Reality catching up with fiction

I'm rewriting my novel Snowbird right now.  I wrote the original first draft of it around twenty years ago, and as I've been working on it I've been struck by how far reality has caught up with fiction.

A large  part of the novel is set on a planet called Angiris.  It's a low-atmosphere, dusty, rock-strewn planet, from which valuable resources are extracted.  I based the planet on Mars, but at the time I wrote the first draft I had very little access to detailed data on the planet.

What a difference twenty years has made.  The growth of computing technology and robotics has radically changed our knowledge of space and our solar system.  We've had Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity rolling around on Mars' surface for years, sending back a wealth of data.  My Facebook groups include one which posts the lastest images received from the planet on daily basis.

And that brings me on to the other major growth in that twenty year period - the Internet.  Twenty years ago, I'd imagined that sunsets on Angiris would always be red-tinged.  Last week I did a search on my iPad on Google for 'sunset on Mars'.  When I started this novel the Internet, iPads, and easy Internet search technology weren't around. Anyway, this time round, hundreds of images came up, real data recorded on the surface of another planet, freely available for me to view over the Internet.

This is both a blessing and a curse.  It means it's much easier to get hold of the information I need, but it also means that I'm obliged to do the research.  And I discovered that Mars' sunsets can sometimes be blue-toned.  That I hadn't expected, and I changed my manuscript to include it.

As an ordinary civilian, there's no way I'd ever know enough about submarine diving procedures or helicopter emergency rotation procedures without being able to access that information on the Internet.  Other files stored on my iPad include articles on Savannah climate, plants under alien skies, hypercapnea, photosynthesis, embryonic stem cells, and many more bizarre and obscure subjects.

All this data is a gift, and all of it is freely available.  The internet allows me to check that my supposed fiction doesn't clash with reality - or worse still, lag behind it.  The Internet allows me to discover where reality has caught up with my fiction.  And hopefully it can stop me making stupid mistakes too.