Underground Airlines is one of the bleakest alternate histories ever
▻http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/09/underground-airlines-is-one-of-the-bleakest-alternate-histories-ever
Most alternate histories reverse just a few big historical events. They show us how bad things would be if the Nazis won World War II or the South won the Civil War. Though Ben H. Winters’ new novel Underground Airlines treads familiar territory in this respect, few alt histories are as complex and horrifying as it is.
Underground Airlines is set in a 2016 where slavery is still legal in part of the United States. In this reality, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1861, and the Civil War never happened. Instead, a compromise was struck. To this day, four Southern states (the “Hard Four”) still keep human beings as property.