The Titanic in Science Fiction
The Titanic in Science Fiction
Featuring an Interview with Titanic Time Travel Author Juile Bihn
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The Ship of Dreams in Science Fiction
Since I need a little break from writing stories in the Fallen universe, we’re all going to combine my fascinations of the Titanic and science fiction.
My father grew up on the shores of the Great Lakes. His youth along the water gave him a great love of ships, something that rubbed off on me. While the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was dad’s great lost ship, the Titanic was right up there. Whether we were watching a documentary about the doomed voyage or when he would tell me nighttime stories about the sinking, I enjoyed every shared moment.
In 1996, in a highly out-of-character action, my father went to BestBuy and bought the brand new game Titanic: Adventure Out of Time. I remember dad going on and on about how you can tour large sections of the ship. While he never played the adventure game itself, he would have me load it up and take him around the Titanic in sandbox mode. As for myself, I did play the game multiple times and enjoyed every minute of it.
The game was my first introduction to Titanic speculative fiction. The plot drew me in: you played a burned-out former British secret service agent living in a small flat surrounded by Titanic memorabilia. A German Blitz attack blows up your apartment, somehow sending you back to the night of the sinking. You have hours to fix your failed mission on that ship, something that could save the world. Maybe it’s a dream, maybe it’s a straight time travel tale, maybe there is a demon on the ship; the game is deep.
Titanic: Adventure Out of Time became a classic and is still playable on modern machines through the game store Gog. It also birthed my interest in Titanic speculative fiction. What I have discovered over time is fascinating yet unsurprising: much of the science fiction about the Titanic deals with cultural themes but not the actual vessel.
The Titanic in Space, But not the Titanic
The Titanic for many means elegance, economic class separation, hubris, mismanagement to the point of corruption, and, of course, disaster. And that’s what we get when science fiction usually takes on the Titanic. In these tales, the “Titanic” tends to be a futuristic spaceship with all the grandeur and cultural flaws of the original, and each time it meets some form of disaster on the maiden voyage. (You think people would learn better than to go on a ship with that name, but then how would there be a story?)
Futurama had a fun parody of the 1997 film, focusing on class differences and hubris.
The Doctor Who episode Voyage of the Damned plays with class differences and conspiracy as only the Doctor can.
Meanwhile, Terry Jones took a Douglas Adams’ idea and turned it into Starship Titanic, which a spawned not only a novel but also a computer game. The book features a misadventure into the grand ship post-disaster, while the computer game presents another tale about the ship. Humor and luxury are the focus of these two tales.
Actual Titanic Science Fiction
As the disaster occurred over 100 years ago, the actual RMS Titanic has been a rare feature in science fiction. The ship is anchored to the past, not the future many science fiction creators think about.
Of the science fiction out there, the two prominent tales have been Raise the Titanic by Clive Cussler and The Ghost from the Grand Banks by Arthur C Clark. Both stories focus on the effort to bring the Titanic out of its watery grave. Cussler’s book deals with the search for minerals on board that would tip the balance of the Cold War, while Clark’s story involves a mystery about finding intact bodies on board. Both have fun exploring the science of how to raise a ship to the surface.
A 1980 film based on the Raise the Titanic novel was a major flop, but it did produce this epic scene.
Titanic Time Travel Literature
Outside the well known stories, there is a whole sub-genre of Titanic Time Travel novels. These range from science fiction to fantasy, with many but not all having heavy romance elements. While I am not too familiar with most of these books (there’s a lot) I do know a Titanic time travel author! Let me introduce Julie Bihn, author of Titanic Voyage.
I managed to interview Julie, getting her insight into the Titanic, Titanic-related time travel books, and her own works.
Tell us about yourself
My name's Julie Bihn, and I'm an author of sweet and sometimes weird time-travel fiction, including my novel Titanic Voyage. I was born and raised in Arizona, so one of my mortal enemies is the sun. In my day job, I write angry letters for a law firm. I'm also capable of traveling forward in time at a rate of approximately one second per second, so I have that going for me.
Tell us about your Titanic novel
Titanic Voyage is a romantic, emotional time-travel novel that uses fictional main characters and time travel to explore love, loss, hope, and the real events of that horrific night in 1912.
Liam Peterson works at the Titanic ride in a history-themed amusement park in Eloy, Arizona. He discovers that he can interact with Clara Jones, a Third Class passenger who saved several people before perishing in the sinking herself. With the help of Rocky, a snarky and ridiculously wealthy teenage computer genius, Liam goes back in time to try to rescue Clara. But if he changes her history, he might erase his own.
The Titanic has captured the attention of generations as well as you and me. What attracted you to the Titanic? Why do people still find it fascinating?
I've had a soft spot for historical places for as long as I can remember, and I adore old ships. One of my favorite memories is visiting the San Diego Maritime Museum back in 2008. At the time, I was most interested in tall ships, the kind that look like pirate ships. But the restroom was on the second floor of the Berkeley, a ferry ship from 1898 that's been turned into a museum. I believe the ground floor of the ship was mostly displays, but I went up the stairs and emerged into this beautiful, huge art nouveau-type room with stained glass windows, ornate woodwork and trim, and even detailing on the ceiling! It felt like stepping into another world. And that was the moment that I realized that as magnificent as tall ships are, those old ships from the turn of the century are much, much cooler, at least on the inside.
As to the Titanic specifically, of course she was a beautiful ship, and she has one of the most fascinating stories of any vessel. Tragedy, heroism, loss, hubris—there's something for everyone. Plus, the Titanic is one of the best-researched ships ever, so if you want to learn about ocean liners of the era, it's a perfect place to start. And yes, I'm sure the magnificent sets and emotional story in James Cameron's famous 1997 film Titanic had plenty to do with piquing my interest in the Titanic.
Concerning mass appeal, it seems like every so often, something comes up to draw interest back to the Titanic. From A Night to Remember in the 1950s to the famous 1997 film to the loss of the Titan submersible back in June 2023, I think the Titanic will keep attracting people for years to come.
You are also a major force in the Time Travel author community. Can you tell us about that?
Back in mid-2022, not long after Titanic Voyage came out, I joined the writing community on X (which I still call Twitter). I saw there were some "hashtag games," where someone posts a series of prompts for the month, one for each day, and you post your answers. I thought that was fun, but the ones I saw focused more on fantasy and works in progress, not published books.
I started a hashtag prompt game with #TimeTravelAuthors in August 2022, intended for anyone who wrote, is writing, or will write time travel. I ultimately settled on doing prompts for every other day on both Twitter and the social media site Mastodon. It's been an incredible way to meet other people who write time travel, and I've found some great reads through it, too. It's also inspired at least one book—author Nat Swift wanted to join in but didn't have a piece, so he answered about a book he'd write in the future. (He's working on it now!)
Inspired by the group, author Joshua Bellin spearheaded publishing two short-story anthologies featuring our authors, The Accidental Time Travelers Collective Volumes 1 and 2, in 2022 and 2023. (I have a story in volume 1 about a time traveling calzone, a story which wouldn't exist without Josh or the hashtag.) Some contributors are working on creating a third volume as we speak. What a ride!
Where does the time travel genre fall between science fiction and fantasy?
When I started #TimeTravelAuthors, I thought time travel was a genre, but the more I look into it, the more I realize that it's more of a tool or trope that can be used in almost every genre. Science fiction, fantasy, romance, historical fiction, action, comedy, or even mainstream/literary fiction like Octavia E. Butler's Kindred—every kind of story can include time travel. In the #TimeTravelAuthors community, I've seen pretty much every genre represented, and lots of works, including my own, cross over various genres.
I guess if you want to get technical, I'd say time travel stories that use magic are fantasy, while time travel stories that use technology are science fiction. But in many cases—maybe most cases—any "technology" to travel through time is more fantasy than science, and often, the setting is more real-world than fantasy. So I'd really call time travel its own thing that can fit under every genre umbrella.
What's the "Jack is a Time Traveller" theory?
I'm not sure where it started, but some people have speculated that Jack from the famous Titanic film is a time traveler who came to 1912. Maybe the best evidence is that he brings up Lake Wissota, an artificial lake which was formed in 1917, and riding a roller coaster on Santa Monica Pier, which didn't yet have a roller coaster in 1912. Nicholas Brooks says that Jack's style dates to the 1930s and 1940s. Some people even go so far as to link the theory with another Cameron movie, The Terminator. I don't think any of that was quite the intention of Titanic, but it is fun to watch the movie through that lens!
How does faith play a role in your stories?
I call myself an "extreme discovery writer," which means I don't necessarily know where the story will be going when I write the first draft. I don't always have it honed on the second, either. So that takes a lot of faith!
But more seriously, I'm a Christian. I don't market my time-travel stories as Christian, though they could be considered "clean fiction." And faith always makes its way into my works. In Titanic Voyage, the main character wonders if changing history might go against God's will. I think that's a fascinating question, and I'm not sure I have an answer for it—but I'm OK with the not knowing. (Though I almost wonder if the shadow moving back in Isaiah 38 might have actually been God making time go backwards as a sign of taking back Hezekiah's stated fate.)
And in Titanic Voyage, the heroine Clara is a ridiculously selfless woman. I imagine she has all the fruits of the spirit and a hefty dose of the love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. "Perfect" characters are out of style nowadays, but when I was in the depths of writing, I found that thinking of how Clara would treat people helped me get a touch closer to how God wants us to act. (And even my short story about a time-traveling calzone features the protagonist praying in desperation!)
What's next for you?
I'm working on a sequel to Titanic Voyage titled Immigrants' Journey, named after another ride in the amusement park where Titanic Voyage is set. My goal is to get a good draft of that completed by the end of this year, though I'll still have a ridiculous amount of polishing to do after that. Then I want to turn my short story "Turtle Day, or Kate Malone and the Magic Calzone" into an episodic novel. I worked on that during November of last year and got my 50,000 words written, but it's hard to write funny, and even harder to keep things funny for an extended period, so getting that done will be an adventure for sure. In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds. (Get it? Future? Time travel? Agh. I'll show myself out.)
Adventures Out of Time
The Titanic lives on in the minds of many creatives. One day I may write my own science fiction tale not dealing with time travel, but first I’ll have to figure out what it’s going to be about. Until then, it will be a ghostly presence in my mind, with its lessons, tragedy, and even memories of my father on board.
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Until Next Time
Next time, we’ll have some political fun EVERYONE can enjoy by thinking about what various political officials would tweet about aliens. Then, I’ll talk about my time at BASEDCON!
As always, please leave a comment with any questions, reviews, thoughts, whatever about Fallen, Risen, Dormition, An Odd Pilgrimage or whatever else I have discussed. I promise to reply!