The world’s largest luxury liner, deemed unsinkable, strikes an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, and sinks with huge loss of life.

We think we know the story, but in fact, this is the plot of a novella published 14 years before the Titanic disaster, by an obscure American writer, Morgan Robertson.

The similarities between the ship featured in Futility (presciently named “Titan”) and the Titanic are many and detailed. In this version of Futility, Stephen Roberts annotates Robertson’s text with the facts of the Titanic sinking, lining up fact and fiction side-by-side. The results are striking and fascinating. Did Morgan Robertson have a window into the future, or is there a more mundane explanation?

“Titanic Foretold” is an annotated version of Morgan Robertson’s “Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan” and has comprehensive notes together with a comparison table in the Appendix.

Titanic Foretold: the annotated version of Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson, annotated by Stephen Roberts is available at Amazon.com.