The other states in the Union have agreed that any slave or person bound to labor, as they're called, must be returned to the corporate plantation from which they've escaped. They're demarcated from the rest of the U.S. Those slave states, known as the Hard Four, consist in the present day of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the reunited Carolinas. And in an act of compromise, some states were allowed to maintain slavery. Rather, Lincoln was assassinated before he took office. 'Underground Airlines' imagines that the Civil War never happened. Winters jolts readers to a heightened awareness, making us see just how much of the nightmare of what could have been is part of the all-too-familiar reality of what is. Instead, 'Underground Airlines' by Ben H. An extraordinary new novel of alternate history, however, refuses to deliver that payoff of relief at the end. And at the more sci-fi-ish end of the spectrum is Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale,' in which a Christian terrorist group takes over the U.S., suspends all constitutional rights and renders women completely subject to the rule of men.Īs ingenious as these novels are, it's also a relief to leave their worlds and hightail it back to the broken but nonetheless better real world that we readers live in. Dick's 'The Man In The High Castle,' where Germany and Japan win the war and divvy up the United States between them. Think, for instance, of Philip Roth's novel 'The Plot Against America,' in which Charles Lindbergh wins the 1940 election against Franklin Roosevelt and promptly signs a peace treaty with Germany and Japan.Īn even grimmer variant on World War II history is Philip K. What I mean by that is - most novels that imagine the different ways the past could have played out imagine things going really, really wrong. MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: One of the comforts of reading a work of so-called alternate or speculative history is being able to stop reading it. Our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, says that however you classify 'Underground Airlines,' it's indisputably a winner. Winters's latest novel, 'Underground Airlines,' mashes together elements of the thriller with speculative history.

Dick Award for distinguished science fiction.

And his 2013 book, 'Countdown City,' won the Philip K. His 2012 book, 'The Last Policeman,' won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Winters is a writer whose work has spanned different genres.

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters