I've really enjoyed the audiobook (narrated brilliantly by: Robert "My Voice is Bourbon and Gravel" Forster) – the 'character business' in each scene is charmingly dated, but the science and the questions the story raises are absolutely top-notch

This is one of those books that I'd point to when giving an example of what science fiction does better than anything else.

A New Translation of The One Russian Science Fiction Novel You Absolutely Must Read
If you’re going to read just one Soviet-era Russian science fiction novel, it should be Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s dark, ambiguous Roadside Picnic. Originally written in the early 1970s, it’s back in print in English after 30 years, with a brand-new translation by Olena Bormashenko and a riveting afterword by Boris Strugatsky about how the book was butchered by Soviet censors. It’s a seriously intense tale of a man who risks his life and freed…