Retrospect: Coils of the Spiral

Everything returns to its circle, and nothing reminded of the former Zone—except for the dried branches-trunks stretching toward the sky with silent reproach. No mutants wander anymore, no anomalies lurk, the shooting has died down, vanishing as if it were a nightmare of mankind. But what is a traveler supposed to do in this new, wonderful, bright world—someone who is used to fighting?

From the author:
The book was written long ago, about ten years back, but since that time it hasn’t lost its relevance. Retrospect is a cycle of five books written in the setting of the popular S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game theme. The publishing series, which started off promising as an idea, very soon degenerated into a commercial project where publishers wanted to cash in—then slid into a cheap five-tier entertainment trash-flooding. Probably, the book was written as a rebuttal to that—intending to bring everything back to the source of the Brothers Strugatsky world, to “Roadside Picnic,” where I took as decoration a partially recognizable game world, while the ideas were completely different… Unexpectedly for myself, besides the atmosphere of the anomalous Zone, the book began to take on the shape of an alternate history in which the USSR, with pain and blood, managed to stop its fatal moment, survive, and change for the better—yet faced the emergence of the Anomalous Zone in place of the former thirty-kilometer Zone of Alienation…

With the previous books of the series, “Spiral Turns,” there are only shared characters, since events unfold already in the World of the USSR of the Daytime…

Retrospect cycle: