The Thinking Machine Makes a Comeback

WE found this in the July 1912 Ainslee's Magazine (HERE):

Some context:

Many of you already know that the author of The Thinking Machine series, Jacques Futrelle (1873-1912), went down on a passenger liner in April 1912 at the age of 37, possibly taking with him even more stories featuring his series character, Professor S.F.X. Van Dusen:

  "Returning from Europe aboard the R.M.S. Titanic, Futrelle, a first-class passenger, refused to board a lifeboat, insisting Lily [his wife] do so instead, to the point of forcing her in. She remembered the last she saw of him: he was smoking a cigarette on deck with John Jacob Astor IV. He perished in the Atlantic and his body was never found." (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

Futrelle on the Titanic's boat deck the day after she set sail from Southhampton.

The ad above doesn't seem to be referring to the Thinking Machine story ("The Mystery of Prince Otto") published in Cassell's Magazine of Fiction in July 1912. Not long after, three others ("The Tragedy of the Life Raft," "The Case of the Scientific Murderer," and "The Jackdaw") did appear in The Popular Magazine in August and September 1912.

The Thinking Machine did have a literary afterlife of sorts:

  "Futrelle is used as the protagonist in Max Allan Collins' disaster series novel The Titanic Murders (1999), about two murders aboard the Titanic." (Wikipedia, op.cit.)

Resources:

- We first dealt with Futrelle's brainy sleuth at length (HERE), then (HERE), and finally (HERE).

- J. J. Connington confronted us with a different kind of thinking machine (HERE).

- Roy Glashan's Library has an impressive collection of Jacques Futrelle's works (HERE).

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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