A New Translation of The One Russian Science Fiction Novel You Absolutely Must Read

If you’re going to read just one Soviet-era Russian science fiction novel, it should be Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s dark, ambiguous Roadside Picnic.

Originally written in the early 1970s, it’s back in print in English after 30 years, with a brand-new translation by Olena Bormashenko and a riveting afterword by Boris Strugatsky about how the book was butchered by Soviet censors.

 <…>

In the afterword, Boris Strugatsky explains that there are worse things than ideological censors — there are the literary gatekeepers who want every work of fiction to be banal and reassuring, never forcing the reader to go outside his or her comfort zone. But Roadside Picnic, now restored to the authors’ original version, is all about going into the Zones that are far beyond the reaches of your safe little life. To venture into the Zone is to confront who we really are, and what our place is in the universe. And the answers will disturb the hell out of you. Which is as it should be.

Abridged. See the complete version of the article here