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.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth the read!!!
Review: I found this book extremely interesting and worth the read. The Titanic sinking had a major impact on many people's lives. This book points out some very scary similarities. Hopefully, we will never see a tragedy like this one again. Futility is a quick, interesting, and fun read!!! Not a writing masterpiece, but an adventurous romp. We should be thankful that somone took the time to re-publish this book, especially with the release of the movie!!!
Rating:
Summary: This book is amazing!
Review: I have ben looking for this book for a long time & I was shocked when I finally read it!!. It is not a very long book, but what it does have is amazing. The similarities to the Titanic are there, as I have heard of- but what is more amazing is "Beyond the Spectrum", also included in this edition. It is one thing to make a prediction of the sinking of the Titanic, and could be considered lucky- but TWO amazing predictions is too much to believe!!!!! Beyond the Spectrum predicts the attack on Pearl Harbor & the Atomic bomb over 40 years before they happened. Amazing- it convinced me!!!
Rating:
Summary: Original version available on microfilm at many libraries.
Review: I read Futility in less that 2 hours at the U. of Washington library where the original version is available on microfilm. This fictional wreck of the Titan is remarkably similar to that of the Titanic, which occured some 14 years after the publication of Futility, but it is not the central theme of the book. But Futility is worth reading for the novelty of the coincidence of early fiction with later fact. R.N. CLARK
Rating: 
Summary: Futility
Review: I would call it an insipid sort of book, very loosely and clumsily constructed. If not for the fact that it resembled the Titanic disasterin some remote way, few would likely know about it. Its coincidence with the Titanic is not nearly so remarkable as some might make out. In fact, the 70-page story contains a few dozen sentences about the Titan and its wreck; most of the rest is unrelated and hard to understand. The style was very abrupt and choppy where the Titan was respected, and too prolific concerning the hero, John Rowland, by the way, who was altogether too heroic. His feminine love was much too perfect, of enough mention was made of her to be able to tell. The story centers selfishly around its hero, who, stranded on an island after the ship sank, one-handedly kills a polar bear with a jack knife to save the heroine's daughter. As for the Titan, it apparently just flops over on its side and sinks.
Rating:
Summary: eerie and riveting
Review: I't's very odd how the book predicts history twice in two seperate short stories. The story Colors of the Spectrum describe a man who has invented a variation of radar during an air war with the Japaneese in the month of December. I have given the book a rating of 3 stars because although it would probably make the bestseller lists in the mid-1800's, the plots are rather simple for today.
Rating:
Summary: A Book that Foretold the Future
Review: In 1898, and English author named Morgan Robertson published a novel about a huge new ocean liner. The ship was far larger than any that had ever been built. The fictional characters on board were mostly the rich and famous. The ship set off on its first voyage. Halfway across the Atlantic, on a cold night in April, the make-believe ship hit and iceberg and sank. There was great loss of life.
Robertson's book, entitled Futility, did not do well. Few people read it. Few people even knew about it.
Certainly not the owners of the White Star Shipping Line.
Fourteen years after the publication of the book, White Star built what was then the largest ocean liner in the world. In nearly every way, it was almost exactly like the one in Robertson's novel. Both were around 800 feet long and weighed between 60 and 70 thousand tons. Both vessels had triple propellers and could make 24 to 25 knots. Both could carry about 3,000 people, and both had enough lifeboats for only a fraction of this number. But, then, this wasn't supposed to matter; both ships were said to be "unsinkable." On April 10, 1912, the real ship left England on her first voyage. On board were some of the richest and most famous people in the world. On a cold April night, about halfway across the Atlantic, the ship struck and iceberg. With great loss of life, she sank.
The real ship, of course, was the Titanic. As for the name of the imaginary ship, the author called it the Titan. Taken from a book entitled "Amazing True Stories" by Don L. Wolffson
Rating: 
Summary: The Truth is Strange Enough
Review: It is strange that reviewers of this book so often obviously haven't read it. The World War II story as it seems to be, appears to have been written in 1912 though the list of three copyright dates in this four short-story book don't specify what date belongs to what story. There is no preface or introduction. No claims are being made no explanations offered. There are no sun bombs in Beyond the Spectrum, the afor mentioned story; just an amazing description of a lazer the Japanese use to cause a temporary blindness in American navel forces. It's as if the writer had a vision of the blinding light of an attomic blast and a lazer and thought the two were somehow related. He refers to the light emited as a radiation three or four times. A description of a WWII submarine and the persecution of American Japanese is right on. The Titan story is just as suprising, but again reviewers site some parallels that don't exist. The link that brought me here said there would be material from Dr. Ian Stevenson included. There isn't.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: It was sad and compelling. It was a stirring book and was gripping. I almost never put it down and cried at some parts.
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