Morgan Robertson - prophet ?

I recently discovered an online copy of the book The Wreck of the Titan ... or, Futility

This was written by Morgan Robertson in 1898 and described how the 'Titan', the largest oceangoing liner ever built struck an iceberg and sunk with great loss of life.

The coincidences between the fate of the fictional 'Titan' and that of the Titanic founteen years later are certainly worth pondering.

The fictional ship is eerily similar to the yet-to-be conceived Titanic in size, speed, equipment, numbers of passengers (both rich and poor), and those lost.
Both ships were British and sailed in April with a top speed of 24 knots. They had the same passenger and crew capacity of 3,000 but sailed with a little over 2,000. Also they were between 800 and 900 feet long and driven with triple propellers. Each also sank 95 miles south of the banks of Greenland.
Here's the most astonishing fact: both ships sank after being pierced by an iceberg on their starboard side.!.!.!

And there's more ... See table at bottom of this website

Even with the possible editing of the book in light of the Titanic disaster, the original facts seem to be somewhat more than a coincidence - especially when considering another novel Roberson wrote later on.

This book was called "Beyond the Spectrum". In it he described a futuristic war fought with aircraft that carried what he called "sun bombs". These bombs were so powerful that with one brilliant flash of blinding light, one single bomb could destroy an entire city (much like a nuclear bomb ). When this book was written, airplanes were still tiny, dangerous machines that could barely carry one man, and crashed frequently, and this was decades before the Germans started their "heavy water" experiments, trying to construct a nuclear device.

Robertson's future war begins in the month of December (much like the actual WW II, which began in December) when the Japanese stage a sneak attack on Hawaii. (WW II was started when the Japanese launched a sneak attack on an American base -Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii.)

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Wow, they've actually got this book online now? I've always wanted to read it.

He was totally a prophet. Some of the best science-fiction writers are prophets. The best place to find inklings and sometimes more-than-inklings of the future is in sci-fi novels and comic books.

Thanks for the link!

I know !

Some of the best Sci-Fi authors seem to know exactly what is going to happen in the future. Orwell's vision of 1984 is getting closer and closer. I hadn't heard of this book until I came here, but its fascinating. It is so close to the Titanic as to be almost unbelieveable.

I have been meaning to write a post about Robertson for some time now, but it seems Pisky bet me to the punch by quite a few years.

This author fellow sure made some amazing insights into the future, huh?

Titanic 3D is here!

Time to resume discussion in this thread!

If you want to read Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan online, here is a working link:


www.titanic-titanic.com...


Enjoy