' published by the Finnish Burger Games was released in 2008, with an English translation released in 2012. And the concept of "stalkers" and "zones" spread far beyond the Strugatsky brothers, appearing in series like ''Franchise/{{Metro}}'' and ''TabletopGame/MutantYearZero'' and even being embraced in real life by scavengers around UsefulNotes/{{Chernobyl}} ([[LifeImitatesArt and its Exclusion Zone]]) and similar areas. [[LifeImitatesArt You really can hire a stalker to sneak you to Pripyat illegally.]]

* AliensAreBastards: Some characters take this point of view. For them, the aliens radically altered human history then left them on their own to deal with the Zones.

* BigBad: [[spoiler:The Meat Grinder, which is the closest there is to the main antagonist of the novel. It is an anomaly that guards the wish-granting artifact, the Golden Sphere, and has ended many unfortunate lives of stalkers who attempt to grant the artifact's wish by killing them and turning them into goo.]]

* CosmicHorrorStory: {{Downplayed}} and PlayedWith. Aliens visited the Earth... and that's pretty much all we know about them. Their visit radically altered parts of the Earth with various anomalies and "artifacts" which have miraculous properties that baffle science. [[ButForMeItWasTuesday One simple visitation by aliens]], who didn't bother talking to the locals, which might as well have been a [[TitleDrop Roadside Picnic]] to them, dramatically altered human culture and technology and humanity will likely spend all of its future existence wondering who the aliens were and what were their motives, likely never getting answers. But life pretty much goes on normally for the rest of the Earth, and in fact the study of the Zone has yielded significant scientific breakthroughs that improved humanity.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: [[spoiler: A short, middle-aged, not very competent engineer Richard Noonan, who actually is a secret agent.]]

* EstablishingSeriesMoment: Redrick's first venture into the Zone in the first chapter quickly establishes what the story is all about: venturing through the Zone for lucrative artifacts, despite the obvious dangers. [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in the final chapter when stalker life is as nowhere common as it was eight years ago and ONLY Redrick is the last "old-school" stalker.

* EverythingTryingToKillYou: "Alien" here means "mostly incompatible with terrestrial life". Where to start? There's a dense fog that turns your bones into jelly. A spider-web that gives you a heart attack hours after you've touched it. Spots where [[GravitySucks gravity is hundred times stronger than normal]] (in other words, step in and go splat on the floor)...the "meat grinder" that...um... well, take a guess...The Zone is littered with the bodies of scavengers that serve as markers for places where you really shouldn't go.

* HumanSacrifice: There's no religious aspect, but this is basically the function of the meat grinder in front of the golden ball--it'll deactivate for a few minutes if something large and organic is thrown into it.
* HumansAreCthulhu: {{Discussed}}. Dr. Pillman states that the Zone is something like a fieldmouse stumbling into an abandoned campsite and finding a burnt-out spark plug (treasure), a page out of a comic book (junk), and an oil slick (hazardous anomaly), but on a human scale. In fact, the discussion is the page quote.

* SufficientlyAdvancedAlien: The general theory on the origin of the Zone: a collection of scraps and residue from unfathomably advanced technology scattered throughout the Zone, left behind either by a crashed alien spacecraft...or by one dumping its trash on an InsignificantLittleBluePlanet after "a picnic" in the countryside.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: The protagonist's daughter is born with fur and a monkey tail, gradually becoming less human and more feral as the story proceeds, until his wife sobs: "The doctor says...she isn't human anymore."

There are also many works that aren’t direct adaptations, but draw tonally on or borrow elements from Roadside picnic: ''Literature/TheSouthernReachTrilogy'' (and its film adaptation ''Film/{{Annihilation|2018}}'') has some thematic similarities, but the author claims it's not an adaptation of ''Roadside Picnic'', but a thematic companion piece. Hell, the [[WesternAnimation/PussInBootsTheLastWish most recent Shrek spin-off]] takes the plot of competing criminal gangs sneaking into a dangerous zone that’s been corrupted by an object from outer-space, in order to [[WishUponAShootingStar claim a wish-granting anomaly for themselves.]]

* CoversAlwaysLie: Some covers show a Stalker holding an assault rifle in an attempt to market the book to fans of the video game series, despite the fact that Stalkers in the book not only avoid guns, but Redrick actively mocks someone for bringing one into the zone. Other editions of the book use an image from the climax Film Adaptation, which takes place in a different location than the book's climax and isn't a location in the book.

There are also many works that aren’t direct adaptations, but draw tonally on or borrow elements from Roadside picnic: ''Literature/TheSouthernReachTrilogy'' (and its film adaptation ''Film/{{Annihilation|2018}}'') has some thematic similarities, but the author claims it's not an adaptation of Roadside picnic, but a thematic companion piece. Hell, the [[WesternAnimation/PussInBootsTheLastWish most recent Shrek spin-off]] takes the plot of competing criminal gangs sneaking into a dangerous zone that’s been corrupted by an object from outer-space, in order to [[WishUponAShootingStar claim a wish-granting anomaly for themselves.]]

There are also many works that aren’t direct adaptations, but draw tonally on or borrow elements from Roadside picnic: ''Literature/TheSouthernReachTrilogy'' (and its film adaptation ''Film/{{Annihilation|2018}}'' ) has some thematic similarities, but the author claims it's not an adaptation of Roadside picnic, but a thematic companion piece. Hell, the [[WesternAnimation/PussInBootsTheLastWish most recent Shrek spin-off]] takes the plot of competing criminal gangs sneaking into a dangerous zone that’s been corrupted by an object from outer-space, in order to [[WishUponAShootingStar claim a wish-granting anomaly for themselves.]]

''Roadside Picnic'' has been loosely adapted to film in 1979 by Creator/AndreiTarkovsky as ''Film/Stalker1979''. Both the book and the movie have inspired the ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' game series. A licensed TabletopRPG (based on the book) called ''Stalker: The Sci-Fi Roleplaying Game'' published by the Finnish Burger Games was released in 2008, with an English translation released in 2012. And the concept of "stalkers" and "zones" spread far beyond the Strugatsky brothers, appearing in series like ''Franchise/{{Metro}}'' and ''TabletopGame/MutantYearZero'' and even being embraced in real life by scavengers around UsefulNotes/{{Chernobyl}} ([[LifeImitatesArt and its Exclusion Zone]]) and similar areas. [[LifeImitatesArt You really can hire a stalker to sneak you to Pripyat illegally.]]

''Roadside Picnic'' has been loosely adapted to film in 1979 by Creator/AndreiTarkovsky as ''Film/{{Stalker}}''. Both the book and the movie have inspired the ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' game series. A licensed TabletopRPG (based on the book) called ''Stalker: The Sci-Fi Roleplaying Game'' published by the Finnish Burger Games was released in 2008, with an English translation released in 2012. And the concept of "stalkers" and "zones" spread far beyond the Strugatsky brothers, appearing in series like ''Franchise/{{Metro}}'' and ''TabletopGame/MutantYearZero'' and even being embraced in real life by scavengers around UsefulNotes/{{Chernobyl}} ([[LifeImitatesArt and its Exclusion Zone]]) and similar areas. [[LifeImitatesArt You really can hire a stalker to sneak you to Pripyat illegally.]]

->'''Pilman''': Imagine a picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car drives off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out of the car carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Gas and oil spilled on the grass. Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around. Rags, burnt out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind. Oil slicks on the pond. And of course, the usual mess -- apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, comics, faded flowers picked in another meadow.
->'''Noonan''': I see. A roadside picnic.
->'''Pilman''': Precisely. A roadside picnic, on some road in the cosmos.

A novel by the Creator/{{Strugatsky brothers}}.