I’ve been reading a number of weighty nonfiction tomes lately, and I thought I’d take a break and read one of the older science fiction books that have been accumulating on my shelves due to visits to used bookstores and little free libraries. Damnation Alley was first published in 1969. It is not one of Zelazny’s better novels. My favorites of his works remain This Immortal, Lord of Light, and the novelettes “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” and “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth.” However, it must be understood that Zelazny was one of the master stylists of science fiction’s New Wave of the sixties and seventies, and even so-so Zelazny is better than the best work of many lesser writers.

Damnation Alley is a dystopian adventure with an antihero protagonist. Hell Tanner, the last living member of a biker gang, is offered a pardon from prison if he will “volunteer” to drive a shipment of plague vaccine from the nation of California to the nation of Boston. After warfare wreaked havoc and radiation on most of the world, leaving it a wasteland, atmospheric storms are so ferocious that flying is impossible and there is no long range communication. A driver somehow made it from Boston to California to plead for the vaccine, and now Tanner has to return with it driving an armored car through Damnation Alley, the bomb-decimated middle of the country, which is rife with volcanoes and craters full of radiation, and populated with vicious gangs and gigantic snakes, spiders, and Gila monsters. Some of the action reminds me of the Mad Max film series, but Damnation Alley is the original, predating the first of those movies by a decade.

I think one of the main reasons that this novel doesn’t rise to Zelazny’s best work is that it is straight adventure; there are no metaphysical undertones, none of the references to mythology and religion that suffuse his masterpieces. This Immortal, for instance, is based on Greek mythology, and Lord of Light leans heavily into Buddhism and Hinduism. “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” uses its namesake book of the Bible to underscore its meaning, and “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” is based on the description of the leviathan in the Bible’s Book of Job. On the other hand, Damnation Alley offers nothing but its straight adventure without undertones. Additionally, although it is short, it is somewhat padded in parts. It seems that originally it was a novella, and in order for it to qualify as a stand-alone novel it needed more words, which Zelazny obliged the publisher in supplying. It is easy to see where the extra verbiage is placed, mainly in occasional snippets of life in Boston while Tanner is on his way with the medicine, and the book would have been stronger without these additions. Even Zelazny himself said that he liked the novella more than the novel. Keep in mind what I said above, though: Zelazny at his worst is far better than most writers at their best. Damnation Alley is a fun short read to help you while away a long plane flight or an afternoon relaxing at the beach.