Quote:
Originally Posted by Fortis
While reading this thread I am reminded of the short story by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic, which posits the notion that we would have about as much of an understanding about the significance of stuff left behind by visiting aliens, as animals would understand what was going on with the junk left behind by people who stop by the side of the road, in a wood, for a picnic.
The odds of us being able to reverse engineer it into something even vaguely useful seems slim at best. |
A pertinent post indeed.
This isn't really a quibble, but... some years ago, a Russian colleague of mine who was a friend of the Strugatsky brothers pointed out that the translation of the title lost a significant point. The "roadside" was not supposed to be the sort of wood where you'd have a picnic; rather, it was a layby in a built-up run-down area next to a busy but poorly maintained road - that is, the
last place you'd want to stop to eat, but for some reason you did anyway.
A great little story - not fully captured in Tarkovsky's film Stalker.