Roadside Picnic - Arkady & Boris Strugatsky / Folio Society Reviews

[@PontusPresents]

I forgot to say this in the video: I bought this book mainly because of Half-Life 2 (I know the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is sort of based on this book, but I haven't played it yet). I loved playing Half-Life 2 growing up and the atmosphere of that game, the wastelands and the monsters, the isolation, horror elements, etc., made me interested in trying this book out! I hope 'Roadside Picnic' can give some similar feelings as playing that game. 🙂

[@dimitriskoutsipetsidis]

Big Half-Life 2 fan here, what a game... While it has some similar vibes, I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is closer to the book than HL2. If you can get past the overall rough finish of the game, and its age, it has a very distinct atmosphere and there's a lot to enjoy, it draws you in. Very different approach from developers in the US. If you play it and find out you like it I recommend skipping the sequel (Clear Sky) and going straight to No3 in the series (Call of Pripyat). Great review, been eyeing this... I'm almost ready to make the purchase, Folio editions have become very expensive.

[@edwardrichardson8254]

The original Half-Life played like a movie compared to the trailblazing FPS games that came before. You must have seen the movie "Stalker," which is beyond awesome, and may have killed its director and possibly the actress via poisoning - the sludge and piles of junk in the Eastern Bloc setting makes "Eraserhead" look like Mr. Clean. My ex-wife is from the former USSR which, in its own way, was more something out of sci-fi than the far more technologically advanced America (when America was investing in Silicon Valley, the Soviets were still investing in Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works). First, you have a society based on a sci-fi notion: An industrial apocalypse whereby the grungy factory workers overthrow their decadent masters (think "Time Machine" and the Morlocks and Eloi) and create a government-free Utopia where everything is shared (which Marx curiously never described because it's an impossibility). This of course never happened, so in come professional revolutionaries who initiate a coup when the nation is imploding at the end of the first biblical industrial war. This is why the USSR appealed to fellow travelers like H. G. Wells and when you examine earlier Soviet art before Stalin banned it, it's Futurism. This was to be the Future of Mankind. But then it goes to hell. Communism can only take root (and by force) in poor agrarian societies. As with China, ironically, the Russians starved the rural farmers to steal their grain to flood the world markets and industrialize. So we have man-made mass famines, we have strange theoretical mindsets resulting in insanity like Lysenkoism, cabals of "intellectuals" who are like the elite "brains" in sci-fi novels. Although relatively dirt poor, they throw everything into weapons and a Space Race w/ the West. Atomic Apocalypse looms over the world. Chernobyl happens but in the cover up the Russians still carry out May Day parades in Ukraine exposing untold thousands to radiation. But after its dissolution we see it for what it really was: a Third World mess and ecological disaster. There was a six-mile wide island of garbage floating in the Black Sea. Millions of people have been living in a deep freeze and do not even know how to write a check. Island states like Cuba become piles of trash w/ people driving vehicles that are vestiges from sixty years before the communist takeover. Satellite shots of the two Koreas show the north in utter darkness at night while their Dear Leader, who they worship like a god, screams WE NUKE YOU! as his Chinese masters laugh and urge him on. Piles of weapons intended for WWIII litter the former Eastern Bloc, kids play in boneyards next to rotting MiGs. I think that's the point of "Roadside Picnic" and its incredible movie adaptation: The USSR is The Zone. The deus ex machina at the end is very "2001: A Space Odyssey" but it begs the question: Is the mutant child to come out all this good or an abomination?

[@PontusPresents]

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[@elliotwalton6159]

A beautiful edition.

[@PontusPresents]

Very!

[@Prometheus_Williams]

Thank you for letting get a look at this beautiful offerings. Do you know how many of these were printed?

[@mtoad]

Perfect choice of music for this video

[@PontusPresents]

Thank you! 😄

[@VisualFeast7557]

Nice reference to Francis Bacon 2:48

[@cfytcf]

Thank you for showing this book. I do notice that the Folio description of the standard edition says: "240 pages printed in dark green ink... " yet the text in this video looks black. Can you confrirm what colour the text is?

[@PontusPresents]

I wasn’t sure initially if the text was black or dark green, but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be (very) dark green!

[@alexanderleece2673]

Got my copy, and it's 100% black/grey. Whacked it into photoshop to check with the colour dropper, and it's nowhere near green. Shame.

[@cfytcf]

@@alexanderleece2673 I agree. My copy appears to have black text. Evidently the description was copied from the special edition. Do better Folio Society.

[@curtishard19944]

Mine appears to be very dark green, it was enough for me to think it very much was not a dark grey or black. (non special edition)