History Literature / Roadmarks

* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: The Creator/MarquisDeSade uses a Tyrannosaurus Rex to quit his teaching job in Writing in the far-distant future and finds himself fighting an amorous dragon with mystic powers. ItMakesSenseInContext.

* LawyerFriendlyCameo: Yet other travelers on the road go unnamed but resemble famous fictional characters including Franchise/DocSavage and one of his enemies, John Sunlight.

* GentleGiant: Mondamay is a large alien robot with the power to obliterate entire planets, but finds himself left behind by his creators due massive system malfunctions. He becomes a potter and lives a peaceful life until reactivated by an assassin and ordered to kill a friend.

* GentleGiant: Mondamay is a large alien robot with the power to obliterate entire planets, but finds himself left behind by his creators due to a malfunction. He becomes a potter and lives a peaceful life until reactivated by an assassin and ordered to kill a friend.

* UsefulNotes/TheCrusades: Randy meets a crusader who lost his way and somehow found The Road. Now he works in a gas station, sometimes asking travelers for news on the wars.

* Main/ActionGirl: Strong female characters, both physically and in personality, feature in the alternative chapters.

** Leila, an old friend of Red's with semi-dependable [[Main/PsychicPowers precognition]], joins Red's son Randy in chasing Red down. She's quite tall and solid, described as carrying her purse like a football. She hopes to save Red's life, but isn't above placing bets against him is there's profit to be made!

* Main/AncientAstronauts: One of the characters is Mondamay, the world killer (retired) from a distant offshoot of Earth where an alien race deposited him. He is enlisted as an assassin against his will.
* Main/ArtificialIntelligence: Two of the characters in the story are computers in the form of books: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_mal Flowers of Evil]] accompanies Red in the ''One'' chapters while his son Randy discovers and is assisted by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass Leaves of Grass]] in the ''Two'' chapters. Both assist in navigating The Road.

* Main/EverybodySmokes: Cigars, by preference.
* Main/EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: The Creator/MarquisDeSade uses a Tyrannosaurus Rex to quit his teaching job in Writing in the far-distant future and finds himself fighting an amorous dragon with mystic powers. Main/ItMakesSenseInContext.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: The other travelers on the road include Creator/AmbroseBierce, the Creator/MarquisDeSade, and a small German man named Adolph who's said to be searching without success for a timeline where his cause was victorious.

* Main/AncientAstronauts: One of the characters is Mondamay, the world killer (retired) from a distant offshoot of Earth where an alien race deposited. He is enlisted as an assassin against his will.

** Leila, an old friend of Red's with semi-dependable [[Main/PsychicPowers clairvoyance]], joins Red's son Randy in chasing Red down. She's quite tall and solid, described as carrying her purse like a football. She hopes to save Red's life, but isn't above placing bets against him is there's profit to be made!

* Main/NoAccountingForTaste: Leaves enjoys songs about drinking and fornicating. '''Don't''' tease her about it unless you plan on [[Main/BerserkButton walking back]] to the Twenty-First century.

''Roadmarks'' is an SF novel published in 1979 by Creator/RogerZelazny.

* HaveWeMetYet: Played with; on several occasions, people reminisce about a previous meeting with Red then add that they're not sure if it's happened to him yet, because he looked older then. [[spoiler:It turns out that he's growing younger instead of older as time goes on.]]

The novel alternates chapters (labeled either One or Two) that tell the story of Red Dorakeen's search for his past with vignettes involving a variety of places and characters along the road, all of which eventually feed in to the resolution of the main plot.

The novel alternates chapters that tell the story of Red Dorakeen's search for his past with vignettes involving a variety of places and characters along the road, all of which eventually feed in to the resolution of the main plot.

* LawyerFriendlyCameo: Yet other travelers on the road go unnamed but resemble famous fictional characters including Franchise/DocSavage.

''Roadmarks'' is an SF novel by Creator/RogerZelazny.

The setting is a highway that can only be found by people with a certain unspecified mystical knack, where each of the exits and off-ramps leads to a different point in history. (In multiple histories, indeed; some of the people traveling on the highway are lost, trying to find the way back to the timeline they originally came from, while others have abandoned their original timeline and are seeking one more to their liking.)

* AnachronicOrder: The vignettes are in no particular order; for instance, the first shows Randy having an encounter on the road, while a later one shows him arriving on the road for the first time. Zelazny reportedly wrote them out on separate pieces of paper and shuffled them into a random order before interleaving them with the Red chapters.

* GentleGiant: Mondamay.

* YouDidntAsk: Used deliberately against one of the villains. A character is placed under a compulsion to obey the villain's orders; the villain's plan fails due to a fact the character knew all along but chose not to volunteer; the villain asks why he didn't warn him, and the character replies, with exact truth, "You never asked me."