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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not Zelazny's best, but damn good fun anyway!,
By Claude Avary "West Coast Reader" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Damnation Alley (Paperback)
"The savage classic that inspired the apocalyptic hit science fiction film!" says the ad blurb.Well, the ad blurb at least got the first part right, eh? However, if it wasn't for the dank 1977 movie and its groovy armored RV, this early Zelazny novel might be languishing out of print. Fourteen years before _The Road Warrior_, another ballsy loner in leather zooms the wastelands of a post-apocalyptic world, one that has gone insane with lurid pulp nasties like giant gila monsters, big snakes, super bats, storms that dump debris from the sky, and roving motorcycle gangs (gotta have those). Our hero, Hell Tanner, carries a shipment of life-saving serum to beleaguered Boston, and the hard-bitten man transforms through his struggles to genuinely care about the survival of the cursed world. The slow transformation never becomes cliché or silly, especially since Zelazny constantly throws a smorgasbord of action at Tanner's armored fortress-car. A few avant-garde sequences throw the book off kilter, but otherwise the hard-boiled fury of this adventure carries you quickly to the finale.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, enjoyable pulp,
By
This review is from: Damnation Alley (The Gregg Press science fiction series) (Hardcover)
After a nuclear war most of North America has become a wasteland known as 'Dammnation Alley'. Hell Tanner, the last surviving Hells Angel and due to die for rape, murder, extortion, etc. is given the choice of delivering a vital vaccine to a plague ridden city or being executed. Zelazny writes a imaginitive and hard edged thriller filled with vivid imagery. I suspect that Hell Tanner was the inspiration for 'Escape From New York' Snake Plisken and its a pity that Jack Smight's film was just a dilute interpretation of the original. I am surprised it hasn't been re-published.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Post-Apocalyptic Road Trip,
By Psychedelic Cowboy "psychedelic_cowboy" (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Damnation Alley (Paperback)
This is an interesting book-- different in some ways from other Zelazny novels. The narrative was less polished than most of his other work. I read this novel on a Greyhound going through some of the area that the story takes place in. I can see why this was made into a film. It has a sort of visual quality, but I never really felt the character was in much danger, or even really challenged, until the encounter with the bikers at the end. Still, the post-apocalyptic road trip across America was intriguing if not gripping. Sort of an On the Road/Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for SF fans. The first thought I had when encountering Hell Tanner was that this must have been the direct inspiration for Snake Pliskin, and that this book (or the 1977 movie) must have been an inspiration for the movie Escape from New York. There are many similarities-- too many for coincidence. It is entertaining, and Hell Tanner is a solid character, far nicer than he believes himself to be. Like all Zelazny novels, my major complaint is that this one is too short. One question I'd like to throw out is that at the end, the "three days" was mentioned, as well as the islands maybe having survived them. Does that mean this is somehow connected to This Immortal?
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