jaeden’s Reviews > Roadside Picnic > Status Update

'Scared... And maybe that's how it should be. They should be even more scared than the rest of us ordinary folks put together. Because we merely don't understand a thing, but they at least understand how much they don't understand... Meanwhile, we sinners look the other way, so to speak... He was right about that: mankind's most impressive achievement is that it has survived and intends to continue doing so.'

'"You ask: what makes man great?" he quoted. "Is it that he re-created nature? That he harnessed forces of almost-cosmic proportions? That in a brief time he has conquered the planet and opened a window onto the universe? No! It is that despite all this, he has survived, and intends to continue doing so."'

'Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world.' i think alongside this, intelligence is also knowing where the destruction lies and the odds that are stacked between empowering the self and empowering the world around the self in the process.

'My God, he thought, we can't do a thing! We can't stop it, we can't slow it down! No force in the world could contain this blight, he thought in horror. It's not because we do bad work. And it's not because they are more clever and cunning than we are. The world is just like that. Man is like that. If it wasn't for the Visit, it would have been something else. Pigs can always find mud.' well well well... relevancy!

this page is particularly intriguing. too long to copy into this update, but truly magnificent - i wish i could share it in full. Red experiencing the zone OUTSIDE of its bounds; a devastatingly colossal collision of sense, all converging into one unmistakably foreign experience that Red feels has pummeled him into a whole separate world from his reality - this is what living and breathing the zone will do to you.

'It was 6am, and the streets were empty, the pavement was wet and black, and the traffic lights at the intersections kept a lonely and pointless vigil.'

physically leaving the zone with an severely injured Burbridge in the backseat, and yet the zone remains, haunting. it appears to mock their mortality by infecting what they perceive with this constant lens of death and suffering, a funeral for the living.

'"Right now, you aren't a person, got it? Right now, you are a machine, my steering wheel, my lever..."'

the fact that the zone causes the stalkers to become so psychologically unhinged that they will say all matter of things in some feeble attempt to remain sane, even sacrificing the remains of their sanity as it drains the farther they venture into the zone - absolutely phenomenal.

'Here's the zone! And instantly a chill runs down my spine. I feel it every time, but I still don't know whether it's the zone greeting me or a stalker's nerves acting up. Every time I figure I'll go back and ask others if they feel it too, and every time I forget.'

barely begun and and i'm utterly obsessed. the zone itself is the most fascinating antagonistic entity, feeding off of those who dare venture inside.