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kleinbl00 · 3945 days ago · link · · parent · post: Scifi club: Roadside Picnic discussion/suggestions for club #2
The Zone is what Red knows. It's the one true constant in his life. He grew up among stalkers, he knows stalkers, his existence is within a stalker economy, and once he's aged enough to want something else, he's banned from emigrating so he's pretty well stuck as a stalker. The allusions to skyscrapers going up to support a tourist economy were all about the diminished choices of locals in the face of top-down economics. In a command economy, "jobs" are things that happen to you. As the Khruschev-era joke goes, "So long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work."