[In Damnation Alley] Roger Zelazny takes the hoodlum hero of American pulp fiction, dresses him in the gear of the Hell's Angels and places him in a period several decades from now when the world has been devastated by atomic warfare. We are given a vivid and startling idea of what the future could be like after the nuclear holocaust as the hero makes a journey carrying plague serum between the two major surviving centers of civilization in North America, along the route known as Damnation Alley. However there is a dubious element of doublethink in the moral stance of the novel, for to achieve his mission of mercy the hero kills and maims steadily, and in wholesale quantities throughout the journey. This strong element of gratuitous violence operates at the mindless level of the American crime comic and leaves a nasty taste. This is a pity for...