Sep 25, 2026 · 1 hr 41 min · 11 segments
Before Andrei Tarkovsky's "Stalker," Arkady & Boris Strugatsky's novel shocked Soviet censors and created a stir among the intellectuals of their era. In episode 394, author Laura Cranehill (WIFE…
Luke ElliottHost
Laura CranehillGuest
James BaileyHost
He's that auteur filmmaker that has a very distinct voice, but he also creates films that feel, I don't know, metaphysical or something.
There's something about them that's magical, that transcends and kind of speaks to an unspeakable sense of humanity in a lot of ways.
And I remember even way back when we covered Annihilation, Luke, which was eons ago, like eight years
Yeah, I remember making the comparisons then just because we were experiencing that that Jeff Vandermeer novel.
And I was like, wow, this zone is really is really reminding me of Stalker in a lot of ways.
And expectations are funny because it's both ambiguous, but answers so much more than what the ambiguous Tarkovsky film does.
And like in a lot of ways is saying different things, but is in the same line of what I was interpreting from Tarkovsky's work.
The book itself is... wild having these little vignetted stories there's like four different stories that we that we're getting from mostly one character's pov that we get throughout in a lot of ways the places that it goes are so much further than what i what i experienced with stalker and a lot of like really interesting subject matter, like sci-fi concepts and just like twisted things that can happen to characters in these areas, like really inventive, horrifying, you know, disturbing things that happen.
Just, you know, having this commentary on, I don't think this is a spoiler to say, but like, It's not so much about like why that mysterious zone exists or kind of how it came about, but more so about like how humanity and people react to these things.
So having like very character driven stories in this way in something that feels so sci-fi and so like otherworldly was really fun to see.
covered Tarkovsky before because we did Solaris, which was based off a Stanislaw Lem novel, which I'll mention later.
It seems like Lem was very influential on the Strugatsy brothers, which, by the way, they're brothers.
And I can see some similarities in the social sci-fi that they write that Lem was also touching on.
He's that auteur filmmaker that has a very distinct voice, but he also creates films that feel, I don't know, metaphysical or something.
There's something about them that's magical, that transcends and kind of speaks to an unspeakable sense of humanity in a lot of ways.
And I remember even way back when we covered Annihilation, Luke, which was eons ago, like eight years
Yeah, I remember making the comparisons then just because we were experiencing that that Jeff Vandermeer novel.
And I was like, wow, this zone is really is really reminding me of Stalker in a lot of ways.
And expectations are funny because it's both ambiguous, but answers so much more than what the ambiguous Tarkovsky film does.
And like in a lot of ways is saying different things, but is in the same line of what I was interpreting from Tarkovsky's work.
The book itself is... wild having these little vignetted stories there's like four different stories that we that we're getting from mostly one character's pov that we get throughout in a lot of ways the places that it goes are so much further than what i what i experienced with stalker and a lot of like really interesting subject matter, like sci-fi concepts and just like twisted things that can happen to characters in these areas, like really inventive, horrifying, you know, disturbing things that happen.
Just, you know, having this commentary on, I don't think this is a spoiler to say, but like, It's not so much about like why that mysterious zone exists or kind of how it came about, but more so about like how humanity and people react to these things.
So having like very character driven stories in this way in something that feels so sci-fi and so like otherworldly was really fun to see.
covered Tarkovsky before because we did Solaris, which was based off a Stanislaw Lem novel, which I'll mention later.
It seems like Lem was very influential on the Strugatsy brothers, which, by the way, they're brothers.
And I can see some similarities in the social sci-fi that they write that Lem was also touching on.
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