I'm sorry readers, this post again quite loosely relates to the gaming world, but I should write it. Partly because I like sci-fi partly to disambiguate some notion about STALKER
Many people tend to think that Stalker is all about Chernobyl, radiation and other bullshit, but it's not. Stalker is a good game, I would even say excellent, for russian-ukrainian game dev, though I'm not the biggest fun.
GSG just borrowed the idea of the abandoned zone with deadly anomalies and stalkers, from soviet writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, however it lost a lot, mostly its dramma and atmosphere. No doubts, Stalker has its own unique charm, but it's totally different from the original storyline. I've read the book about 5 or 6 times and it impressed me a lot, and of course it influenced on my work and world perception.
Someone wrote: Roadside Picnic is a work of fiction based on the aftermath of an extra-terrestrial event (called the Visitation) which simultaneously took place in half a dozen separate locations around Earth for a two day period. Neither the Visitors themselves nor their means of arrival or departure were ever seen by the local population who lived inside the relatively small (a few square miles/kilometers) area of each of the six Visitation Zones. Such zones exhibit strange and dangerous phenomena not understood by humans, and contain artifacts with inexplicable, seemingly supernatural properties. The name of the novel derives from an analogy proposed by the character Dr. Valentine Pilman who compares the extra-terrestrial event to a picnic.
you can read more on wiki En.wikipedia.org
If you like sci-fi, I would defiantly recommend you to take a look at this book, its original name "Roadside Picnic"
I found a link on Amazon, but the price is insane, I will try to find a link on something more reasonable and post it here later.
Amazon.com
UPD. The link on PDF book Thomas-hersey.wiki.uml.edu
