41–50 of 103 posts
"Stalker" is my favorite film of all time and I highly recommend it.
See, some people think our current culture/civilization/capitalism will not survive climate change, but clearly there is no wasteland too blasted and dangerous for it to eventually become a money-making tourist attraction. Our culture will live on in its perversity. I fully expect people to be huffing recreational Covid in 30 years’ time.
I'm surprised nowhere in the article does it mention the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R .) They are loosely based on the novel, however perhaps more well known (in the US at least) than the book or movie.
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Second this recommendation. And if you’re used to sci-fi by Western authors, books by Cold War, Iron Curtain authors like Strugatsky, Lem (Polish) and others are fascinating.
Thanks for that, anything in particular by Lem that you recommend getting started with? I find we get very little exposure to Russian / slavic authors in North America, and when I do occasionally get to read one (including the classics but also some paperbacks) I suspect how much we must be missing by not having more of them readily available and marketed.
The book is much more detailed than the films. For example, in the book they go down to the “surface” of the alien and visit it… more than once as I recall. That’s not in the films.
The piece about possibly coming across killers as they buried a body feels like quite the buried lede…
It might be poor opsec to elaborate too heavily about a time you witnessed organized criminals concealing a murder.
The article talks about Roadside Picnic, the Russian sci-fi novel where the Stalker term was coined. I learned about this book on HN and highly recommend it.
It is absolutely mad how Roadside Picnic and derived works basically created a fictional setting and subculture that, decades later, was brought wholesale into reality. Never seen anything like it, and I doubt anything like it will ever happen again.
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I watched Tarkovski's movie for the first time the other night. It was a lot more "artsy" than I expected (in a good way).
If you liked it, watch the Russian Solaris. It's interesting to compare and contrast with 2001.
The article talks about Roadside Picnic, the Russian sci-fi novel where the Stalker term was coined. I learned about this book on HN and highly recommend it.
Concur. My all-time favorite sci-fi novel. And that's reading it in the English translation. It must be sublime in Russian.
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Concur. My all-time favorite sci-fi novel. And that's reading it in the English translation. It must be sublime in Russian.
Did you read Metro 2033? It’s been compared to Roadside Picnic and has spawned a sub-culture, too (exploring abandoned Soviet subways lines and stations)