The evolving myth of the Zone across late 20th- and early 21st-century cultural landscapes (“Roadside Picnic” by the Strugatsky brothers, Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”, and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game universe)

The article is dedicated to the study of the Zone myth within a literary context and its subsequent media embodiments. The research aims to trace the transformation of the Zone myth as a cultural archetype across three embodiments: the literary work “Roadside Picnic” by the Strugatsky brothers, Tarkovsky’s film adaptation “Stalker”, and the game universe of the shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The article’s scientific originality is established by its pioneering comparative analysis of three interpretations of the Zone, which reveals the unique characteristics of its evolution as a literary and cultural phenomenon. As a result of the research, firstly, the correlation of the Zone myth with other well-known world myths (from Antiquity to the Middle Ages) has been identified. Secondly, three fundamental functions have been isolated that allow tracing the development of the Zone concept in the Strugatsky brothers’ novel (literary text), Tarkovsky’s film (film text), and the game universe (shooter narrative): eschatological, sacral, and existential. Finally, it has been established that while the game world of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe, in its interpretation of the Zone as an interworld, a liminal space, emphasizes the synthesis of a technogenic context with a mythological aspect in its depiction, the literary and film texts are united by existential issues that highlight the crisis of the individual.