8.8 /10 1 Votes
4.9/5 Barnes & Noble Language English Publication date 5 July 2016 Originally published 5 July 2016 | 3.9/5 Goodreads Country United States Publisher Mulholland (Hachette) Media type Print (Hardcover) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cover artist Oliver Munday in collaboration with Keith Hayes Nominations Goodreads Choice Awards Best Science Fiction Similar Works by Ben Winters, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Underground airlines by ben winters book review
Underground Airlines is a 2016 novel by Ben Winters which is set in a contemporary alternate-history United States where the American Civil War never occurred because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated prior to his 1861 inauguration and a version of the Crittenden Compromise was adopted instead. As a result, slavery has remained legal in the "Hard Four" southern states: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and a united Carolinas. The novel attracted praise for exploring racism through the alternate-history mechanism, but also engendered criticism for seemingly ignoring similar contributions by Octavia Butler.
Contents
Underground airlines by ben h winters book trailer
Plot
The novel is narrated by Victor, a former Person Bound to Labor (nicknamed 'peeb' in the alternate history) who, after escaping life in a Hard Four state, has been forced to work as an undercover agent for a mysterious federal marshall, infiltrating and gathering evidence to prosecute fellow escapees and the people and organizations helping peebs escape slavery. If Victor refuses to help, the agent has threatened to return him to the plantation from which he escaped; and he can be tracked by a device implanted in his spine if he tries to run.
As the novel opens, Victor is tracking down the peeb escapee Jackdaw, whose last known whereabouts have led Victor to Indianapolis.
Development history
Our country is still dealing with the legacy of slavery. As I researched the subject, I realized I wanted to take this figurative idea that slavery is still with us, and make it literal.
Winters cites Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as a strong influence on the finished novel.
Publication history
Cover art
The United States hardback edition cover was designed by Oliver Munday. An alternative cover for the UK edition featured a background with the stars and bars from the Confederate Battle Flag.
Reception
In an early review, Kirkus Reviews called the novel's premise "worthy of Philip K. Dick ... smart and well-paced." The book debuted on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list at #20, and was ranked #11 on the Indie Bestsellers list.
Charles Finch wrote, in a review for USA Today, the novel had a "rather prosaic plotline" and "many of [the novel's] big turns are anticlimactic" but overall, it was "a swift, smart, angry new novel [that] illuminates all the ways that slavery has endured into the present day — by depicting an alternate world in which it has endured" and called it an astonishing feat of world-building.
In a review for The Washington Post, Jon Michaud found the "alternate history that does not feel fully realized [in] its rendering of popular culture" was "slightly distracting" but overall, the novel was a success "because its fiction is disturbingly close to our present reality." Many reviewers probed the novel's premise and found it reasonable. Maureen Corrigan, writing for National Public Radio, called the novel "one suspenseful tale filled with double crosses and dangerous expeditions" set in "a disturbing but plausible alternate reality for the United States." Kathryn Schulz, reviewing the novel for The New Yorker, said "Winters gets the balance right. He is careful to set up a plausible case for how history shifted off-kilter ... and he paints a convincing picture of what fugitive life would look like in our own era.
Racial controversy
A profile in The New York Times called the novel "creatively and professionally risky" for Winters, as fellow author Lev Grossman was quoted describing Winters as "fearless" for being "a white writer going after questions of what it's like to be black in America." Corrigan wrote that a white author imagining the thoughts and experiences of a black character was potentially controversial. Other critics of the Times profile felt that Winters was being unfairly lionized, especially since the themes of science fiction, racism and slavery had in fact been explored before, most notably by African-American author Octavia Butler in her 1979 novel Kindred.
Winters had already acknowledged Butler's influence in a blog post published three weeks before the profile in the Times.
Adaptation
Winters has written the pilot script for a television adaptation.