Futility or the Wreck of the Titan

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Review

Even stranger is another story included in this ebook: Beyond the Spectrum

This story describes 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 ).

N. B.: When this story was written, airplanes were still tiny, dangerous machines that could barely carry one man and was decades before the Germans started their “heavy water” experiments, trying to construct a nuclear device.

In addition, this future war begins in the month of December when the Japanese stage a sneak attack on Hawaii. (WW II began also, when the Japanese launched a sneak attack in December on an American base -Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii.)

It appears that the author was visionary of sorts.

Quite honestly, the similarities between this novella and the Titanic disaster are what got me to read this story. I'm sure that's the case for most people that read it. Overall, it's a fine story. The pacing sometimes feels off, but that's mostly due to this novella being three short stories loosely tied together by the event. I think the author had enough material to expand this out to be a longer story.