2025 Reading Challenge 02 Zona
Book two. I’m not 100% sure what exactly it is, it feels at its heart like a love letter to the film Stalker. It’s entertaining, heart-wrenching, insightful and feels important, even when I don’t understand it.
Zona is from Geoff Dyer, Geoff Dyer is an English author, as the Bomb Magazine says, “…our leading master of the undefinable memoir-essay-perambulation on diverse topics: jazz, DH Lawrence, photography, travel, …”
The footnotes need to be mentioned, at times the footnotes take over the prose, a couple of moments when I’m not sure if I’m still reading footnotes or the book. Just imagine there is a constant director’s commentary running through your head, in the background, as you read the main body of the text.
In simple form, the author describes watching the film Stalker from beginning to end but interweaves moments in his life, excerpts from Tarkovsky’s trials in the making of the film and pure existential thoughts on life in general.
There are extensive swearing and laugh-out-loud moments, especially when performing the internal monologues of Writer, Stalker and Professor. Stalker is a serious film, but Geoff pricks this bubble, whilst also showing us why he loves this film so deeply, and how it informed so much of his love and understanding of filmmaking.
Overall, an enjoyable thought-provoking book, it requires effort to understand and engage with certain parts, but it really shines in highlighting the genius of the film-maker and what film can achieve.
I rated it 8.5 out of 10.
Thanks to Dirk the Dice and Mike W for introducing this book as part of Dirk’s The Grognard Files Science Fiction Film Club on their Discord.
TTRPG Thoughts:
Focus is on the film, also the story Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. So we’ll say the setting, the Zone is the fantastical TTRPG element, a weird wasteland. Protected, hidden, shunned, myths have built up around it. The PCs will have to infiltrate this location; armed soldiers, guard dogs, a rickety train journey, chases through abandoned factories.
Once there, the supernatural takes over, we need to find the centre of the Zone, The Room, with the promise of untold riches, any wish granted. But getting there is dangerous, all around are examples of this; Weird winds blowing a gale from nowhere, esoteric guidance - nuts tied with cloth must be thrown ahead of any movement, skeletal bodies fused to military vehicles, bubbling volcanic (?) streams and a black dog. Traps too, rushing water, darkened, forbidding tunnels, seemingly trapped in a repeating loop, coming across the same locations again and again.
Another element is the PCs, such fun to be hand with generating the pre-gens, firstly the one-word code names - Writer, Professor, Stalker. Plus their Conditions, Dampness must feature extensively plus Equipment a thermos flask and the aforementioned nuts. Then the motivations, I mean SPOILER Professor is there to blow up The Room, whilst Writer wants his heart’s desire and Stalker is their guide, protecting the Zone, but mainly not always sure of himself, roll on the random table of Stalker-isms to see what you do now, “The way ahead is unclear”.
Lastly, we can stretch into other media, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. the computer game, here there are parallels with real life, set as it is in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a straightforward Twilight:2000 scenario, avoiding RAD exposure, whilst exploring the mutant-infested wasteland, searching for signs of life and some legendary McGuffin at the heart of the reactor?