The speculative fiction of Ben Winters' Underground Airlines inhabits a 21st Century wherein the peculiar institution of slavery continues to thrive. These "altered states" of America turn into a parallel universe when an imminent Civil War is averted through the Crittenden Compromise, a pact enforcing slavery as a constitutional right in select southern states. Subsequently, Winters' novel is inverted at its core and reads, in part, as a thrilling postmodern slave narrative—its protagonist, Victor, an antithesis of Harry Tubman, covertly laboring as "soul catcher" tasked with returning a fugitive slave to the modern day plantation of a corporate factory.