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| Damnation
Alley by Roger Zelazny check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
Alongside its Masterworks imprint is the 'Collector's Edition' range and it's from this line that 'Damnation Alley' comes. Roger Zelazny was one of the leading figures in the New Wave of SF during the sixties, changing the direction of the genre towards the 'softer' side of the social sciences.
'Damnation Alley' is a
very short book, barely more than a novella. It took me less than a day to read
its 157 pages but it was an enjoyable trip. Up until his death in 1995, Zelazny
wrote with flair and invention and very strong characterisation which at the time
was a revelation. 'Damnation Alley' is a book about America after a terrible Nuclear Holocaust in which most of the world's population has died and almost all of the USA is uninhabitable. Survivors remain in Boston and California, struggling to survive against violent storms, volcanoes and disease. A
fierce wind whips around the planet constantly, ripping off chunks of rock, trees
and buildings and drops them during storms. Mutated snakes, hundreds of feet long,
and vicious tornadoes roam the centre of the continent. Our hero in
his piece is actually more of an anti-hero. Hell Tanner, last surviving Hell's
Angel biker, is promised pardon from his prison sentence if he'll drive from California
to Boston across Damnation Alley. Reluctantly he agrees, but only after injuring
his brother so that his brother can't also make the trip. The journey
is near suicidal. Three heavily armoured, near-tank cars set out from California
with Hell in the lead. Barely a third into the trip, only Hell's car remains but
he has to get through, for his cargo is a vaccine against a virus threatening
to wipe out Boston. It's an enjoyable ride and Zelazny dips you effortlessly into his believable world. It feels as desperate and relentlessly tough as you would imagine and the struggle through the ruined central plains is taut and exciting. The grimy nature of Hell Tanner's anti-hero personality adds a constant
edge to the action and makes it more interesting than a standard adventure. The
end section doesn't quite deliver the climax the story really deserves but 'Damnation
Alley' is still a worthy addition to the classic SF bookshelf. Tomas
L. Martin
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OTHER REVIEWS - November 2003
Told By The Dead by Ramsay Campbell The Sandman: Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman Robota by Doug Chaing and Orson Scott Card Grass For His Pillow by Lian Hearn Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson The World Jones Made by Philip K. Dick All My Sins Remembered by Joe Haldeman Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion by Larry Nemecek The Year's Best Fantasy And Horror The Binder's Road by Terry McGarry Project Orion - The Atomic Spaceship by George Dyson The Word And The Void by Terry Brooks Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine April/May 2003 Time Out Of Joint by Philip K. Dick Buffy the Vampire Slayer Soundtrack Smallville Soundtrack (The Talon Mix) Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days by Alastair Reynolds Crossroads Of Twilight by Robert Jordan Mediations On Middle-Earth by Karen Haber and John Howe
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There's
a lot of good SF being reprinted in the UK at the moment and Gollancz seems to
be the driving force behind it. 
Zelazny,
together with contemporaries such as Samuel Delany and Ursula K. LeGuin, had a
huge influence on the way Science Fiction and fantasy is written and it's good
to see such important work being reprinted.
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