“If a lion could speak, we wouldn’t understand him.”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein
Regular Grailers are aware of my obsession with Jacques Vallée’s Forbidden Science published memoirs—check out our latest interview with him on our YouTube channel if you haven’t—in which he not only shares his journal-recorded insights into the study of UFOs as they developed throughout the decades, but also glimpses on his daily life and personal tastes. Learning of his passion for classical music was not particularly revelatory, but discovering that he is also a Carlos Santana fan? That kind of blew my mind to be honest…
Another unsurprising thing about Jacques is that he loves reading, and the FS journals are peppered with dozens of book mentions of all kinds. One title that caught my attention was Roadside Picnic, a science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
The reason the reference to this title stood out for me is because Jacques mentions it during his speculation on the rumors of crashed UFOs, and alleged recovered artifacts of off-world origin. The general assumption among true believers is that once these alien materials are finally revealed by the Coverup gatekeepers, and openly shared with the scientific community, such Disclosure will trigger another Copernican revolution which would advance our knowledge centuries—if not millennia! —forward into the future, bringing about a golden age of prosperity for Humanity.
(Yeah, right)
Jacques shares his skepticism on this naive optimism in his journals (which I share, hence this essay) and points to Roadside Picnic as a poignant counterargument: published in the old Soviet Union in 1972, the novel (which you might find freely online if you know where to look) portrays a ‘first contact’ scenario in which the visiting aliens neither come to save/uplift mankind nor to invade/destroy it. Instead, they do something far worse to our collective ego—they completely ignore us.
[Mild Spoilers Ahead]
Roadside Picnic takes place in the fictional town of Harmont (the text implies it is in the United States but it is never specified) where the United Nations have taken control of the Zone in the middle of the town where the alien visit took place, which rendered it an uninhabitable wasteland due to the strange objects left behind after they abruptly left (originally written in Russian, the authors used a few English words to add believability to the plot, and possibly inserted a few veiled puns here and there, like trying to hint at the Harm-ful quality of the Zone near Harm-ont).
Were the aliens uninterested in establishing communication with humans, or were they so different from us that they were not even aware of our presence at all? Like ants crawling around the scraps of a discarded picnic, the survivors of Harmont (and the rest of the world) are left with no answers about the visitors’ origins or ultimate intentions.
And the alien scraps retrieved from the Zone by the stalkers—reckless delinquents who make a living by risking their lives venturing into the unimaginable dangers inside the restricted area—are not only outside the scientific paradigm of the researchers who study them; they also shatter the most basic assumptions about reality itself. Cruel miracles.
In concordance with the age-old Russian pessimistic outlook on life, the Strugatsky brothers throw a bucket of Siberian snow to our Sci-Fi illusions of establishing relationships (be it friendly or hostile) with interstellar races which we wishfully imagine to be essentially just like us, give or take some minor cosmetic differences or several technological degrees of separation. Just like an ant would never be able to decipher the meaning of a beer can thrown by the roadside in a million or even a billion years, the artifacts of a truly advanced alien civilization may very well be beyond all human understanding.
But even if we could figure out the most basic functions behind some of the simplest alien gadgets—like Leonardo DaVinci finding a modern garage opener in his Renaissance studio, and discovering he could turn on its lights if he pressed the right button—without proper context the ultimate purpose of any cultural object produced by a non-human species remains inscrutable. To truly understand the purpose of a garage opener, for example, not only do you need a sense of what a car is, you also need to understand the social concepts of ownership and theft, which would be meaningless to an alien culture in which material possessions are not coveted—not to mention that you also need to be close to the garage door in order to activate its mechanism.
The only discernible fact about the alien visit in Roadside Picnic is that it happened, and the only scientific revolution that can be expected with any certainty, is derived from answering one of the most fundamental questions of our existence: Man is indeed not alone; there is, at least, one other form of intelligence sharing the universe with us. Ants rejoice, for one day we might all be stamped out for no particular reason!
…And what is ‘Intelligence’ anyway? How can we best define it, and are we so sure we would be able to recognize it as such, if it came from a mind not evolved on planet Earth? In a conversation between a somewhat cynical scientist working for the international institute studying the alien artifacts, and a mid-level manager going through an existential crisis, over the realization that there is no way to contain the flow of smuggled artifacts out of the Zone—despite how dangerous they are and their disruptive potential to human society, the black market spawned out of them is just too lucrative, and the corporate competition to uncover any potential applications from them too fierce—Roadside Picnic offers a couple of somewhat bleak definitions (again, this is a Russian book) of what Intelligence might be:
“Intelligence is the ability of a living creature to perform pointless or unnatural acts.” (Social media anyone?)
“Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world.” (We’re still on stand-by on that one, aren’t we?)
In 1979, acclaimed Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky released Stalker, a wonderful loose adaptation of the Strugatskys’ novel—which we embed below for your viewing pleasure:
Replacing special effects and Hollywood gimmicks with atmospheric scenery and philosophical discussions, Stalker makes use of derelict power plants near Estonia as a backdrop to convey the desolate quality of the Zone. With his long shots of decaying refuse as if to convey the state of mind of the characters, Tarkovsky seems to offer his own (unspoken) solution to the Intelligence dilemma: Intelligence is the capacity of a species to create more complex forms of trash.
Think about it: It is, after all, through trash that archeologists are able to conclude whether a place was inhabited by humans, and through the same trash is that later anthropologists try to deduce their customs and social structures. Given enough time, even a pile of shit can end up exhibited in a museum.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
Trash betrays our presence, past or present; it reveals us, defines us. It even changes us in ways we barely manage to perceive or accept. In Roadside Picnic, long term exposure to the Zone has unpredictable mutating effects on the stalkers and their offspring, Tarkovsky’s film also shows how the stalker’s daughter is being slowly transformed, although in a gentler and more intriguing manner; which surprisingly goes in agreement with some of Jeff Kripal’s ideas as exposed in his book Mutants and Mystics (watch the movie if you want to know what I mean).
Even in the real world, scientists are alarmingly reporting more and more instances of microplastics found inside our own bodies, in ways that will inevitably modify our health and those of our children’s children for generations. Is Homo Sapiens destined to inherit a plastic-laced planet to Homo Polymeris?
We may find this Intelligence=Trash conclusion to be demeaning or even demoralizing, but Stalker’s photography reminds us there may be beauty—even grace—to be appreciated in decay. After all, one man’s garbage can be another man’s hidden treasure as Pawn Stars’ fans know well. And like Philip K. Dick, Tarkovsky seems to also imply there may be divine messages to be found in the things that others discard.
This mystical quality is perhaps the film’s biggest departure from the existentialist bleakness of the original novel: Redrick, the stalker who is the main character in Roadside Picnic, is a hardened ruffian of low scruples only redeemed by his raw humanness. His struggle to risk his life by braving into the Zone in order to survive in a harsh world, is the struggle of every man who has tried to carve out his own little piece of fame and fortune in the Frontier—the Americas, the Wild West, whichever new impenetrable border there is to cross. The world is full of them, and is always drawing up more…
Here the Strugatskys’ decision to use the English word ‘stalker’ (which theyintroduced into the Russian lexicon after the novel became a huge success) gains special meaning: a stalker is not a prospector, a looter or even a burglar (like how Gandalf introduces Bilbo Baggins to the dwarves in Tolkien’s The Hobbit). A stalker is a hunter, and the unpredictable quality of the Zone demands stealth and cunning, lest the deadly bitch (how Redrick often refers to it in the novel) chew you up and spit you into pieces—literally.
Tarkovsky’s Stalker, on the other hand (he is given no name; he is totally defined by what he does) is shown as a God’s fool (another very Russian concept). He is not a ruffian but a kind-hearted mystic—a shaman, maybe? —who treats the Zone with reverence, almost as if the land’s contact with the alien presence had endowed it with a will of its own (here Tarkovsky seems to repeat the same themes of another great film of his, Solaris). Entering the Zone means an initiation journey from where there is no return to whence you started, only those the Zone deems worthy are able to survive, and no man leaves the same.
Tarkovsky’s Stalker fulfils his duty not for fame or fortune, but to give the lucky few he chooses as traveling companions a glimpse of true Transcendence; like briefly opening the lid of the Ark of the Covenant and glimpsing into its content before your face starts to melt down.
There’s plenty more that could be mentioned about Tarkovsky’s film; like for example, its potent metaleptic (i.e. the breaking of the fourth wall) quality: The film had to be reshot three times due to technical difficulties during production, replicating the three incursions into the Zone narrated throughout Roadside Picnic. And as if the deadly nature of the fictitious Zone imagined by the Strugatskys was mimicked in real life, the movie ended up causing the death of Tarkovsky, his wife, and one of the lead actors (Anatoly Solonitsyn). Talk about one hell of a fictional incursion, eh Josh?
But for now, let us return to the theme of alien artifacts and consider their real-life implications, if they are actually able to be found beyond old Soviet fiction books or American TV shows. In her book American Cosmic, Diana Pasulka regards the zones where UFOs have allegedly crashed as ‘places of Hierophany’: the divine presence manifested on an earthly plane. Much like Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the enigmatic Tyler D. (a.k.a. Tim Taylor) only takes to these crash sites those he deems worthy. Pasulka takes greats effort in portraying Tyler/Taylor as a mystic (or even a mutant, if one gives credence to her book)in direct contact with non-human intelligences. But is he, and all the other Disclosure stalkers out there clamoring the alien visit has already happened, a fool for God—or a fool for Gold?
I have watched for some time now, and with growing concern, the rise of a new trend in the UFO subculture, that seems to be retracing the footsteps of previous subcultures which have managed to introduce themselves into the mainstream, becoming an empty prostituted version of their former selves in the process: Yoga practices, meditation, the psychedelic movement, it seems as if the corruptive nature of the West to commodify anything knows no bound.
Now comes the new wave of UAP entrepreneurs, eager to replace the old-school UFO enthusiasts with their suave marketing mentality and TED-esque tactics. Whereas the old UFO dudes wanted to appeal to Congress and other institutions of authority to confirm an alien presence on our planet, the UAP entrepreneurs seek to influence policies and gain access to crash materials as an avenue for investment opportunities.
Maybe it’s my own ‘god-foolishness’ seeping out as I type these words, but aside from the fact these plastic shamans are taking for granted that their little ant brains would be able to make heads, or tails, of whatever shiny beer can was found by them lying on the deserts of New Mexico, their UAPonzi schemes have a nasty tinge of Deja-Vu.
Throughout history, there have been figures and ideologies promising an escape from the suffering experienced both fictitiously by Redrick in the Roadside Picnic novel, and by all the people in the real world who have found themselves with the deck of cards stacked up against them by the cruelty of life: “Unlimited Growth!” “A Workers’ Paradise!” “A New Jerusalem!”
They all bark the same wondrous promises… and they have all failed to deliver this golden brave new world of theirs—Christianity did not fulfill it; Capitalism did not produce it; Communism did not provide it. Just what makes us think alien technology, no matter how advanced or miraculous, would be any different?
“Happiness, Free for All!” like in the Strugatsky’s novel. “Unlimited Free Energy!” like in the mantra of Disclosure advocates. There’s now a Yoga studio in every affluent neighborhood in the Western world, and soon there will be a psychedelic ‘wellness center’ in every major city, promising to cure all the syndromes and afflictions we have brought upon ourselves in our relentless march for ‘progress’.
Meanwhile the residue of microplastics in my brain—and yours too, dear reader; make no mistake of that—keep piling up…
“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”
–J.R.R. Tolkien
The characters in Roadside Picnic are shown wrapping their heads over the meaning of the alien visit. Maybe it really was a meaningless fluke, like the title and the ants analogy implies. Or maybe it was a test of sorts, some characters imagine (or hope) with the aliens leaving behind their cruel miracles to see what we do with them—will the ants ever learn to use a cigarette lighter to bring light and heat into their hill, or will the burn themselves to smithereens?
Nowadays there is a new term used by UFO personalities—including Vallée, oddly enough?—applied to the alleged crash sites: The ‘gifting fields’. This is worrisome, because it implies not only a human-like quality to the psychology of the aliens, but a philanthropic motivation by leaving behind their artifacts on purpose.
Was philanthropy what compelled white settlers to hand out blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians who refused to fall in line with their expansionist plans?
“It is a gift!” says Boromir at the sight of the One Ring during the Council of Elrond, in the Fellowship of the Ring movie (how would Boromir look wearing the clothes of a Silicon Valley techpreneur, I wonder?). No self-respecting geek needs to be reminded of the moral lesson behind the trilogy: the only solution towards the awesome power of the Ring is to reject it, like Galadriel does, and destroy it, like Frodo manages to do at the end—with a little help from Gollum, of course.
The characters of Tarkovsky’s Stalker are equally left with a moral quandary: Do you harness the awesome power of the Zone to fulfill your heart’s desire? But what happens in a world in which power-hungry men are left to manifest their deepest, darkest desires?
The question is rhetorical, of course—just take a look around.
Deducing the intentions of an alien intelligence may be impossible, as the Strugatskys masterfully proved with their novel, and I myself have fallen victim of anthropomorphizing the phenomenon, like many others in the past—ants will be ants, after all…
All I know is that, alien test or not, ant colonies have little use for beer cans or lighters.
