Customer Reviews

Damnation Alley

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"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.

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.

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?

When I read this I was struck by the similarities between the deal offered to Hell Tanner to run the serum thru Damnation Alley to a plague stricken Boston in order to recieve a full pardon for every criminal act he's committed in the Nation of California...hmmm. That sounds alot like the deal offered to Snake Plissken, who seems to share alot of other similarities with Hell Tanner, who admittedly came first in 1969. I have no way of knowing whether or not John Carpenter or Nick Castle read the Zelazny book by the time they wrote Escape from New York but it wouldn't surprise me at all. Being a big fan of Plissken's exploits I can't help but like this pulpy sci fi novel. With a few very slight changes someone could easily adapt this into the 3rd Snake Plissken movie!!!! (Why am I not a Hollywood hot shot with clout, power, influence? Oh yeah, my ambition is handicapped by laziness.)

There is nothing on earth that could make the awful 1977 film adaptation worthwile. It has about zero to do with the book, which is filled with great twisted post-apocalyptic imagery: giant bats and scorpions and other fantastic beasties and tornado winds whipping great hunks of concrete and other unhealthy materials thru the malestrom that is "the Alley." And the Land-Master that Tanner drives is super-cool in a James Bond/Speed Racer way; it has flame throwers and grenade launchers and all sorts of buzz saw hub cap weapons.Very cool.

This novel is an absolute classic portrayal of near future but post apocalypse Earth. It is set in a US in which what remains of the population is confined largely to the coasts and separated by a wild and dangerous interior. When the population on the East coast is threatened by a deadly disease, the only hope is for a medical supplies to be transported overland. The book follows one man, unreformed biker Hell Tanner who sets out to cross the badlands.

As a setting for a novel this is not very promising. However, the author brings a huge amount of invention and narrative skill to bear and the result is a page turner. Of course, you know from the start that Hell Tanner will reluctantly accept the assignment and that he will face almost certain defeat on the way.

Despite that knowledge, you want to keep reading this book because the story is just so well put together. For me, one of the marks of a really good book is the vividness of the images that it creates in my head. By that test, this book was very good indeed.

If you like SF adventure stories, then track down a copy of this book and you will not be disappointed.

Damnation Alley is a book of epic proportions, set in the future. Travel between settlements have become nearly impossible and that is where the true story lies. You are taken on a trip through a typical voyage accross america in a post World War III land. From strange plants, to odd weather shifts makes for a great adventure. This definitly is a must read.

How can you not love a book about the last Hells' Angel forced into making a mission of mercy by making an extended road trip across a scarred and irradiated post-nuclear America?

It's brutal and a little dated at times, but if you're a sucker for the post-apocalyptic fiction genre you won't put it down.

I read this as a kid. I remember really liking it but not much else.

This Is a reread. I couldn't remember details so I reread it to reaffirm my 4 star rating. The rating stands. I enjoy Post-apocalyptic stories and the different paths they can follow. This is post nuclear and leans toward some of the scifi effects of radiation: lingering hot-pockets, mutations, altered weather, etc.

The US is split into different nations with most of the population on either coasts. The middle is essentially a dead no-mans land called Damnation Alley. Planes can't fly, the land roams with mutant animals and deadly weather, and the is no radio communication.

Sometime after a nuclear apocalypse, there are two nations left in the former U.S. (perhaps in the world); the nations of California and Boston. All the rest is a wasteland of radioactivity, mutant beasts, super storms and violent gangs, known as Damnation Alley.

Word comes that a plague has struck Boston. California sends a group of their best drivers across Damnation Alley to deliver vaccine. To lead this group, they shanghai Hell Tanner: criminal, the last Hell's Angel and the best damned driver they have.

This was my first Roger Zelazny novel and it wasn't what I expected. The writing was quirky and more literary than I was expecting, given the pulpy storyline and the workman-like writing in so much old sci-fi. The post-apocalyptic setting, lack of details about the causes of the war and unspecified year of the story kept the book from feeling particularly dated (except for the late-sixties fascination with the Hell's Angels).

So I liked the writing (enough that I will pick up other books by Zelazny), but overall I thought the book was only so-so. For the bulk of the book, though we hear what a terrible place Damnation Alley is, it just doesn't seem so dangerous.

Once Hell reaches the Eastern Seaboard he is constantly being harassed by raiders (and this section was very well done), but the previous days' driving across the country seemed almost mellow in comparison. I think maybe the book would have benefited a little from a couple of extra chapters and a few more travails.

Still, even though I think the book is flawed, it is worth a read. It helped spark a whole sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction, as I'm pretty sure Walter Jon Williams Hardwired, movies like Doomsday and the Mad Max series and game worlds like Gamma World and Dark Future were all at least partly inspired by this book.

Hell Tanner, the last of the Hells Angels, gets a pardon from the Nation of California - if he takes plague vaccine from Los Angeles to Boston. To make it, though, he has to go through Damnation Alley -- what's left of America after a nuclear war. It's a land of giant critters, volcanoes, biker gangs, and storms that drop boulders out of the sky. Along the way, murdering, pimping, thieving Tanner decides he may just like to have a go at being a hero ...

This is a fast-paced, very enjoyable adventure story told in prose colorful in every sense of the word. Zelazny himself preferred the shorter novella version. He was right. The added bits about life in plague-ridden Boston don't add much and a poetic, impressionistic section on the source and circulation of the winds that plague the world breaks up the pacing and tone. And, needless to say, there's little in the way of plausible science. Still, those are minor blemishes, and the story is worth reading in either version.