A Tale of Two Sci-Fis: Solaris v. Roadside Picnic

After the surprising travesty that was Solaris, I went back and looked at Roadside Picnic again. Both are Soviet science fiction works, so I thought I would do a little compare and contrast.

Does Blogger not do tables or columns? Oh, bother...

Okay, here we go:

• The characters in Solaris are poorly developed and act absurdly. The characters in Roadside Picnic are both believable and relatable, with human reactions even to strange phenomena.
• The plot of Solaris is barely there. The plot of Roadside Picnic is reasonable and satisfying, with a variety of twists, turns, and developments.
• There is practically no futurism in Solaris. Roadside Picnic combines fascinating inventions and phenomena with creative dangers and very human reactions to these weird things, including developing them into useful tech.
• There is almost no sense of wonder in Solaris. The setting of Roadside Picnic is thoroughly wonderful and creative, an exploration and examination of a novel world by interesting and crafty people.
• Solaris asks one very basic, almost silly philosophical question: What if we can't talk with aliens? It's the kind of question that sounds deep but only if you don't realize real people often talk past each other to the point they cannot understand each other. Roadside Picnic provides a thought-provoking twist on a similar question, but adds an additional and unusual condition (the aliens are gone and left stuff behind) which makes the question and the search for the answer all the more interesting.
• Solaris has large blocks of fairly bad exposition, just barely hidden behind the motivation of Kelvin to read a book. The exposition in Roadside Picnic is woven expertly into the story and drip-fed to keep things engaging. It's also worth noting that it can be very fun to hear someone yell: "There's an anomaly there, don't move!" and letting the tension build as the nature of the anomaly is gradually explained, all while characters we care about try to escape the danger.
• The ending of Solaris is ambiguous, but not really interesting. Roadside Picnic's ending is ambiguous, too, but it manages to be clever and engaging.

Is the praise for Solaris based on the misguided idea that "literature" shouldn't be fun, and therefore a work that systematically drains the fun and wonder out of a potentially great sci-fi setting (which Solaris had and wasted!) must be good? Is it peer pressure? Or is it a product of Soviet-sympathizer ass-kissing? I'm sure I don't know, but what I can tell you is that Roadside Picnic is superior to Solaris in practically every conceivable way, both as something fun to read, and as "literature."

You can read my reviews of the two books here...

Roadside Picnic: https://rnkfiction.blogspot.com/2025/04/fantastic-food-for-thought-sci-fi.html

Solaris: https://rnkfiction.blogspot.com/2025/08/solaris-an-inexplicable-classic.html