Roadside Picnic (1978)

The Strugatsky brothers imagine alien visitors leaving dangerous objects behind without explaining their purpose. Red’s illicit trips into the Zone make that cosmic indifference part of a working life with urgent local consequences. Choose Olena Bormashenko’s translation from Russian for an edition based on the restored text; older English copies use Antonina W. Bouis’s version. The book’s tense, grubby scale is a useful counterpoint to grand stories in which humanity occupies the centre of the universe.