"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Roadside Picnic (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

laughter, rich with scorn, effervescent with the comic spirit. One has to
search back to Alice's tea party to find a scene as mad as the chamber of
the Troika; yet, in retrospect, one realizes that one has experienced a
profoundly serious work, since every bent line illuminates a straight one,
all illogic signifies the purity from which it has departed.
A word of appreciation must be extended to Ms. Antonina W. Bouis, the
translator of these short novels. Russian I do not know; fiction I do; and I
must honor anyone who can so deftly pass emotion, character dimension, even
conversational idiom, through so formidable a barrier. Theodore Sturgeon San
Diego, California 1976

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Translated from Russian by Antonina W.
Bouis MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc, New York

Roadside Picnic

You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have
got to make it out of. * Robert Penn Warren

FROM AN INTERVIEW BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT FROM HARMONT RADIO WITH
DOCTOR VALENTINE PILMAN, RECIPIENT OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS FOR 19..

"I suppose that your first serious discovery, Dr. Pilman, should be
considered what is now called the Pilman Radiant?"
"I don't think so. The Pilman Radiant wasn't the first, nor was it
serious, nor was it really a discovery. And it wasn't completely mine,
either."
"Surely you're joking, doctor. The Pilman Radiant is a concept known to
every schoolchild."
"That doesn't surprise me. According to some sources, the Pilman
Radiant was discovered by a schoolboy. Unfortunately, I don't re member his
name. Look it up in Stetson's History of the Visitation --it's described in
full detail there. His version is that the radiant was discovered by a
schoolboy, that a college student published the coordinates, but that for
some unknown reason it was named after me."
"Yes, many amazing things can happen with a discovery. Would you mind
explaining it to our listeners, Dr. Pilman?"
"The Pilman Radiant is simplicity itself. Imagine that you spin a huge
globe and you start firing bullets into it. The bullet holes would lie on
the surface in a smooth curve. The whole point of what you call my first
serious discovery lies in the simple fact that all six Visitation Zones are
situated on the surface of our planet as though someone had taken six shots
at Earth from a pistol located somewhere along the Earth-Deneb line. Deneb
is the alpha star in Cygnus. The Point in the heavens from which, so to
speak, the shots came is the Pilman Radiant."
"Thank you, doctor. My fellow Harmonites! Finally we have heard a clear
explanation of the Pilman Radiant! By the way, the day before yesterday was
the thirtieth anniversary of the Visitation. Dr Pilman, would you care to
say a few words to Your fellow townsmen on the subject?"
"What in particular interests you? Remember, I wasn't in Harmont at the