Winterflight

I wouldn't really say this is a great work of fiction nor was it meant to be. I believe that the story is an allegory for the direction that the author saw the country turning. He envisioned an America where everyone has universal healthcare and no one suffers from the ravages of Tay Sachs, hemophilia, or sickle cell anemia but where those who have these conditions and other congenital deformities are aborted or live Brain Dead in Body Banks ready to 'donate' a body part to those in need. No one worries about having to live on social security into old age as once you turn 75, the government has you report to a euthanasia center(shades of Edgar G. Robinson in "Soylent Green"). The future he paints is not bright and the ending of the story is not pleasant, but with recent cases in the news and the ascendancy of the culture of abortion and euthanasia the late author may have painted a picture of where we are headed as a society

Through the course of the narrative many questions are raised, many situations are set up, but are left open. Rather than to think this was an error on the part on of the author, this was instead asking a bold "What if..?" these type of events were allowed to unfold without so much of a protest in everyday real life. After all, some practices within todays society go on as if fully accepted without quarrel while others seek the same acceptance, and thus, do the same disrespect to the sanctity of human life the author makes references too. While I was disturbed by the ending, I fully understand where the grandfather felt there was no other recourse for him or for his grandson. But, isn't that the point? Where was the Christian witnesses when and where it was needed? Where were his Christian brothers and sisters? All cosy until they happen to be affected by "the termination notices"? For a society to view all those 75 yrs and older as disposable and all children born with ~any~ type of physical abnormality or condition as defective should that be considered just as, if even not ~more so~ disturbing? This is a very timely book with a very timely message for all those who cherish the sanctity of human life.

The book is a disturbing look at what America might be in the future. 20 years after this book was originally written, I live in a state with legal abortion and legal physician-assisted suicide. An America closer to the one written about in the book than the one in which the author lived. I agree with another review that calls the book a wake up call. The most disturbing part of the book is the failure of the characters in the story to have acted earlier. They were content to live in an America that decided who lived and who didn't untill the ones who were told to die were in their own family. The father in the story, Jon, says that he "is no Dietrich Bonhoeffer." Indeed! Bonhoeffer opposed Hitler's policies of death from the beginning and resisted them untill his execution. Joseph Bayly never lets us forget in the book the parallels he draws between this futuristic America and Nazi Germany. As a medical student and scientist, I found the book to be an important reminder of the implications to today's research and medical practices.

Reading this book ten years ago left me thinking that the mass euthanasia of our elderly and genetically impure could never happen. Now in the days of Dr. Kevorkian, and the increasing amount of governmental controls over our society, the book's content could become more of a reality than we would have expected. If you want to peek at future possibilities based on today's moral choices, this book will certainly make you think twice about the things our culture deems to be ethical now. Just what are we paving the way for??? This book gives a plausible answer.

This is a thoughtful book for Christians willing to think about the implications of our society's Faustian bargain with death. Though written in the 1970s, the novel seems prescient in its analysis of where abortion is leading our nation. Some readers may not like the ending: there are always Pollyannas in the evangelical world who think that no Christian novel should ever end unhappily, yet it strikes me that there is no more logical or Biblical ending to such a situation than the one described by the author.