Author notes

595

The doodler

on June 28, 2022

Hello, and welcome to the page with the inordinate amount of Roadside Picnic references! It's a novel by the Strugatsky brothers (as a side note, we see a young Chekhov reading another one of their books, Monday Begins on Saturday, back on page 518).
The basic premise is that aliens landed briefly in Canada (and several other off-screen places) and then left, leaving some of their junk(?) behind them.

In effect, the humans living in the area are like mice who stumbled onto the remains of a, well, roadside picnic – some of the things left behind are hugely beneficial for humanity, some of them are horribly dangerous (the "witches' jelly" that Veli is referencing here is one of them), and none of them really make sense. (ie, two pieces of metal that aren't connected in any way, but stay a certain distance apart no matter what you do.)
The area where the landing took place is known as the Zone, and a bunch of freelance nutters who go in to collect the strange artifacts naturally arise. (Yes, the video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is based on it.)
There's a rumor that there's a thing in the heart of the Zone that will give you heart's desire, but to reach it, you have to pass this anomaly "the meatgrinder" that shreds anyone who sets foot inside. But if someone else is killed right before you, it pauses, and you can get in right behind them. One of the guys in quest of the wish-granter brings along a young guy named Artie and to feed to the anomaly and … well, that's giving away the ending.