The novel “Damnation Alley” by Roger Zelazny was published for the first time in 1969. It’s an extension of a novella published in 1967.

Hell Tanner is a criminal who’s ruthless even by the standards of the territories that used to be the USA before a nuclear war led to their fragmentation. When he gets caught, he can expect no leniency but is offered the chance to receive a pardon if he agrees to transport a shipment of vaccines from Los Angeles to Boston, where an epidemic is striking the population hard.

Assisted by a crew of volunteers, Hell Tanner drives a group of three armored cars with a large array of weapons of various kinds. The crossing of North America holds a series of dangers in a post-apocalyptic world where the climate has gone mad, geography has been altered, flora and fauna have changed at times monstrously, and there are always other human beings ready to cut the throats to anyone if they think they can get something from them.

“Damnation Alley” is set a few decades after a nuclear war devastated human civilization, but its remains continue to resist. The former USA territory is divided into small states where the law can be difficult to enforce.

Among the long-term consequences of that situation, there are new epidemics with the difficulty of getting vaccines and drugs to reach great distances due to the impossibility of flying because of very strong winds and the dangers faced by the people who risk traveling on the road. For this reason, Hell Tanner, a criminal who was part of a bike gang who can handle himself on the most dangerous roads, is chosen to transport vaccines from one ex-USA coast to the other.

Hell Tanner is an antihero as he serves his own interests and his list of crimes clearly shows that he has no problem committing acts of violence. In this case, he’s forced to accept what for many people is a suicide mission to avoid life imprisonment.

This novel is very adventurous as Hell Tanner and his crew face a variety of dangers of very different types over the course of their long journey. In essence, it’s a survival test that leaves little chance of victory even starting it with three armored cars and a crew armed to the teeth. The plot is very simple as the travelers face one danger after another and generally some of them die.

In many ways, “Damnation Alley” looks like a pulp magazine era novel even though certain descriptions are perhaps too brutal for that type of market. It’s a bit out of the ordinary for Roger Zelazny, who admitted he had extended his original novella at the request of his agent to try to get a deal to produce a movie. From this point of view it was successful leading to the release of the movie “Damnation Alley” in 1977, but the final script turned out to change many elements of the story and the author was disappointed.

“Damnation Alley” is a novel that even by 1960s standards is short, but it’s intense. It also has the merit of having anticipated certain antiheroes that became famous especially in movies in the following years. In my opinion, it’s not among Roger Zelazny’s best novels, but it’s still worth reading, also for its ending.