Coincidence or prophesy?

[BazaJT]

Today I've read a short story[at one time called a novella]titled Futility which at the outset describes a ship called the Titan.In the story this ship is the largest most opulent ocean liner built-800ft long,75,000 tons displacement and a speed of 25 knots.Said to be virtually unsinkable with automatic water tight doors and able to stay afloat with her first 9 compartments flooded.Carrying the bare minimum number of lifeboats required by law and nowhere near enough for her 2,000 passengers plus crew.This work of fiction goes on to describe how on her third Atlantic crossing-from New York to Southampton-while travelling at high speed in fog in the month of April she hits an iceberg and sinks with all but a handful of survivors to tell the tale.Sound vaguely familiar?Some of the story[notably the tonnage of the ship]was subsequently changed after April 1912.The amazing thing is that Morgan Robertson wrote this story in 1898!! 14yrs before the Titanic disaster,pure coincidence or some kind of eerie prophecy?

[Field Marshal Dr. Opti]

Perhaps he owned a time machine.

[Rods2]

Monkeys & typewriters have much to answer for in the murky world of coincidences, random predictions & conspiracy theories.

[Doctor Gollum]

I read that at school out of curiosity

Certainly a predictable event, even to the broad details based on some of the details prevalent at the time... certainly the growth in liner size wasn't science fiction

[Nick W]

Jules Verne's description of the Nautilus capabilities are close to nuclear submarines. There are lots of well-reasoned speculative fiction that read like prophesies

[Lizzie Zoom]

Yes, a very interesting book

But sci-fi has often 'predicted' future machines and developments.  If you write enough of those stories one, at least, is bound to come true in some way or another.  If you have the gift of unlimited imagination, anything is possible, and that very writing can prompt others to eventually invent what the author of the original imagination suggested, with predictions / or even designs of future developments coming true! Research on line reveals many of these examples going back centuries.  Leonardo da Vinci will always be my favourite in this field of 'advanced thought' and imagination

Fascinating subject