Fiction Predictions: The Ship that Sank Twice

Futility or The Wreck of the Titan on Amazon - by Morgan Robertson

This month on Fiction Predictions, we look at a literary coincidence so mathematically precise it will make your spine tingle.

Imagine a thrilling sea adventure about the world’s largest, most luxurious ocean liner. It’s deemed "unsinkable" by the creators, yet on a freezing April night in the North Atlantic, it strikes an iceberg. Because the ship doesn’t carry enough lifeboats for its thousands of passengers, the disaster becomes a historic mass tragedy.

If you think you know this story, look again. This isn't a history lesson about the RMS Titanic—it's the plot of a fictional novella titled Futility, written by a former sailor named Morgan Robertson. The most unnerving part? Robertson published his book in 1898. 

That's nearly a decade before the Titanic was even a blueprint, and eleven years before a single piece of its steel keel was laid in Belfast. 

If this isn't a case of incredible coincidence, then surely it's a glimpse into the future.

The Titan vs. the Titanic

Feature	The Fiction: Titan (1898)	The Reality: Titanic (1912)
Key Timeline	Published 9 years before Titanic was conceived.	Construction began 11 years after the book.
Month of Voyage	April	April
Location of Disaster	North Atlantic Ocean	North Atlantic Ocean
Cause of Sinking	Struck an iceberg	Struck an iceberg
Description	"Unsinkable" luxury liner	"Unsinkable" luxury liner
Length	800 feet	882.5 feet
Propellers	Triple screw	Triple screw
Passenger Capacity	3,000 people	3,000 people
The Lifeboat Crisis	Only 24 boats on board	Only 20 boats on board

 Quotes from Futility say it all. Remember, Robertson wrote these headline-worthy lines 14 years before the Titanic launched.

"She was the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men... She was considered unsinkable—indestructible."

Robertson describes the exact cause of the disaster:

"Seventy-five feet above the sea was the bridge... localizing the cold, damp air that always surrounds an iceberg... 'In the track of the ice, Mr. Smith,' said the Captain."

And the fatal mistake that caused thousands of people to drown.

"She carried as few as would satisfy the laws... she carried twenty-four lifeboats... which could, in a smooth sea, hold perhaps five hundred people."

Where were the remaining 2500 souls to go? 

Der Untergang der Titanic (Image courtesy of Titanic Sinking, engraving by Willy Stöwer/Public Domain)     

Was Morgan Robertson a Seer?

So, how do we explain a literary prediction that got the ship's name, size, month, speed, location, and lifeboat shortage right more than a decade before the facts existed? 

Was Morgan Robertson a genuine clairvoyant who peered through the mists of time?

Robertson himself was the first to admit he was not. Following the disaster in 1912, the author was besieged by journalists and spiritualists demanding to know how he did it. His response was simple: "I know what I'm writing about, that's all. I’m just a writer who knows the sea."

We can say that Robertson was a highly observant former sailor with a gift for engineering math and a certain cynicism regarding corporate greed. He looked at the shipbuilding trends of the late 1890s and realized companies were building vessels bigger and faster to win the lucrative transatlantic trade. At the same time, he knew British maritime safety laws were outdated, basing lifeboat capacity on a ship's weight rather than passenger count. 

In this way, we could say he calculated the future. 

But... still a synchronicity of correlations seems to exist. A meaningful coincidence? If only the executives at White Star Line had read Robertson's novella before they began work on the Titanic. 

If only....

***

About Kim Falconer

The Amassia Series

Kim Falconer, also writing as AK Wilder, has released Crown of Bones, a YA Epic Fantasy with Curse of Shadows as book 2 in the series. 

 Quantum Enchantment

Kim can be found on AKWilder.com, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and KimFalconer.com. 

Throw the bones on the AKWilder.com site. See you there!

Read Blood and Water, a PNR alt history that will leave you questioning every natural disaster ever endured.

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.” 

From the Backlist: "Writing the Story -- Just a Trip on the Open Road" by Pamela Palmer

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"Plotter or pantser" is one of the vital decisions all writers must make --- and also a question our Supernatural Underground authors get asked a lot. 

Here's Pamela Palmer's take in terms of her own writing. Enjoy!

Writing the Story -- Just a Trip on the Open Road

by Pamela Palmer

I used to think I was a plotter. Or maybe I just wanted to be a plotter since it appealed to my control freak side. The idea of sitting down to write with a thoroughly plotted outline at my fingertips enthralled me. I imagined that marvelous document, each chapter broken down into detailed scene-by-scene action, emotion, and descriptions, with character goals and conflicts spelled out in perfect clarity. Writing would be a snap, I thought. 

Then I tried it. And failed. Miserably.

I spent months creating that brilliant outline for one of my early books (a Scottish historical that will never see the light of day). But at the first critical turning point in the story, all that meticulous planning fell apart. The hero, who had come roaring to life in the first few chapters, simply refused to react to that pivotal moment the way I (and my beautiful outline) required him to. I could have forced him, of course. And he and anyone who read the book would have hated me for it. So I didn't. I let him react the way he needed to, which sent the story spinning in a direction I'd never foreseen. And all the meticulous planning I'd done from that point forward had to be scrapped.

So, I tried again, carefully plotting the rest of the story from that point on, convinced it would work now that I understood the hero better. Wrong. Within a few chapters, he was glaring at me, arms crossed, a mulish set to his chiseled jaw. No way in hell was he doing what I'd intended. Again.

I'd love to say that after two failures I'd learned my lesson. Nope. To paraphrase one of my favorite fictional characters (Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum), I try never to make the same mistake more than two or three times. Eventually, I figured it out. For me, traveling through a story is a lot like traveling by car along roads I've never visited before. Yes, I can grab a map and plan the route ahead of time, in detail, but all I'm doing is guessing the best way to go. We've all done it--chosen a route that appears to be quick, or short, or interesting, only to find the reality anything but. That 'straight shot' through the city has us caught in traffic so thick we haven't moved for an hour or that 'short cut' between two highways turns out to be little more than a track through the mountains where we can hardly tell the roads from the driveways.

Planning the trip ahead of time is all well and fine, but it's not until I get into the middle of it that I'm able to see where I really want to go.

I still plot, because my stories are too complicated to simply dive into without any plan. But my plotting these days looks more like a trip itinerary that reads: Atlanta to Cincinnati to Denver to Albuquerque. The highlights only. I refuse to plan the details of how I'll get from Cincinnati to Denver until I reach Cincinnati. At that point, I'll look at the situation (how much time I have, how much money, what the weather looks like, and how the traffic reports are stacking up), and make my decisions based on up-to-the-minute data. And even then, I'm okay with things changing. If a road looks good, I'll take it. If not, I won't. No commitments. No meticulous pre-planning. And if it starts to make more sense to switch Albuquerque with Denver, that's okay, too.

...

To read the full post, click here

Pamela's website is here

A Year of Heroines in Fantasy: Karou, Rose Marshall, and Yorindesarinen

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The thing I love about this month's trio of heroines is that one of them is resurrected and two of them are dead, Yep, I'm talking heroines with a distinctly supernatural vibe. ;-)

Another thing I love about this otherworldly troika is how they hail from distinct Fantasy subgenres. Karou is from Laini Taylor's wonderful romantic fantasy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Rose Marshall stars in Seanan McGuire's paranormal urban fantasy/ horror Sparrow Hill Road (Ghost Roads #1) and Yorindesarinen is a 'best supporting heroine' in my own The Wall of Night series, which is epic-heroic fantasy all the way. 

On the surface, Karou, Rose, and Yorindesarinen are as different as their Fantasy subgenres, but there is one more element that ties them together. All three have died under traumatic circumstances in their past lives.

Rose and Yorindesarinen are both easy to talk about in this respect without fear of spoilers, because Rose is already a ghost when introduced, and Yorindesarinen a spirit being living in a between-realm called the Gate of Dreams.

 

In the Ghost Road series, Rose was murdered in a hit-and-run. Her murderer, Bobby Cross, has sold his soul for immortality and Rose's murder was intended to seal the deal. Fifty-two years later, Bobby is still hunting Rose's ghost to finish what he started. In a tale spun between diners and highways--some real, some ghosts themselves--and constant tension between the living and dead, Rose must elude pursuit, deal with crossroads spirits and old gods, and find a way to finish Bobby before he ends her, once and for all. 

She's brave and determined, ruthless in her dealings with the road's many predators, but also kind to those in need -- and when the supernatural chips are down, you definitely want Rose on your side.

Yorindesarinen is a spirit guide and mentor to Malian, the main character in The Wall of Night series. And yes, you're right -- she does have a really long name. :D That's because in her clan, the more magically gifted an individual, the longer their name -- and Yorindesarinen was the greatest hero and champion of her people, the Derai. 

Like Malian, Yorindesarinen was a Chosen hero named in prophecy, but when the Derai fled a monstrous, demonic, and apparently unstoppable opponent, she died battling it alone. She also slew the monster, and has survived in spirit form to guide Malian and ensure that when she faces similar demonic forces, she won't do so alone. Yet her chief role, as Malian grows in strength, is to provide a moral compass in dealing with allies and enemies -- and like Rose, she is kindly disposed.

Ghost, check; spirit guide, check -- and then there's Karou. Initially, despite distinctive blue hair, Karou presents as a fairly standard young woman, having fun and open to adventure as she makes her way in the world. The reader quickly learns, though, that there's far more to Karou than meets the eye, starting with living in two realms. One is our world, the other is Elsewhere, where she serves the magician, Brimstone, who uses teeth to transfer souls into new bodies. 

When Karou's path crosses that of an angel called Akiva, she discovers that Elsewhere is a city of monsters and devils besieged by angels. She also learns of the star-crossed love of Akiva and Madrigal, a devil who gathered battlefield souls for Brimstone to reincarnate, but was executed for treachery and her soul forbidden reincarnation. The more Karou learns of Brimstone's work and Akiva's war, the more she comes to suspect that she, too, is one of the reincarnated... 

Past lives and present, Karou, Rose, and Yorindesarinen, are all brave and resourceful, resolute and daring -- and in addition to being kind, all three have a sense of fun. All great reasons to have them in my fantasy hall of fame. :-)

.

Prior Posts: A Year of Heroines in Fantasy

February: Aerin, Elfrid, & Malian of Night
March: Yeine Darr & Rowan Birchmoon
May: Brienne of Tarth, Adjunct Tavore, & Asantir, Commander of Night
June: Shallan, Jehane Mor, & Aidris of the Chameln

July: Amat Kyaan, Rachael Boucher, & Nhairin

 

~*~

About Helen Lowe

Helen Lowe is the award-winning author of Thornspell and The Wall Of Night fantasy series, as well as a poet, blogger, and lover of story. She has recently completed writing the final book in The Wall of Night series, which is now with publisher, Harper Voyager.

Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog, monthly on the Supernatural Underground, and tweets @helenl0we.

From the Backlist: Alone is not Lonely

 

Art by by_zhixorris_

Welcome to another post in the Supernatural Underground Backlist Series. Today's feature is from July 2015 by Amanda Arista. Here she talks about the essentials of writing 'alone' and what that might mean. 

Is alone always lonely? 

Let's explore this together! 

✍🏼 The Sup

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Alone is not Lonely

by Amanda Arista

Year of Living Authentically: A writer is never alone.

I was a kid who spent a lot of time alone, but looking back, there are very few times I felt lonely. Even as early as third grade, I would choose to be writing or reading, rather than socializing and that's probably why I don't have the suave social skill of my little brother who loved to be in the crowd. I had the people in my books and the people in my head and a family who took me to the library every week. 

As I grew up and life got decidedly less fun, I would retreat into the world in my books and the people in my head. While others were boozing away their Thursday nights in collage, I was curled up with a spiral notebook creating the world that would become Diaries of an Urban Panther. I have characters in my head who have been with me longer than some friends.

I teach as part of a writing program and we are always talking about building your writing tribe and finding others who speak your language. I talk about the synergy of writing with a group of people and the relief that comes when someone else gets a 'Call to Adventure' joke. How finding others who share your passion for writing is one of the best things a writer can do.

But fundamentally, writing is an alone process. It is you and your story and maybe a cup of coffee. Writing isn't lonely. You have characters who are making you as you are making them, but the process is not a communal one. You have experiences that you crafting for others to live, but you can not share in the creation because it is creating you as you go. The writer you on page one  is not the same writer you as the one who finishes the manuscript. You have been changed. You know more about yourself than you did on page one and that change is just as important as the one on the hero went through.

Writing is an intrinsic force that almost demands you shut yourself away from the outside world to focus on the internal one. Writers are stereotyped as hermits, because hermitting is a natural reaction to the need to form a cocoon around yourself so change can happen.  I haven't met a writer yet that doesn't fantasize about cabins in the woods or cabanas on the beach where they can just "be" with their stories.  

I advocate both. Find quite time. Find a ritual that takes you to that internal world and spend lots of time there. Get your story on the page before you share it. But then, find flesh-and-blood humans you can talk to this stuff about, who you can share this process with, who understand the desire to hide under a blanket because change is hard: writing is hard. Find those who understand that a first draft is a new creation, fragile and still hardening its wings, and will respect it as they do their own. 

So when you see that girl in the coffee shop with her over-the-ear headphones typing away at something, instead of making a big show of 'why does she even come here if she's just going to take up a table on a Saturday afternoon,' give her a knowing smile, so she doesn't feel lonely, but let her be alone. She's already got a table full of friends, and maybe an enemy, and there is magic happening right before your eyes. 

Until next time, YOLA!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amanda Arista

Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther

www.amandaarista.com

Fiction Predictions: ChickieNobs Anyone?

Oryx and Crake

 By

 Nidaou on DeviantArt

Can you imagine buying a protein product that was grown in a vat, completely detached from a brain, a beak, or a central nervous system? While you're at it, picture a medical facility where a human life is saved using a heart harvested from a genetically engineered pig. If this sounds like a far-fetched future dystopia, it was, but now these are literal snapshots of modern reality. 

Welcome back to Fiction Predictions. 

This month we explore Margaret Atwood’s chilling 2003 dystopia, Oryx and Crake. Decades before biotech startups began serving cultivated meat and surgeons successfully crossed the species barrier in organ transplantation, Atwood mapped it out for us in story. But was she seeing the future, or, as she claims, simply following a logical thread to its conclusion

Author & Book Overview

The Author: Margaret Atwood is a literary icon, a master of speculative fiction who anchors her worlds in harsh realities rather than fairytale fantasy.

The Book: Make no mistake, Oryx and Crake (2003), the first book in her MaddAddam trilogy, is a dystopian novel that can take a hot minute to get into. Once hooked, it will reveal itself through the eyes of Snowman (formerly Jimmy), the lone human survivor of a man-made apocalyptic plague. Told through flashbacks, the story immerses us in a corporate-controlled world where we meet Jimmy's genius childhood friend, Crake, and the mysterious woman they both loved. Not unlike themes in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Taneth Lee's Silver Metal Lover, we live through unchecked scientific hubris that doomed humanity. Not for the faint of heart!

The Setting: As you can imagine, it's a bleak, corporate-dominated future where gene-splicing is a consumer-driven pastime and society is strictly divided between wealthy tech compounds and chaotic slums.

The "Predictions"

Lab-Grown Meat: Enter "ChickieNobs," genetically modified organism chunks that grow breasts and wings without brains or feelings. This mirrors today's rapidly advancing cultivated and cellular meat industries. (Forget about shopping organic, pesticide-free, non-GMO, let alone no bad oils).

Spliced Animals: And here we have "pigoons" (pigs bred to grow human organs for transplants) and "splices" like "snats" (snake-rats). The word sounds cute, but trust me, they aren't. Today, scientists are already onto it, growing human organs inside pig embryos (xenotransplantation).

Biotech Pandemics: The plot revolves around a man-made global pandemic engineered inside a corporate lab to wipe out humanity. It perfectly mirrors, if not reality, then the modern anxieties regarding synthetic biology and biosecurity.

Extreme Climate & Hyper-Consumerism: The book depicts a world of blistering UV rays, collapsed ecosystems, and corporations commercialising everything from youth serums to suicide.

Was Atwood a "Seer"?

I want to say yes, but I know Atwood famously claims she does not predict the future; she simply looks at the present and follows the trends to their logical conclusions. Still, is that now a form of 'seeing'? Is that so much different from Shelly, Lee, Ballard, the rest...?

What do you think? I would love to see your thoughts in the comments.

Kim 📘 🙏🏼 💙

* * * 

About Kim Falconer

The Amassia Series

Kim Falconer, also writing as AK Wilder, has released Crown of Bones, a YA Epic Fantasy with Curse of Shadows as book 2 in the series. 

 Quantum Enchantment

Kim can be found on AKWilder.com, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and KimFalconer.com. 

Throw the bones on the AKWilder.com site. See you there!

Read Blood and Water, a PNR alt history that will leave you questioning every natural disaster ever endured.

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.” 

From the Backlist: "Faith and Fantasy" by Jeaniene Frost

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We think this is a fabulous post, by the great Jeaniene Frost, so we hope you enjoy this revisit. :)

Faith and Fantasy

by Jeaniene Frost

...

As a paranormal writer, I’ve often been asked how my supernatural creatures differ from others. Take my vampires. One of the things they can do that many others in fiction can’t is walk around in the daylight. Yes, just like in the original Dracula by Bram Stoker, my vampires have no lethal aversion to sunlight. Something else that repels many vampires in modern fiction, but also has no effect on mine, is crosses. I originally decided on that because I couldn't come up with an answer to the question of how a vampire who pre-dated Christianity would cringe away from a cross, and I have some vampires in my novel who are much older than two thousand years.* Therefore, religious objects in my books don’t have any effect on vampires.

That doesn’t mean faith is absent in my stories. In fact, my idea for the origin of vampires came from the Biblical story of Cain. In my retelling of it, God’s “mark” was making Cain into the first vampire, cursed to forever drink blood as punishment for spilling his brother Abel’s (or so the vampires claim. Ghouls in my books have a different version of what Cain was turned into, heh). So right from the beginning, I knew I’d have to deal with the element of faith in my supernatural world.

Still, the idea than an entire species would agree about spiritual beliefs seemed an impossible notion even for a work of supernatural fiction. Therefore, even though I made up a fictitious creationist history for the undead based on the biblical character of Cain, this doesn't make the vampires or ghouls in my book automatically Judeo-Christian. Instead, they represent a wide range of beliefs, including atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, pagans, voodoo, and more. Mencheres, the hero in my upcoming novel, Eternal Kiss of Darkness, still believes in the ancient Egyptian gods -- which gave me an excuse to indulge my love of Egyptology with more research about them!

...

To read the full post, click here

To visit with Jeaniene Frost and discover her latest series, try her website

A Year of Heroines in Fantasy: Amat Kyaan, Rachael Boucher, & Nhairin

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Well here we are again -- it's heroines time and I have another line-up of three from my Fantasy hall of fame.

My July trio are Amat Kyaan from Daniel Abraham's  Shadow in Summer, #1 in the Long-Price Quartet, Rachael Boucher in T Frohock's Miserere, and Nhairin from my own The Wall of Night series.

All three are deeply troubled characters, chiefly because of circumstances, although their personalities also play a part. The other thing this particular three have in common is that they have no superpowers, unlike many of their fellow protagonists in each story. 

Amat Kyaan is an ageing bookkeeper, and single woman, who loses almost everything in the city of Saraykeht's cutthroat commercial society. She could well have ended up as just another piece of human flotsam on the city's ruthless tides. Instead, she sets out to take over the city's criminal establishment and take down her enemies. An enterprise that demands tenacity, nerves of steel, considerable daring – and forensic use of double-entry book-keeping.

Rachael Boucher is a Judge in the battleground realm of Woerld, which stands between the contending forces of heaven and hell. In the story's past, her lover abandoned her in Hell, where she was infected by a demon. Although Rachael managed to escape, she has been fighting the demon's encroaching possession ever since.

Like Amat Kyaan, Rachael is staunch. She is also toughminded, self-disciplined, and self-reliant -- she has to be, because the possession makes her an outcast. Perhaps Rachael's most important quality, though, despite the adversity she's suffered, is that she remains merciful. Like Amat Kyaan, she's a great favorite of mine.

Nhairin is also a character who has lost, and suffered, a great deal, both emotionally and physically. She was badly wounded defending her best friend, who was subsequently exiled and is believed dead, and only just escaped with her own life. Nhairin also feels betrayed by another childhood friend, and remains deeply troubled. She is also far less resilient than either Amat or Rachael, which leads her to close in on herself, and eventually fall prey to a predatory madness.

Although very different characters, I've identified the circumstances common to all three heroines. The greatest commonality, though, is the way all three -- yes, even Nhairin -- keep going, until one achieves victory, one is saved, and the third finds forgiveness. They are definitely heroines that endure in the face of great adversity -- which is why, if you haven't met them already, I believe they'll repay a visit. 

Prior Posts: A Year of Heroines in Fantasy

February: Aerin, Elfrid, & Malian of Night
March: Yeine Darr & Rowan Birchmoon
May: Brienne of Tarth, Adjunct Tavore, & Asantir, Commander of Night
June: Shallan, Jehane Mor, & Aidris of the Chameln

~*~

About Helen Lowe

Helen Lowe is the award-winning author of Thornspell and The Wall Of Night fantasy series, as well as a poet, blogger, and lover of story. She has recently completed writing the final book in The Wall of Night series, which is now with publisher, Harper Voyager.

Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog, monthly on the Supernatural Underground, and tweets @helenl0we.