Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny

This high-octane adventure never lets up on the action. Damnation Alley spawned a 1977 cult film and inspired the influential video game Fallout, now a streaming series on Apple.

Hell Tanner is a vicious loner, an ex-biker jailed when the nuclear war came years ago. In three days, the United States became a decimated wasteland, leaving only the Northwest and Southeast inhabitable. Planes no longer fly; radio ceased. The irradiated multicolored skies are now crisscrossed with ribbons of black and pour down sheets of water, rocks, hail, lightning, and fish. The Nation of California developed a serum for the ensuing plague, which the Nation of Boston is now desperate for. The government of California offers Hell a full pardon for past and future crimes if he will drive the serum to Boston. No one has ever survived the trip, but as the last survivor of the exterminated cycle gangs, Tanner knows the way. Six drivers are enlisted in three bulletproof vehicles fully weaponized with rockets, flamethrowers, guns, grenades, and motorcycles. Setting into the so-called Damnation Alley in a lethal electrical sandstorm, Tanner is soon alone to fend off giant aberrations of nature, past craters of radiation and fires that burn forever. Once in what used to be the Eastern states, the real problems begin. He does find settlements of survivors along the way who doubt he will make it. It looks unlikely.

Roger Zelazny was nominated for the Nebula Award fourteen times, winning three, and was also nominated for the Hugo Award fourteen times, winning six. This was based on Zelazny's novella (available to read free on Internet Archive). It was extended into a novel in hopes of a film sale, and Zelazny approved the script. What they actually filmed was something different, the 1977 film starring George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent. I was 10 when it came out, and I loved it. Retaining only the general idea of the book, it bombed but later became a cult favorite. It couldn't come close to the harrowing action of the novel. This is over-the-top action, in the best way.

1969 / Paperback / 160 pages