Soviet Sci-Fi

So yeah, this is supposed to be a music blog, but for this entry I'm gonna ramble on about a book which led me to a film which led me to some music.

The book is Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and it was only by good marketing that I noticed it in the first place.  Along with a line claiming Roadside Picnic was the inspiration for both a movie and a video game, a prominently placed note at the bottom of the cover informed me that the book contained a new forward written by Ursula LeGuin.  I've been a fan of LeGuin's work for many years, so I was immediately intrigued and checked out Roadside Picnic.


Like many of the very best sci-fi books, Roadside Picnic springs from a unique, compelling and unsettling idea: Earth was recently visited by aliens looking for a nice spot for a picnic during their travels.  These starfaring creatures were so far beyond us in terms of technological development that they saw no reason to make contact and, after lunch, took off again on their journey, leaving behind some trash strewn about their campsite.  The site becomes known among humans as "The Zone," an area in which the normal laws of physics do not apply, seemingly having been warped by the profoundly powerful and inscrutable objects left behind which irradiate and pollute the area.  The UN places the site under quarantine following a number of deaths as people begin to remove alien artifacts from this hazardous Zone for sale on the black market.  Smugglers (referred to as "stalkers" in the sense of a stealthy approach toward dangerous prey) continue to illegally remove items from the Zone, and Roadside Picnic is primarily about the life and times of one such individual. 

Roadside Picnic is very much a product of its time and culture.  Published in 1972 while the USSR was near the height of its power, Roadside Picnic reflects what I'm going to describe as a typically Communist preoccupation in science fiction at the time--how interpersonal human relations are shaped by technological development and contact with alien cultures and beings.  It seems to me that a great deal of  U.S. sci-fi is more concerned with those technological developments themselves, and it is only in the realm of fantasy that authors from our country show a greater interest in people.  In this work the Strugatsky brothers, much like Stanislaw Lem in his Solaris, are more interested in how people cope with the challenge of the unknown than with investigating the unknown itself.  As a result, Roadside Picnic becomes more a tale of how its protagonist fares as a smuggler of exotic and dangerous items than an account of who the aliens were, why they visited Earth and so on.

Sometime after I'd blasted through the book (and purchased my own copy for future re-reads), I began searching for the film.  To my surprise and joy, PCPL owns a copy of the movie as well.  Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky with a screenplay written by the Strugatsky brothers, the film was released in 1979 (also while the USSR was still a seemingly strong geopolitical force).  "Stalker" is as much a reflection of the time and place of its creation as is the novel.  Much like Tarkovsky's cinematic interpretation of Solaris, the film is a slow-moving, visually gorgeous and deeply philosophical work.  That is, it's sure to bore most US sci-fi fans due to its near-total lack of action.  Even the over-educated one himself here got a little sleepy during the second half of the film, as our stalkers take a load off in the Zone to chat about Romanticism and a well-led life.  The first half of the movie is classic Tarkovsky however, opening in an uncontaminated world captured in sepia tones and then shifting to a much more vivid palette of colors as the stalkers enter the Zone.  Throughout the movie, Tarkovsky favors long takes and very, very slow camera movement.  While the film departs increasingly from the plotline of the original novel as it progresses, "Stalker" captures the feel of the novel very well.

Even more unsettling is the tortured tale of the movie's creation, which was ultimately shot in its entirety three separate times.  Tarkovsky's first take was made using defective stock, and the entire project had to be filmed over again.  A second cut was abandoned by Tarkovsky after a series of disagreements with his cinematographer led to the latter's dismissal from the project.  All three cuts were filmed in part downstream from a shuttered chemical plant in Estonia, with much of the outdoor footage taken in an area polluted by toxic waste.  According to some of the crew involved in the production of "Stalker," several actors and workers became ill during the filming, and three (including Tarkovsky) later died of similar forms of respiratory cancer.  One of the sound crew maintains that a scene in which snow seemingly falls on the actors during their mid-summer trek into the Zone is not actually snow, but in fact is airborne waste from the chemical plant upriver.

What is really striking about the film however, is its soundtrack.  Russian composer Eduard Artemyev, who had worked on Tarkovsky films before, creates an absolutely unforgettable and haunting backdrop for "Stalker."  His initial orchestral score was rejected by Tarkovsky, who wanted something less conventional.  Artemyev went back into the studio and using relatively primitive synthesizers and electronic treatments of traditional instruments (we're talking 1977-78 here), completely recreated his score.  Artemyev employed instruments and tunings from across the globe to design a sound which is familiar yet changed in unexpected ways.  Over washes and scrapes of guitar-like synthesized sounds, a flute wistfully drifts in and out of the mix, employing a tonality which is very much non-Western, evoking the music of Japan and India.  In the main theme (entitled "Meditation"), an Indian tambura plays a sustained drone over which a Persian lute, the tar, improvises along with the electronically processed flute.  However, the tar is played back at a significantly slower speed than its initial recording, which makes its improvisation more abstract and its sound much more bizarre.  Artemyev and Tarkovsky also favored using natural sounds (such as water dripping, vehicle engines and animal calls) in the score, often mixing these bits of found sound in such a way that the, say, clank of a train running on its tracks becomes a rhythmic marker every bit as musical as conventional percussion.

Most unfortunately, Artemyev never become particularly well-known outside Russia, and most of his original music is now out of print.  There are a number of remakes out there offering re-recorded versions which are significantly different from their originals, and these tend to de-emphasize the unconventional elements (found sound, odd mixing) in favor of gentle synthesized New Age orchestration.  Neither PCPL or Freegal offers any of his music, but a diligent internet search can get you exposure to some Artemyev originals at the least.  Alternatively, one might simply run the DVD through a stereo system and try to decide if the music is more or less captivating with the picture off.  I vote for off, but then, I am a music nut at heart.

Tarkovsky's film was also the inspiration for a very dark and edgy work of ambient music by Robert Rich and Brian Lustmord. Their Stalker is not a simple remake of Artemyev's original soundtrack, but is rather a reinterpretation of the film through music. The 1995 release is anything but gentle New Age music: deep, ominous-sounding synthesizer lines predominate, punctuated by sharp swells in dynamics which accent its eerie melodic lines. The musicians describe this work as an attempt to "illuminate" and "decode" the feel of the film, and they have done an excellent job of capturing the emotional impact of the slow-moving yet profoundly unsettling film. Unfortunately, neither PCPL or Freegal can provide access to the album, though it is much easier to find elsewhere online than the Artemyev original.

You can reserve a copy of the novel Roadside Picnic from PCPL by clicking on the image below:

You can reserve a copy of the DVD "Stalker" from PCPL by clicking on the image below: