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 get on and off.

Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire and Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman appear as cybernetic extensions of themselves.

According to Zelazny: I did not decide until I was well into the book that since there was really two time-situations being dealt with (on-Road and off-Road—with off-Road being anywhen in history), I needed only two chapter headings, One and Two, to let the reader know where we are.

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.