The Big Idea of this classic science fiction story, at 150 pages, a novella, isn’t revealed until almost at the end. You get unexplicated hints all along the way, of course, as you do in most good fiction. They keep you reading, trying to figure out the puzzle. As in the editor’s admonition: Resist the urge to explain.
But even though the Big Idea–which I’m not going to reveal and spoil for you, though WikiPedia does, so go there at your own risk–is worth the price of admission, it came rather late for me. There’s too much preceding material, however artful, and it is artful. Shows you how much our attention spans have shortened since the book was published in 1971. I almost got fed up with being teased and quit reading. Partly because the protagonist is a blue-collar brawler, a type which never interested me. He’s got a tender side, sure, but don’t all the brawler stereotypes?
Well, most of them. Then, at the end, the Soviet authors, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, turn loose the brawler’s class-consciousness and he starts whining about his low rung on the totem pole, rather than the real pain he’s hiding. Whose explication would have worked much better for me. I never identified with Marlon Brandon’s working-class sneer. Still the book is worth the read, if only for the Big Idea. It’s cynical, but it lingers as wry humor. As one of the characters, a physicist, might say: Embrace your inner cave man. Go on, it will be good for you. And I don’t mean the brawler bit. I’m resisting the urge to explain. Haw.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
I never remembered the Big Idea, although reread the book a few times. It’s not important; I think it’s added for readers who’re very big on plot.
Perhaps. But in this case, without the Idea, the book is just an overly long look at a chain-smoking, binge-drinking brawler.
As a Stalker, however, he collides with the Idea and enlarges it. It creates everything, including the tragedy of his daughter. Heck, even the title is part of the Idea. I don’t think the action and the Idea can be separated in Sci Fi. Without a Big Idea, it’s not Sci Fi. You might as well call it “realism.”
It would be like a Julian Barnes story without the erudition. Barnes’ people are educated, sophisticated. A lot more interesting than another surly Marlon Brando on the waterfront.
In any case, I enjoyed it enough that I’m still thinking about the story. It definitely lingers. Thanks for the tip.
I’m glad it left a trace (hehe, I just caught myself on cultural transition: Russian-speaking Strugatsky’s fan would catch the pun. “Trace”=”tracks”=Snail on a Slope (another, earlier, novel).
See, my – and regular Russian reader’s – perception of Strugatsky’s works in general and Picnic in particular is different from foreign readers. They were considered outrageously brave writers, who for some reason could say prohibitively-political, or rather anti-soviet things under a thin guise of Sci-Fi. Picnic, actually, is not so big on it, although the personal philosophy of the writers (“Happiness for everyone and free and let no one to leave without!”) is something I don’t share. Other books, “Troika”, “The Inhabited Island”, and Hard to be a God – more. It was a time, the 70’s, when only the books written in Esopian language (Eng. sp?)could dare to talk about societal problems. Besides, there are so many specifically soviet-reality details, that readers joyfully recognise, and then recognize their own old disdain and bitterness about them – this aspect, alas, is something foreigners will miss entirely.
OK. See, I was married to a crazy Strugatsky’s fanatic…he used to barter everything he could get his hands on for this or that S’ broth. book. I witnessed (and engaged in) so many long discussions about them, and the transparent reality parallels of the worlsd they created, I lost the sense of proportion entirely where S. are concerned.
You know what – your reaction makes me want to reread their books, some of them, at least. May be I’ll go to a public online library (used to be called Moshkov’s), and immerse myself into Snail. It used to be my favorite one.
I figured there was Soviet criticism, as well as some toeing of the Soviet line (else would not the authors wind up in prison?).
But it is the tragedy of the daughter that sticks with me, being a parent myself. And the Idea that the aliens were so uninterested in us that they simply picnicked and then left. Pretty funny. Cuts us down to size. Cave man size.
Oh yes, they (St. broth.) could show us all from an unexpected side. To ourselves.
Just occurred to me. Have you seen Tarkovsky’s Stalker? Some criticism from Strugatskys about the director distorting their ideas, but it is great to watch it after reading the book. It’s a cult film, too, and “shrouded in mysteries”: most of the actors and director, an unusually big number – all died soon after making the movie. When they all were relatively young. That added sort of sensational note to the fanclubs’ litanies. The actors were all first class, though, from what might be called “a small pocket of intellectuals” in acting profession. Worked in Moscow and Leningrad theaters.
Sorry for hammering the same topic; here’s a link to some of the trivia of the film:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/trivia
Of course, after Chernobyl everyone started to talk (some-in all seriousness) of prophetic nature of the movie. Even though the sequence was the normally linear one – Tarkovsky learned about nuclear accident near Chelyabinsk, on Ural, and based the visuals on that.
If you click on the names of the actors, you’ll see how soon after the movie was finished, two of the main actors (Solonitcyn and Grinko) had died.
I haven’t seen the flick, but I might rent it.