This video is a thoughtful and timely commentary on both the novel, and the time that we live in. That’s fitting for SF. And the location, and the lighting and camera work are excellent. It’s a beautiful video with an original approach for a BookTube review video. Well done, all!
Just finished last week. Amazing how we seldom question scifi musings about the future, but are always surprised how fresh and timeless were the themes of books written in the recent and far-distant past. This book is one that even today stands apart from most of the genre. Adding it to my not-to-long list of books to reread sometime.
I left a comment on The Road video about how your style is getting more refined and you've got that special something that makes a really great youtube channel. Booktube got me into SF, primarily your channel and discord with the help of some other members of the Alliance, and my gut tells me your channel is going to see huge organic growth this year. Absolutely LOVE the content Moid - couldn't ask for a more kickass cult leader 🤘
Wow! What a great video, content aside (which is great, btw.. Roadside Picnic is one of my favourite books), really interesting direction and production. Can't wait to see films like this on the channel.
A respectable author is an artist through the quality of their creative writing, and you have demonstrated in this and your Watership Down vids (just to name two recent examples) that the rare reader exists who can claim that title, too, through the depth of their reading. You inspire me to be a better writer, one worthy of the commitment of readers like you. Thanks for brightening my day. Cheers.
This is my favorite first contact set up. The idea of aliens being so above us that they consider our most significant moment as a species to be something very unremarkable makes for a very unique take on aliens as they relate to us. I really enjoy the mystery because it's framed to show how perspective is everything. What are ants to us? What are we to interstellar beings?
I just finished this a few weeks ago after seeing it on some lists. It was good, not mind blowing but solid and I liked the ending. I appreciate your take on it and this video was top notch.
The book is a great entertainment piece with some good philosophical ponderables splashed in. On it's own it's just a really solid short novel. The 1979 Tarkovsky movie and the Stalker games form a sort of holy trinity with Roadside Picnic, and that's what the stalker cult following is really all about. "Same same. But diiiiifferent."
Tnanks, Moid. I'm loving these variant format videos. Fab music too, as is often the case; I wish you'd credit the music in all your videos. If you fancy another book with a strange, dangerous alien zone, I recommend Algis Budrys' Rogue Moon.
I finished this book recently and I was just enamored by how the world and more so the characters were written, many of the characters are distinctively human ,with their many flaws and weaknesses. which is something I feel many books fail to do, this books speaks on greed, misery, morality, and the general human condition is such a unique way
Been watching the channel since you started really like this sort of stuff you do it very well Moid. Interviews have been great a big thumbs up inspired me to try roadside sometime ago . And Iain m bank’s culture was an unknown until your read along so many thanks for that and all the other tips . Keep up the good work mate🫡
You've reviewed/mentioned this book so often that it is soundly at the very top of my TBR!! I can't wait to read it even though I know the entire story from watching your videos LOL FYI...I love the production quality of this video!!!
Excellent production! Six minutes isn't long enough, but the video packs a lot into that time span, so good job and thumbs up from me 👍. As probably many others did, I read Roadside Picnic only after seeing Tarkovsky's Stalker, a movie that I watched a number of times before becoming aquainted with the source material. I recently watched a five episode miniseries based on the Stalker universe that I think in some ways tries to bridge the connection between Tarkovsky's and the Strugatsky's visions. It's available on RUclips and made by Kinart Films-they don't seem to have a big audience and it's in German with subtitles. I think that they did a pretty solid job and the series is worth watching for those interested in spending more time in that world-I have no affiliation with the producers, just passing along what I feel is some good Stalker content. Thanks for the excellent video.
At first I thought the review was quite in-depth. But when the interpreter said that the Strugatsky brothers criticized the Soviet regime in The Roadside Picnic, I was, frankly, very surprised. It seems to me that such a vulgarized interpretation is as if to say that in the novel “Crime and Punishment” Fyodor Dostoevsky criticized the tsarist regime of Alexander II.
I mean... Are you saying he wasn't criticizing the Tsarist system? The guy that endured a mock execution and ten years of hard exile for being a threat to the Tsar? Just because he no longer believed revolution was the answer doesn't mean he came to "love Big Brother", as it were.
Fantastic book with so much meaning. I prefer the translation of "...and let no one be forgotten!" but it's a good line nonetheless. There's also a plea to divine forces, any cosmic being that knows the nature of Red's soul. That act of faith involved in the last paragraph beautifully ties in the themes of money and ideology. "Look into my soul, I know - everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I've never sold my soul to anyone!" It's a mini soliloquy and it's one of my favourite endings to any book, ever.
I like this one! Different, and as many new things, it is something to like. But more important: The condensation is very good! Altough I've both read the book and seen the movie, this gave me another angle. And now I must read it again, maybe I'll try it as an audiobook this time -anything is the new black! The video? -Also new and different. I like it, cheers!
I read it for the first time recently and thought it a pretty good critique of our time then realized it was written 40 years ago in the USSR. Scary thought that.
Woooot!!!!!! Wow this was awesome. I Loooouuughhve this style of review. Still like the library reviews but this was excellent. Would use this to get people interested in the book. 👍
This book may very well had been the first sci-fi novel I've ever read, I can't remember. I remember wanting to get into Stalker video game as a teenager and struggling, borrowing the book from the town library in hopes it will hype me up. My friend loved the game and I wanted to love it too. But I couldn't, though I still liked the book. My first was either this or Mass Effect novel and I hope to god it wasn't a shitty Mass Effect novel... :D I read a bunch of fantasy novels as teenager but never really dived deeper into sci-fi until my late 20's.
Great video. You might wanna explore your subject a bit further, since at the end we're left to think if you thought Roadside Picnic was a criticism of the Soviet system specifically or if you thought it was a criticism of the soul crushing authoritarianism generally prevalent through the Cold war. I love how you crafted the video, I wish it were longer. :)
Absolutely loving the Tarkovsky homage. I do not consider the book to be a criticism of the communist system any more than I think 'Stranger In A Strange Land' by Heinlein is a criticism of capitalism. For example, the events in the story do not take place in Russia or anywhere in the Soviet Union; they occur in and around the fictional Canadian town of Harmont. It is simply a really good sci-fi novel written within the constraints imposed by an authoritarian regime.
@@MediaDeathCultBoris Strugatsky himself wrote that the book is not at all ideologically driven and is, if anything, about "a world of decaying capitalism". He wrote his commentary after the fall of the SU, so there is no argument for any kind of dishonesty in his statement. For reference, the edition I read it in is the Russian 2023 edition of the 6th Volume of the Collected Works (1969-1973).
4:06 What an obfuscation. The Strugatskys were communists - this is incredibly obvious if you've read their other books (especially "Space Apprentice"). The disagreements they had with the Soviet censors were largely over minor details like the inclusion of profanity and graphic imagery - comparing the early, censored editions and later, uncensored editions of Picnic, the plot and themes are basically the same. People take this small bit of editorial meddling and try to spin a narrative that the Strugatskys were some anti-Soviet renegades, trying to sneak critiques of communism past the censors, when it was nothing of the sort. Ideologically, Roadside Picnic is aggressively anti-capitalist - it comments on how automation undermines the job security of manual laborers, and the hypocrisy of criminalizing the poor while relying on them for profit. It shows how advances in technology, even boosted by something as crazy as an alien invasion, always end up in the hands of the wealthy and privileged (artifacts are used to power their cars and decorate their jewelry), while the working class is literally dying in the Zone to make that possible. The idea of financial independence and upward mobility is almost mocked, as Redrick quits his job at the Institute to become his own boss, and ends up more miserable and overworked than ever. 90% of the book's commentary could easily be interpreted as a scathing critique of America, with its prison-industrial complex and glamorization of rugged individualism. Yes, the Strugatskys also take jabs at the Soviet Union's naïve utopianism - Kirill, a Russian scientist, has big dreams of saving the entire world with advancements in technology, but is completely out of touch with the people he's supposedly trying to help, and his ignorance to these harsh realities is what ultimately leads to his death. But despite this, he's still portrayed as one of the most sympathetic characters in the book, with genuinely altruistic, noble intentions. He's a downright inspirational figure to Redrick, who is otherwise portrayed as very cynical and pessimistic. But no, Redrick's name has the word "red" in it, so clearly, it's commentary on the Soviet Union. Some truly top-shelf analysis, mate. If you want to really discuss a time when the Strugatskys clashed with the Soviet censors on ideological grounds, why not go over the turbulent publishing history of "Tale of the Troika"? That's a much better example.
@@MediaDeathCult Thank you. Sorry if I came off as too aggressive; I just feel that the subtext of Roadside Picnic is so overt that you really don't need to delve into name symbolism to pick up on it. And good job on the video in general, it's very beautiful. I only take issue with those last few lines - otherwise, it's a perfectly good summary / review.
Thanks again, I like to make these videos my own creation and not an attempt to present any absolutes, I hold back on doing too much research. I disagree that this is "top shelf analysis", I can point you in the direction of pretty much every other Roadside Picnic review where that would be the case. Next time I read this book I will have your comment in my head and have a different interpretation.
Next level book review. Excellent. Read it over 50 years ago. Time to read it again.
You actually read the first Russian printing? How does that compare with the English version, is there much lost in translation?
These videos just keep getting better
I’m loving these cinematic videos.
Oh, perfect! 🤗
This video is a thoughtful and timely commentary on both the novel, and the time that we live in. That’s fitting for SF. And the location, and the lighting and camera work are excellent. It’s a beautiful video with an original approach for a BookTube review video. Well done, all!
Just finished last week. Amazing how we seldom question scifi musings about the future, but are always surprised how fresh and timeless were the themes of books written in the recent and far-distant past. This book is one that even today stands apart from most of the genre. Adding it to my not-to-long list of books to reread sometime.
Gotta respect the classics.
Excellent. Thanks, Moid.
I left a comment on The Road video about how your style is getting more refined and you've got that special something that makes a really great youtube channel. Booktube got me into SF, primarily your channel and discord with the help of some other members of the Alliance, and my gut tells me your channel is going to see huge organic growth this year. Absolutely LOVE the content Moid - couldn't ask for a more kickass cult leader 🤘
Thank You
Please don't abandon "your mum's" jokes though
Wow! What a great video, content aside (which is great, btw.. Roadside Picnic is one of my favourite books), really interesting direction and production. Can't wait to see films like this on the channel.
I read Roadside Picnic last year thanks to this channel. I picked up Stalker on blu-ray soon after. Both have their individual charms.
Beautifully done! Makes me proud to be a Patron.
A respectable author is an artist through the quality of their creative writing, and you have demonstrated in this and your Watership Down vids (just to name two recent examples) that the rare reader exists who can claim that title, too, through the depth of their reading. You inspire me to be a better writer, one worthy of the commitment of readers like you. Thanks for brightening my day. Cheers.
Great comment, thank you
This is my favorite first contact set up. The idea of aliens being so above us that they consider our most significant moment as a species to be something very unremarkable makes for a very unique take on aliens as they relate to us. I really enjoy the mystery because it's framed to show how perspective is everything. What are ants to us? What are we to interstellar beings?
I just finished this a few weeks ago after seeing it on some lists. It was good, not mind blowing but solid and I liked the ending. I appreciate your take on it and this video was top notch.
The book is a great entertainment piece with some good philosophical ponderables splashed in. On it's own it's just a really solid short novel.
The 1979 Tarkovsky movie and the Stalker games form a sort of holy trinity with Roadside Picnic, and that's what the stalker cult following is really all about. "Same same. But diiiiifferent."
Top video work Moid. Very polished.
Tnanks, Moid. I'm loving these variant format videos. Fab music too, as is often the case; I wish you'd credit the music in all your videos.
If you fancy another book with a strange, dangerous alien zone, I recommend Algis Budrys' Rogue Moon.
Excellent job, sir.
Magnificent video. More of this sort of thing, please.
This video is so amazingly well crafted it does the book justice
Thank you
I finished this book recently and I was just enamored by how the world and more so the characters were written, many of the characters are distinctively human ,with their many flaws and weaknesses. which is something I feel many books fail to do, this books speaks on greed, misery, morality, and the general human condition is such a unique way
Been watching the channel since you started really like this sort of stuff you do it very well Moid. Interviews have been great a big thumbs up inspired me to try roadside sometime ago . And Iain m bank’s culture was an unknown until your read along so many thanks for that and all the other tips . Keep up the good work mate🫡
Fantastic production value, and a fantastic examination of the themes in the book. Thanks for this, Moid. A neat spin on your usual format.
You've reviewed/mentioned this book so often that it is soundly at the very top of my TBR!! I can't wait to read it even though I know the entire story from watching your videos LOL
FYI...I love the production quality of this video!!!
Thank You Jenna
@@MediaDeathCult You are most welcome Moid!
You put a lot of effort into the production of this video & it shows!!
What a great video!
Fantastic review, eloquently put. Well done!
Beautiful work, Moid. I loved this book and your review does it justice, I'd say. Great videography and commentary. Cheers.
Another great video. Really digging these cinematic reviews.
It's no wonder that in the saddest corner of the planet, happiness is science fiction.
My favourite science-fiction novel, and my favourite movie.
LOve it. Just finished Roadside last night. ". . . .thick as porridge." lololol rolling. You should have had sun glasses on and had ready The Who
Excellent production! Six minutes isn't long enough, but the video packs a lot into that time span, so good job and thumbs up from me 👍.
As probably many others did, I read Roadside Picnic only after seeing Tarkovsky's Stalker, a movie that I watched a number of times before becoming aquainted with the source material.
I recently watched a five episode miniseries based on the Stalker universe that I think in some ways tries to bridge the connection between Tarkovsky's and the Strugatsky's visions.
It's available on RUclips and made by Kinart Films-they don't seem to have a big audience and it's in German with subtitles.
I think that they did a pretty solid job and the series is worth watching for those interested in spending more time in that world-I have no affiliation with the producers, just passing along what I feel is some good Stalker content.
Thanks for the excellent video.
I'm loving these reviews and book commentaries on location. A very nice touch that could only ever have come from MDC. Ubbsolute brollianse. :s
I finally read the book. Loved it, thanks for helping me read more
My pleasure
At first I thought the review was quite in-depth. But when the interpreter said that the Strugatsky brothers criticized the Soviet regime in The Roadside Picnic, I was, frankly, very surprised. It seems to me that such a vulgarized interpretation is as if to say that in the novel “Crime and Punishment” Fyodor Dostoevsky criticized the tsarist regime of Alexander II.
I mean... Are you saying he wasn't criticizing the Tsarist system? The guy that endured a mock execution and ten years of hard exile for being a threat to the Tsar? Just because he no longer believed revolution was the answer doesn't mean he came to "love Big Brother", as it were.
Fantastic book with so much meaning. I prefer the translation of "...and let no one be forgotten!" but it's a good line nonetheless.
There's also a plea to divine forces, any cosmic being that knows the nature of Red's soul. That act of faith involved in the last paragraph beautifully ties in the themes of money and ideology. "Look into my soul, I know - everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I've never sold my soul to anyone!"
It's a mini soliloquy and it's one of my favourite endings to any book, ever.
Just read this one. Its a page turner and, dare i say, a masterpiece
I like this one! Different, and as many new things, it is something to like.
But more important: The condensation is very good! Altough I've both read the book and seen the movie, this gave me another angle. And now I must read it again, maybe I'll try it as an audiobook this time -anything is the new black!
The video? -Also new and different. I like it, cheers!
I read it for the first time recently and thought it a pretty good critique of our time then realized it was written 40 years ago in the USSR. Scary thought that.
ur stupid
Woooot!!!!!! Wow this was awesome. I Loooouuughhve this style of review. Still like the library reviews but this was excellent. Would use this to get people interested in the book. 👍
Nice video style. Did you go to WGT in Leipzig this year?
This book may very well had been the first sci-fi novel I've ever read, I can't remember. I remember wanting to get into Stalker video game as a teenager and struggling, borrowing the book from the town library in hopes it will hype me up. My friend loved the game and I wanted to love it too. But I couldn't, though I still liked the book. My first was either this or Mass Effect novel and I hope to god it wasn't a shitty Mass Effect novel... :D
I read a bunch of fantasy novels as teenager but never really dived deeper into sci-fi until my late 20's.
🛸🛸🚀🚀
Very Good CGI effects You've used to look like your outside,
I know right! Didn't realise ILM were involved in the production!
Great video. You might wanna explore your subject a bit further, since at the end we're left to think if you thought Roadside Picnic was a criticism of the Soviet system specifically or if you thought it was a criticism of the soul crushing authoritarianism generally prevalent through the Cold war. I love how you crafted the video, I wish it were longer. :)
Thanks, I like to leave the audience in a pondering mood.....or do I?
Absolutely loving the Tarkovsky homage.
I do not consider the book to be a criticism of the communist system any more than I think 'Stranger In A Strange Land' by Heinlein is a criticism of capitalism. For example, the events in the story do not take place in Russia or anywhere in the Soviet Union; they occur in and around the fictional Canadian town of Harmont.
It is simply a really good sci-fi novel written within the constraints imposed by an authoritarian regime.
Yeah, they should have based the story in Moscow to make it clearer
@@MediaDeathCult It is a dubious vulgarized interpretation, however, typical in the West.
@@MediaDeathCultBoris Strugatsky himself wrote that the book is not at all ideologically driven and is, if anything, about "a world of decaying capitalism".
He wrote his commentary after the fall of the SU, so there is no argument for any kind of dishonesty in his statement. For reference, the edition I read it in is the Russian 2023 edition of the 6th Volume of the Collected Works (1969-1973).
4:06 What an obfuscation. The Strugatskys were communists - this is incredibly obvious if you've read their other books (especially "Space Apprentice"). The disagreements they had with the Soviet censors were largely over minor details like the inclusion of profanity and graphic imagery - comparing the early, censored editions and later, uncensored editions of Picnic, the plot and themes are basically the same. People take this small bit of editorial meddling and try to spin a narrative that the Strugatskys were some anti-Soviet renegades, trying to sneak critiques of communism past the censors, when it was nothing of the sort.
Ideologically, Roadside Picnic is aggressively anti-capitalist - it comments on how automation undermines the job security of manual laborers, and the hypocrisy of criminalizing the poor while relying on them for profit. It shows how advances in technology, even boosted by something as crazy as an alien invasion, always end up in the hands of the wealthy and privileged (artifacts are used to power their cars and decorate their jewelry), while the working class is literally dying in the Zone to make that possible. The idea of financial independence and upward mobility is almost mocked, as Redrick quits his job at the Institute to become his own boss, and ends up more miserable and overworked than ever. 90% of the book's commentary could easily be interpreted as a scathing critique of America, with its prison-industrial complex and glamorization of rugged individualism.
Yes, the Strugatskys also take jabs at the Soviet Union's naïve utopianism - Kirill, a Russian scientist, has big dreams of saving the entire world with advancements in technology, but is completely out of touch with the people he's supposedly trying to help, and his ignorance to these harsh realities is what ultimately leads to his death. But despite this, he's still portrayed as one of the most sympathetic characters in the book, with genuinely altruistic, noble intentions. He's a downright inspirational figure to Redrick, who is otherwise portrayed as very cynical and pessimistic.
But no, Redrick's name has the word "red" in it, so clearly, it's commentary on the Soviet Union. Some truly top-shelf analysis, mate.
If you want to really discuss a time when the Strugatskys clashed with the Soviet censors on ideological grounds, why not go over the turbulent publishing history of "Tale of the Troika"? That's a much better example.
Great comment, thank you
@@MediaDeathCult Thank you. Sorry if I came off as too aggressive; I just feel that the subtext of Roadside Picnic is so overt that you really don't need to delve into name symbolism to pick up on it.
And good job on the video in general, it's very beautiful. I only take issue with those last few lines - otherwise, it's a perfectly good summary / review.
Thanks again, I like to make these videos my own creation and not an attempt to present any absolutes, I hold back on doing too much research.
I disagree that this is "top shelf analysis", I can point you in the direction of pretty much every other Roadside Picnic review where that would be the case.
Next time I read this book I will have your comment in my head and have a different interpretation.
I agree with your notice. Thanks.