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Re:The Invincible – 1964 novel by atombender on Friday August 16, 2019 @03:00PM (#20718459)
Indeed. One of my favourite anti-anthropocentric Strugatsky stories is "Wanderers and Travellers" [1], from 1968. It's a very short story, almost a vignette, about a scientist ("stro-archaeologist") who returns from space. He happens to talk to a marine biologist whose project involves putting tracking transmitters on a newly discovered species of cephalopod that seems to have become partly land-dwelling. The scientist then tunes the biologist's radio receiver to a certain wavelength, and reveals, sadly, that the signal they're hearing is coming from himself. He has no idea how, but ever since he and some other scientists visited a certain planet, he's been emitting radio waves. He's been living, powerless and in fear, knowing that, apparently, something out there has "tagged" him with a tracker, just like the biologist with his cephalopods.

The story ties in with the Strugatsky's "Noon universe" explored in several other books, such as Beetle in the Anthill [2], which explores the same purported aliens, the Wanderers, which seem to operate invisibly behind the scenes, subtly manipulating humankind. The aliens may or may not be same ones that caused the Zone in their masterpiece Roadside Picnic.

[1] https://archive.org/details/WanderersAndTravellers

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle_in_the_Anthill

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