Underground Airlines

Underground Airlines
First edition
AuthorBen H. Winters
Cover artistOliver Munday in collaboration with Keith Hayes
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherMulholland (Hachette)
Publication date
July 5, 2016
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages327
ISBN978-0-316-26124-1

Underground Airlines is a 2016 science fiction novel by American writer Ben Winters, 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" (a group of Southern states that have kept slavery): Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and a unified Carolina. Its name evokes the Underground Railroad in relations to its setting. The novel attracted praise for exploring racism through the alternate-history mechanism.