This novel is set in a town called Harmont, where, thirteen years prior to the start of the story, aliens landed and then departed a short while later. There were a total of six such landing spots. The aliens left behind a number of horrific and/or fascinating new technologies, which are being collected and studied by the Harmont branch of the International Institute of Extraterrestrial Cultures. The Zone (where the aliens landed) is an incredibly dangerous place, and the men who go into it to harvest the alien items must be ready to accept death as a possibility. There is also a large black market for items from the Zone, and the novel focuses on about eight years in the life of Redrick Schuhart, known as "a stalker," a man who works for the institute and also sneaks into the Zone in order to collect items to sell on the black market. "Red" eventually goes to jail for a few years, but when he's let out, he goes into the Zone for one last mission—to try to retrieve a legendary item called the Golden Sphere, which is supposed to grant one's wishes. He finds it, but, when he does, he is unable to formulate any wishes, unable to figure out what it is that he even wants the most.