Roadside Picnic

Roadside Picnic

Read September 2017

Sometimes a book that is not available becomes an obsession. Roadside Picnic was one of my obsessions. I first heard about this book in 2013 when I found it on a list of banned genre fiction books over at Worldswithoutend.com. I had never heard of the book it but...... I have some kind-of a drive that makes me automatically need to read a book I'm told I should not read. On a little aside, by finishing this book I have now read 37 of the 55 books on the list.

This story was originally published in USSR in 1971 in serial form, it was banned in book form there for over 8 years before being released in a "highly edited" form. I just had a very hard time getting my hands on a copy at a reasonable price. I could not get a copy in interlibrary loan, or at my local used book store. The harder time I had getting it the more I wanted to read it. Finally, a week ago I found out my local library had a digital copy and I jumped at the chance to read it.

This was a short story at 209 pages. The concept and the reason for the title are one of the most interesting concepts for a sci-fi novel I have ever read. The idea that an alien race might not even have been aware of the existence of humans when they visited Earth, and the items left are no more than the detritus of the equivalence of a roadside picnic on an interstellar road trip really put me in my place metaphysically. Most genre fiction readers are familiar to first contact as being the E.T. version, friendly and just wanting to teach us to be better, or like War of the Worlds, wanting to invade and conquer. But to be so insignificant that an alien race comes to Earth and does not even realize we are there, mind blown!

I was very worried that after looking for this book for years I would be disappointed when I finally got to read it, but It was a great story and well worth the wait. Although to be honest I'm not sure why it was banned in USSR for so long.