The story opens in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, in a hellish world shattered by nuclear war decades before. Several police states have emerged in place of the former United States. Hurricane-force winds above five hundred feet prevent any sort of air travel from one state to the next, and sudden, violent, and unpredictable "garbage storms" and giant, mutated animals and insects make day-to-day life a mini-hell. Hell Tanner, an imprisoned killer, is offered a full pardon in exchange for taking on a suicide mission—a drive through "Damnation Alley" across a ruined America from Los Angeles to Boston—as one of three Landmaster vehicles attempting to deliver an urgently needed plague vaccine.
Reception
found the book "an interesting novella converted to an unfortunate novel," faulting it as "a mechanical, simply transposed action-adventure story written, in my view, at the bottom of the man's talent." Zelazny himself agreed with Malzberg, stating that he preferred the novella and only expanded it at his agent's request to make it more viable for a movie deal.
Film adaptation
In 1977, a film loosely based on the novel was directed by Jack Smight. Roger Zelazny had liked the original script by Lukas Heller and expected that to be the filmed version; he did not realize until he saw it in the theater that the shooting script was quite different. He never liked the movie and was embarrassed by it. However, assertions that he requested to have his name removed from the film are completely unfounded. The movie was released before he ever discovered he did not like it.
Related works
The novel Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams is an homage to Damnation Alley. The two authors later became good friends. Kevin O'Neill has said that the 2000AD story The Cursed Earth was inspired by Damnation Alley. The Hawkwind album Quark, Strangeness and Charm contains a song inspired by the story. The setting and premise of the 2011 Lonesome Road add-on for the post-apocalyptic computer game was inspired by Damnation Alley, according to lead designerChris Avellone. The film adaptation of Zelazny's novel was also one of several sources of inspiration for the original Fallout, according to designer R. Scott Campbell.
