Roadside Picnic

I enjoyed reading this after seeing Tarkovsky's STALKER. The film focuses on the Zone, and its unbearable pressure on the stalkers. But Roadside Picnic is focused much more on Redrick and his struggles outside of being a stalker. I wonder how much that comes down the refining a story — the authors wrote this over a year or so. And they came up with an excellent story, albeit a bit dry and slow. What if they'd waited a year and then rewrote it? Created a new story in the same vein? Would it be better? Different?

I've been thinking a lot about how people find niches to excel in. Sometimes that's their one world, or it's a certain kind of furniture, or some particular software. I liked the book but I enjoyed the movie more. Why?