Rating: 
Summary: Strange coincidence...
Review: According to http://www.im.gte.com/titanic/fof.html:
English writer Morgan Robertson wrote Futility, an imaginary account of a collision between a large
trans-Atlantic oceanliner and an iceberg on her maiden voyage to New York. He called his ship the
Titan. Did he cash in on the disaster? Hardly. Robertson published his book in 1898--14 years
before the Titanic sank. Robertson later wrote a book, Beyond the Spectrum, that described a future war fought with aircraft that carried
"sun bombs". Incredibly powerful, one bomb could destroy a city, erupting in a flash of light that blinds all who
look at it. The war begins in December, started by the Japanese with a sneak attack on Hawaii. . . .
Rating: 
Summary: Don't have,. Haven't read.
Review: All I can say is that I would like to invest in an original copy of this book. I have heard about it for years and didn't realize it had been reprinted. The Titanic disaster has fascinated me most of my life. When the film came out I knew all of the historical characters' names, ranks, positions within the ship, etc. I have a rather large collection of books about the ship and the events surrounding its demise. This book would be a neat little lagniappe for my library, but only if it were a first edition.
Rating:
Summary: oh so good
Review: An excellent prenomenatio
Rating: 
Summary: Little did the author know how right he was......
Review: An intriguing story, written 14 years before the Titanic disaster, about the world's largest ocean liner, the Titan, inadequately supplied with lifeboats, that sank after striking an iceberg. The story itself is only O.K., although the depiction of the greedy insurance agent that doesn't want to pay up for the wreck seems very true to life. Also has a somewhat drawn out and unromantic love story that one tires of, but it's a lot better than the cheesy love story from the recent Titanic flick. Not great literature, but fascinating from the point of view of future history and enough action to keep you interested.
Rating:
Summary: WOW!!! This book is incredible!!!
Review: As a "Titantic fanatic" I loved reading this book! If you believe in fate, coincidence, or premonitions this is the book for you... It took me FOREVER to find this book - thank you for reprinting it for the rest of us to enjoy. It's amazing how many creepy coincidences this book contains regarding the Titan and the Titanic. Using the original cover design was very cool too. We've shown the book to several of our "Titanic" obsessed friends who have ordered copies of their own.
Rating:
Summary: How could he be so psychic?
Review: Either this guy is psychic, or these stories were not written when they are said to have been. The story of the Titanic already was so amazing, so fantastic that it is easy to imagine that it may just be a story. Everything that happened with that ship was so perfectly fitting for a disaster on its maiden voyage, so good a story, that it actually was in "Futility". But I ask you, how could so many details be so acurately described, even the name of the ship(Titan)? It is truly amazing. And that is why I, or anyone, has reason to believe that this story possibly was not written 1896, but after the real disaster. Think about it- it is just as logical, even more so, that "Futility" was written afterwards. And I see no way to prove either way, really.
Rating:
Summary: Futility almost seems to foretell the titanic disaster.
Review: Futility is a story about a huge ocean liner called the "Titan" which was the largest and most luxurious ship in the world. The Titan hits an iceberg on its starboard side and sinks in the icy North Atlantic during the month of April. I wanted to read this story because it was believed by some that this story would foretell the sinking of the Titanic 14 years later. I found parts of the book to be interesting; but I had a hard time trying to follow all of the events without rereading some of the pages. At one point, I put the book down because it became a little boring at times. Overall, Futility is a good book to read, and no doubt was a good sea adventure in 1898! I cannot really say there is any similarities to the way the "Titan" sank compared to the Titanic disaster. I gave this book 4 stars, because Morgan Robertson spoke of important nautical terms (like the Titan's 19 watertight compartments, triple screw expansion,etc). These were on ocean liners of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Futility is not the best book I have ever read, but I think it was a pretty good one. It is hard not to try to compare the events unfolding in Futility and compare it to the events leading up to the sinking of Titanic; since the two events are similiar. It is a story that any Titanic enthusiast or historian must read!
Rating:
Summary: The book is only a "Titanic curiosity"
Review: Futility or the Wreck of the Titan is definitely a book that deserves to be mentioned. However, many other books, documentaries, and so-called "historians" (e.g. Charles Pellegrino) have blown it out of porportion. Face it, it's a dry Victorian novel. Yes, I have to agree there are many coincidences -- number of passengers, collison with iceberg in April, the name of the ship. But they are JUST coincidences. Robertson was not only a WELL-KNOWN author in America and Britain, but a seaman who most likely kept up with all the shipping journals. It doesn't take much to predict what a ship might be like in the next 11 years. (construction of Titanic began about 1909)And when do icebergs begin to flow down to the middle latitudes? During the spring, of course, when it's warm. Also, most people never bring up the dissimilarities. For example, the Titan was on her third voyage, not maiden. She was heading toward England. The Titan had a hand full of survivors includin! ! g the captain and first officer versus the real ship, which lost over 1,500 people, including those two men. The people on the Titan experienced a haze or fog. The real people on the Titanic had a beautiful, though moonless night. Even so, only the beginning portion of the book is dedicated to the ship. Don't get me wrong, I do recommend reading the book as sort of a "Titanic curiosity". However, I do think some people will be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Premonition, or coincidence? 5- Stars, Read this Book!
Review: History is clear. April 15, 1912, the White Star luxury liner Titanic, on its much anticipated and publicized maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, collided with an iceberg somewhere in the freezing North Atlantic. Several hours later, the Titanic sank beneath its icy-cold waters. Over 1500 people were killed. In 1898, fourteen years before this horrifying tragedy, an American author by the name Morgan Robertson penned a short novel called Futility, which told the tale of a mammoth British liner doomed to strike an iceberg in the North Atlantic, killing nearly all on board. His ill-fated ship was named the Titan. This, nine years before the Titanic was ever conceived. An odd coincidence, maybe, but one peculiar enough to elicit goosebumps on the flesh of even the greatest skeptics of the paranormal. What is absolutely chilling is that Robertson's Titan was in fact nearly identical, detail for detail, to the true-life Titanic. From the vessels' time of sailing to their top speeds, from their dimensions to the number of passengers aboard, statistical data on both ships are hauntingly alike. Morgan Robertson, who died in 1915, surprisingly never received much acclaim or reputation for his book, and very little else is known about the man who claimed to have been inspired by an "astral writing partner". It is known, however, that he wrote fourteen novels, all ocean-faring adventures (Robertson himself spent his early life at sea). In addition to Futility, Beyond the Spectrum has also been included in the book you are now holding. It is yet another eerie example of his premonition, a short story alluding to a terrible war between the Japanese and Americans, as well as the use of secret super-radiation weapons. This, some forty-one years before the start of World War II, not to mention almost fifty years before the invention of the atomic bomb. Still odd coincidence? Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Get it for its historical novelty-value
Review: I first learned of this book when reading Walter Lord's famous "A Night to Remember," which was of course later released as a fine film of the same name, and which Lord updated in the early 1980s with the wonderful follow-up novel, "The Night Lives On." At the beginning of "A Night to Remember," Lord alludes generously to Robertson's novel "Futility," about the fictional ship 'Titan' and its uncanny resemblence to the 'Titanic' both in physical dimensions and tragic sinking. From Lord's brief synopsis of Robertson's novel, I got the impression that "Futility" would be a comprehensive novel that went to great lengths to describe the ship (Titan), passengers, crew, disaster, and aftermath. I was very surprised when I opened the shipping box and instead received a very skimpy novelette, weighing in at a whole forty pages or so.
Although "Futility" does have eerie similarities with the actual Titanic disaster, which makes it immediately of high historical novelty value, as a stand-alone novel in its own right it is simply not a very well-written piece of fiction. It has some nice ideas that should have been further developed. The cataclysmic sinking of the Titan is contained in about 1/3 a page, and amounts to "struck an iceberg, fell flat on her side, the end."
Amazingly, the extreme cold of the North Atlantic never seems to be an issue, as it is never mentioned. The story centers around a disgraced former US navy officer who, after his fall, became an ordinary seaman on the Titan. The plot revolves around his love affair (or lack of one) with a former girlfriend. The story is filled with cheesy dialog (even for 1890s Victorian standards) and interminable soliloquies that will have the reader rolling his or her eyes and going "whatever."
The plot of this story can be summed up thus:
- Titan is a huge ship and represents Victorian decadence
- Rowlands (the disgraced officer) loves some girl who's married to someone else
- Girl mistakenly thinks Rowlands is trying to murder her toddler
- Ship hits iceberg
- Ship founders two paragraphs later
- Rowlands rescues his ex girlfriend's toddler
- Rowlands somehow defeats a 2,000 lb polar bear in hand to hand combat
- no one gets hypothermia
- the end.
This story is interesting insofar as its similarity to the Titanic disaster, but beyond that, it is doggerel.
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