Roadside Picnic

Copyright

Copyright © 1972 Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Foreword copyright © 2012 by Ursula K. Le Guin

Afterword copyright © 2012 by Boris Strugatsky

English language translation copyright © 2012 by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-61374-341-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strugatskii, Arkadii Natanovich, author.

[Piknik na obochine. English. 2012]

Roadside picnic / Arkady and Boris Strugatsky ; translated by Olena Bormashenko.

pages ; cm

Summary: “Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of the 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.”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-61374-341-6

1. Science fiction, Russian. I. Strugatskii, Boris Natanovich, author.

II. Bormashenko, Olena, translator. III. Title.

PG3476.S78835P5513 2012

891.73’44—dc23

2012001294

Cover and interior design: Sarah Olson

Cover image: Still from the 1979 film Stalker, Mosfilm

Printed in the United States of America

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