Roadside Picnic
Boris Strugatsky
 The novel is set in a post-visitation world where there are now six Zones known on Earth (each zone is approximately five square miles/kilometers in size) which are still full of unexplained phenomena and where strange happenings have briefly occurred, assumed to have been visitations by aliens. World governments and the UN try to keep tight control over them to prevent leakage of artifacts from the Zones, fearful of unforeseen consequences. A subculture of stalkers, thieves going into the Zones to get the artifacts, evolves around the Zones. The novel is set in and around a specific Zone in Harmont, a town in a fictitious Commonwealth country, and follows the main protagonist over an eight year period. The introduction is a live radio interview with Dr. Pilman who is credited with the discovery that the six Visitation Zones' locations weren't random. He explains it so: "Imagine that you spin a huge globe and you start firing bullets into it. The bullet holes would lie on the surface in a smooth curve. The whole point (is that) all six Visitation Zones are situated on the surface of our planet as though someone had taken six shots at Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the Earth-Deneb line. Deneb is the alpha star in Cygnus." The story revolves around Redrick "Red" Schuhart, a tough and experienced stalker who regularly enters the Zone illegally at night in search for valuable artifacts - "swag"- for profit. Trying to clean up his act, he becomes employed as a lab assistant at the International Institute, which studies the Zone. To help the career of his boss, whom he considers a friend, he goes into the Zone with him on an official expedition to recover a unique artifact (a full "empty"), which leads to his friend's death later on. This comes as a heavy shock when the news reaches Redrick, heavily drunk in a bar, and he blames himself for his friend's fate. While at the bar, a police force enters looking for any stalkers about. Redrick is forced to use a "howler" to make a hasty getaway. Red's girlfriend Guta is pregnant and decides to keep the baby no matter what. It is widely rumored that frequent incursions into the Zone by stalkers carry a high risk of mutations in their children. They decide to marry. Redrick helps a fellow stalker named Burbridge the Buzzard to get out of the Zone after the latter loses his legs to a substance known as "hell slime". Later on he confronts Burbridge's daughter who gets angry at Redrick because he saved her father from death. Guta has given birth to a beautiful, happy and intelligent daughter, fully normal save for the short and light full body hair. They call her lovingly, Monkey. Redrick's dead father comes home from the cemetery, now situated inside the Zone, as copies of other deceased are now slowly returning to their homes too. As she grows up, Redrick's daughter seems to resemble a monkey more and more, becomes reclusive while barely talking to anyone anymore, screaming strange screams at night together with Redrick's father. Redrick is arrested, but escapes, and before he is recaptured contacts a mysterious buyer with an offer of a small porcelain container of "witches' jelly" which he'd smuggled out previously. Redrick asks that the proceeds from the sale be sent to Guta. Red's old friend Richard Noonan (a supply contractor with offices inside The Institute), is revealed as a covert operative of an unnamed, presumably governmental, secret organization working hard to stop the contraband flow of artifacts from the Zone. Content he's almost succeeded in his multi-year assignment, he is confronted by his boss, who reveals to him the flow is stronger than ever, and is tasked with finding who is responsible and how they achieve it. Redrick is released from jail and makes a secret deal with Burbridge. Guta is depressed because recent medical examinations of her daughter indicate that she is no longer human. It is implied that the weekend picnics-for-tourists business set up by Burbridge are a cover for the new generation of stalkers to learn and go into the zone. They jokingly refer to the setup as "Sunday school". Red goes into the Zone one last time in order to reach the wish-granting "Golden Sphere". He has a map, given to him by Burbridge, whose son joins him on the expedition. Red knows one of them will have to die in order for the other to reach the sphere, to deactivate a phenomenon known as "meatgrinder", and keeps this a secret from his companion. After they get to the location surviving many obstacles, the young man rushes towards the sphere shouting out his wishes only to be savagely dispatched by the meatgrinder phenomenon. Spent and disillusioned, Red looks back on his broken life struggling to find meaning and hope, hoping the Sphere will find something good in his heart - it is the hidden wish that it grants, supposedly - and in the end can't think of anything other than repeating the now dead youngster's words: "HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!". Another translation of the wish from the original Russian "СЧАСТЬЕ ДЛЯ ВСЕХ, ДАРОМ, И ПУСТЬ НИКТО НЕ УЙДЕТ ОБИЖЕННЫЙ!" is "A Gift of Happiness for Everyone, So No One (Leaves)/(Passes Away) Feeling (Left Out)/(Offended By Life)."