Roadmarks
Roger Zelazny
 The central theme of the novel is time travel using a highway that links all times and all possible histories. Exits from the highway lead to different times and places. Changing events in the past cause some exits further up the road, in the future, to become overgrown and inaccessible and new exits to appear, leading to different alternative futures. The narrator and protagonist, Red Dorakeen, has vague memories of a place or time that is no longer accessible from the Road. He runs guns to the Greeks at Marathon, trying to recreate history as he remembers it in an attempt to open a new exit from the Road to his half-remembered place. The phrase "Last Exit to Babylon" was the manuscript title of the book and appears on the cover art; it was later used as a title for Volume Four in the Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny collection. All "One" chapters feature Red Dorakeen, and all "Two" chapters feature secondary characters. These are Red's natural son Randy, newly introduced to the Road and tired of his old life in Ohio; a bevy of would-be assassins attempting to kill Red, some of whom are comic references to pulp characters, or real people (it is implied that Ambrose Bierce is writing a novel somewhere on the metaphysical highway) and Leila, a woman whose fate is bound to Red's in mysterious and unexplained ways. The "One" storyline is fairly linear, but the "Two" storyline jumps around in time and sequence, first bringing in Randy and Leila without introduction, then later showing Randy's introduction to the Road and meeting with Leila, who will/has just abandoned Red following an incident in the "One" timeline. Everything comes clear in the final chapter, however. There are a number of interesting humorous touches and allusions in the story. These include an ancient dragon who falls in love with a tyrannosaurus, a futuristic warrior robot left behind by aliens because it is malfunctioning and has now taken up pottery, a lost crusader who now works in a gas station located somewhere on the timeless road, occasionally asking his customers about the "current" status of the Holy Land, an ancient Sumerian who buries artifacts later to be found by himself as archaeologist, along with the brief appearances of pulp heroes such as Doc Savage and John Sunlight as well as real historical figures, including Jack the Ripper, Marquis de Sade and an angry Adolf Hitler (who is furiously searching for the place "where he won").