Roadside picnic is a fantastic book that feels thrilling for a scifi story. There’s everything you could hope for, from deep philosophical questions to fictional technology that’s described in a way that fascinates but doesn’t attempt to over-explain; there’s political implications to the geopolitics of the time that the authors consider. And at the center, an anti-hero who just wants to get his wish fulfilled and get out of this place, who’s willing to make a deal with the devil for it.
To take all that and reimagine it as a long trialogue in an eerily deserted nature reserve/post-apocalyptic wasteland that touches upon all sorts of deep philosophy—from the divine to whether we can truly know ourselves; the struggle between logic and creativity; the vast ineffability of the natural world, not so much as Man vs. Nature conflict but as a reminder of how large and apathetic the natural world is to humanity—while maintaining a strained atmosphere of invisible threats that we never see. I could draw parallels to Dante’s Inferno and Sartre’s No Exit.
Stalker ending spoilerThen for the protagonists to leave empty-handed after it all, too afraid to find out who they truly are deep down.
chef’s kiss
It is one of the most aesthetically beautiful films I’ve ever seen, and does something I wish more filmmakers would do: focus on atmosphere rather than plot and action. It sounds boring, but it was a transformative work of art.
It’s dark, it’s broody, it’s strangely serene. I love it so much.