La spedizione degli angeli

by Steve Wilson, Laura Bruno (translator)

Gli Angeli di cui qui si tratta portano giubbe di cuoio, coltelli a serramanico, catene, ispide barbe. Si lavano poco e si picchiano molto. Fumano strane sigarette e bevono ancor più strane pozioni. Volano non con le ali ma per mezzo di potentissime motociclette. Sono insomma gli Angeli dell'Inferno, i famosi Hell's Angels di California, che la distruzione nucleare dell'America e della civiltà non è riuscita a eliminare. Nei nuovi piccoli stati che si vanno formando dopo la catastrofe, gli Angeli hanno anzi una posizione di tutto rispetto. Sono diventati il braccio irregolare del governo, i commandos cui si affidano le missioni più dure, i motocowboys che si addentrano nei territori contaminati, a esplorare, razziare, combattere. Tre di essi vengono inviati a catturare un uomo prezioso per la California, e le loro peripezie, i loro duelli feroci, i loro trucchi, il loro coraggio, i loro rapporti con zingari, indiani, soldati amici e nemici, I'incontro della loro violenta subcultura con la rinata civiltà dei pellerossa, formano un'originalissima epopea che combina la cruda avventura western con la spaziosa poesia di Easy Rider.

Copertina di Karel Thole

Genres: Science Fiction, Apocalyptic, Action

198 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars might be a bit generous, but there were some good ideas here - too many & their execution was poor. It's a post-apocalyptic, tough motorcycle club, guy novel with some half baked hippy/Indian mysticism & such in it. I don't know why it stuck around on my shelves for so long, but I don't remember it at all. It's probably been there since the early 80's.

It fails by going too far for the point too often. For instance, our young hero, part of a motorcycle gang, has a crush on a girl. He finds her screwing several guys at a party. The author goes into detail about how she takes on 2 of the 3 to start, one in the rear because he says his buddy doesn't like sloppy seconds, so he brought some 'motorcycle chain grease'. That's just too much for me. I don't object to anal sex or a girl & 2 guys in a novel, but it was tacked on only for extra shock value. Even this excess was overdone by the wording. 'Grease' would have been fine, but a specific type was ridiculous given the man's position & activity while speaking.

The way she takes on the final guy solo is well described & quite erotic - lots of lust & proves she is in it for the pleasure, damn all the rules. Just this part would have been plenty. The real horror of the situation being our young hero's shattered ideal of his first love or crush. Maybe if she'd taken on the other 2 afterward, it wouldn't have bugged me so much.

That's pretty much how the whole book read. The good ideas & parts were just too often ruined by ridiculous over-kill & ended up as gross or stupid. The tone & POV also varies a lot which doesn't help. Toward the end, parts of a battle read like something out of a WWII book. It was actually fairly well done in some ways, but then we switch back to idiocy again. It's almost as if the book was written in pieces by a committee. A semi-decent writer handed his action novel over to a mystic & a grotesque thug to tack pieces on to.

I read all the way to the end hoping for something good because of the way the novel started. I was severely disappointed. There'd been bits of mysticism throughout the book, pretty hokey stuff, but not enough to turn me off. The end was very mystical & was supposed to be powerful, I think. Major fail.

Not recommended for anyone. It will be removed from my shelves & put up for trade.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Lost Traveller was subtitled "A Motorcycle Grail Quest Epic and Science Fiction Western." My Ace paperback edition has a fine wrap-around cover by Bob Adragna and an introductory preface by Norman Spinrad in which he calls it, "...the most promising first science fiction novel to come along in several years." Unfortunately, Wilson never published another, but I certainly enjoyed this post-apocalyptic one very much on my twentieth birthday. Genre mashups were virtually unknown at the time, and this one incorporated all of the elements promised and added a very healthy, heady, and heavy dose of Native American philosophy and mysticism. It has some flaws (which I probably didn't notice at the time), and some needlessly graphic elements, but as a fan of Easy Rider and Hell Tanner (from Zelazny's Damnation Alley) I was happy to slap Steppenwolf on the turntable and fire all of my guns at once and explode into space. ...blam...

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's billed on the cover as a science fiction western but is actually a post apocolyptic novel featuring the Hell's Angels and their descendents as survivors of World War III. Pretty interesting concept. I thought it was enjoyable.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steve Wilson writes the kind of fiction that I like! I am so happy to see The Lost Traveller deservedly back in print! It is a flat-out post-apocalyptic, psychomotor nightmare told with verve and alacrity. The SF landscape is reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's "Damnation Alley" and Robert Charles Wilson's "Julian Comstock" with an adult dose of an Elmore Leonard western thrown in. This book is truly hell on wheels!

[Roger Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The nuclear war has come and gone. It is called the BLAM and in this novel history is divided into preBLAM and postBLAM. The setting is western North America and national government is no longer existent. It can be said that society is under the rule of outlaw motorcycle gangs. As I was reading this book I was contemplating the review I was going to write and for a long while I thought I was going to say that it does not read like science fiction. It was reading like a biker story. The Hell's Angels were in conflict with their biker rivals, the Gypsie Jokers. I was going to point out that it was not a bad book, but just that it did not read quite like science fiction. Then about halfway through the book the Hell's Angels protagonists encounter and join up with Lakota Indians who, in this post apocalyptic world have gone back to the "old" ways. Then it starts to read like an historical western. The Hell's Angels even give up their motorcycles for a time to ride horses. At that point, though, the fragmentation of North America starts to hit home. Then about two thirds through the book the Hell's angels tangle with the technologically advanced, militaristic, totalitarian regime in the east. That is when the actual alienness of the postBLAM situation starts sinking in. By the time I finished I could no longer say that it did not read like a science fiction novel. Still, though, there is a lot of reliance on outlaw biker culture and the main characters are all outlaw bikers. All in all I liked the story.

[Andy Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subtitle of this book is, "A motorcycle grail quest epic and science fiction western". I'm not quite sure what that means, even after reading it, but there are some motorcycles and there is a bit of a western feel to it.

Set 200 years after a nuclear war, a group of Hell's Angels on the west coast of the US live in not-quite-harmony with a fairly civilised growing settlement. Three of them are given the task of travelling across the bulk of the country to liberate a scientist from a militaristic regime from the east, as he has a method to rejuvenate the poisoned land. All OK so far, if you like a bit of post-apocalyptic craziness.

However, the implementation isn't the greatest and all the hippy stuff related to the Native Americans got on my nerves a bit. It's also a pretty explicit book in more than one respect, which doesn't bother me, but might be a bit much for some readers. In its favour, the book is fairly original in some ways, in a genre that can be pretty predictable.


EDIT

I came here in May 2026 to write a review and apparently I wrote one in December 2021! The fact that I can't remember the book at all tells me something!

Two things to add:
1) It really is explicit in a way that isn't really necessary. Sex, drugs, violence, sometimes more than one at once.
2) Given that this is 200 years or something after a nuclear exchange, how are the motorbikes (and later other vehicles) still running? Who is manufacturing the drugs? Would there really be working oil refineries? It all seems a bit unlikely.

[Marcus Blakeston · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I were a lad I used to go bombing down Conisbrough hill on my moped, flat down over the petrol tank, trying to reach the death-defying speed of 45 MPH while pretending I was Chopper from the Peter Cave books I used to read when I was 12.

It was around that time I first bought this book, from the remainder section of Woolworths. Post-nuclear war Hells Angels, you'd need to be a completely useless bastard to cock something like that up. It was different to what I expected, no token black characters called Superspade or whatever, no punch ups with skinheads, and no burn ups down the King's Road cos it's set in That America. I've since seen it called cowboys and indians on motorcycles, which is a reasonably accurate description.

This is a re-read of the recent ebook reissue, with added OCR errors to make it seem more modern. There's also an interview with the writer at the end, as an added bonus. The book seems a lot slower paced than I remember it, but that's mostly down the the 1970s style of writing used -- lengthy summaries, unnecessary details, he was, and the like. Some people still seem to like that sort of thing, but for me his later Dealer's books (Move, Wheels and War, all of which I also re-read a few months ago) were better. If anyone plans on republishing those, hopefully they will do a better job of it.

[Antonio Ippolito · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romanzo di avventura post-apocalittico tipicamente anni ’70, ma non banale: l’idea di base è l’esaltazione di quelle squadracce di delinquenti motorizzati che sono gli “Angeli dell’Inferno” californiani, divenuti una milizia privata in una Califoirnia divisa in staterelli feudali, un po’ come nel “Cantico di San Leibowitz”, e molto diversamente dal “Sempre la valle” della LeGuin. Al di là dei loro riti feroci, e della guerra di difesa del Feudo contro l’imperialismo degli Stati dell’Est degli USA (ci sarà una sottile satira in questo?), il romanzo inserisce un interesse non banale per la spiritualità dei nativi americani, di cui vengono ben descritti alcuni riti; al punto che uno dei protagonisti, come il "Piccolo grande uomo" di Penn, passerà a vivere con loro. Interessanti alcune considerazioni sul fatto che la missione degli Angeli (rapire dall’est uno scienziato che saprà bonificare le Terre Morte, rese tali dal fallout radioattivo) porterà sì al rafforzamento del Feudo, ma anche al suo snaturamento, per cui tornerà a essere una grande potenza come l’Est, come quelle del “pre-BOOM” (il periodo pre-catastrofe..).
Dal punto di vista editoriale, un confronto con la lunghezza dei testi originali, nonché la crudezza di certi episodi di erotismo e violenza, fa pensare che le censure di Urania fossero ormai finite. Restava però la necessità di stare nelle pagine previste: la presenza di episodi raccontati brevemente da altri personaggi, oppure solamente allusi, e le lodi dei lettori della versione originale, fanno pensare a tagli non indifferenti. Traduzione buona, che cerca di rendere il gergo da fattoni di molti Angeli; una buffa svista: a una fiera di paese, una ragazza “con un fauno al guinzaglio”.. siamo in un fantasy? No, “fawn” significa anche “cerbiatto”. E scopro che “tanica” si può dire anche “tanca” (“tank”, in effetti) e che una moto può esser detta “macchina” (in effetti in francese “la machine” può essere la bicicletta, e forse anche nell’italiano di cent’anni fa).

[Nicola Strangis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Una storia orrenda, scritta malissimo e se possibile tradotta peggio. Uno degli Urania più brutti di sempre.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorites. A mystical mixture of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, motorcycle and western genres.

[Nils · Rating 4 out of 5]

You need to read this.