Every once in a while, I come across a line that feels bigger than the book that birthed it. Of course, there are classics with years of literary study behind them that speak volumes on the nature of society, technology, or the world writ large. But few are quite as elegant or as profoundly humanistic as the final moments of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic. The 1972 novel offers a very different kind of sci-fi ending than its myriad predecessors and successors.