Roadmarks
A time-travel highway novel with talking poetry books.
Roadmarks, a science fantasy novel by American author Roger Zelazny, was written in the late 1970s and came out in 1979. The story is built around a road that moves through time, with a nexus appearing every few years that only a few specially gifted people can use to get on or off. The main plot follows a series of attempts to kill the protagonist, with short vignettes focusing on each would-be assassin.
Two poetry collections appear as characters: Charles Baudelaire's *Les Fleurs du Mal* and Walt Whitman's *Leaves of Grass*, existing as cybernetic versions of themselves. Called "Flowers" and "Leaves," they act as companions to the protagonist and his son Randy, talking, arguing, and often quoting their own lines with human-like intelligence.
The book alternates between "One" and "Two" chapters. The "One" chapters are linear, while the "Two" chapters are non-linear. Zelazny explained that he decided late in the writing process to use just these two headings to show whether the action was on the Road or off it (anywhere in history). He clipped each "Two" chapter into a discrete packet, stacked them, shuffled them, and then reinserted them between the "One" chapters, believing the order didn't matter. He credited his experience with earlier experimental books for giving him the nerve to try this.
The central idea is time travel via a highway linking all times and possible histories. Exits lead to different times and places. Changing past events can cause some future exits to become overgrown and inaccessible, while new exits appear, leading to different alternative futures. The narrator and protagonist, Red Dorakeen, has vague memories of a place or time no longer reachable from the Road. He runs guns to the Greeks at Marathon, trying to recreate history as he remembers it to open a new exit to that half-remembered place. The phrase "Last Exit to Babylon" was the manuscript's title and appears on the cover art; it later became the title of Volume Four in the *Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny*.
All "One" chapters focus on Red Dorakeen. The "Two" chapters feature secondary characters: his natural son Randy, newly introduced to the Road and tired of his old life in Ohio; a series of potential assassins trying to kill Red, some comic references to pul
- author
- Roger Zelazny
- published
- 1979
- genre
- Science fantasy
- nationality
- American
- notable_elements
- Time-travel highway, sentient poetry collections, non-linear chapter structure
Lore & Background
The novel postulates a road that travels through time, with a nexus placed every few years, where a handful of specially gifted people are able to enter and exit. The plot involves a series of assassination attempts on the protagonist, Red Dorakeen, with short vignettes on each of the would-be assassins. The book has two poetry collections as characters: Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire and Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, appearing as cybernetic extensions of themselves, referred to as 'Flowers' and 'Leaves'.
Reader's Guide
Roadmarks is a fun book that, from anyone but Zelazny, would be considered a tour de force, according to reviewer Greg Costikyan. Its major difficulty is that Zelazny tried to force too many ideas into a length unsuited for them, thus being unable to exploit all of those ideas to satisfying fullness. The novel received multiple reviews in 1980 and 1981 from publications including Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Heavy Metal, Amazing Stories, and Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact. In February 2021, it was reported that George R.R. Martin and Kalinda Vazquez were developing a television adaptation for HBO.
Did You Know?
- The manuscript title was 'Last Exit to Babylon', which later became the title of Volume Four in the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny.
- The novel features two poetry collections as cybernetic characters: Les Fleurs du Mal and Leaves of Grass.
- Zelazny shuffled the non-linear 'Two' chapters before inserting them between the linear 'One' chapters.
- The book's editor required Zelazny to rearrange the order of several 'Two' chapters before publication.
More in Novels by Roger Zelazny 1-24
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