Way WAY back in the mid to late 50's, I first read "Red Planet" by Robert A. Heinlein. He and Isaac Asimov put the hard science into speculative fiction. I remember reading a story by Asimov and he very carefully inserted pages of diagrams and mathematics to illustrate what ever science fact he was illustrating. Heinlein wrote extensively of the hard science. He was particularly interested in the complicated math it would take to rotate a rocket ship to oriented to the planets surface. In the interest of appreciation of the story, lack of interest in the hard science part, my mind edited all of that out.
I purchased a copy of Red Planet for my Kindle a few weeks ago (thank you scalable font) and re-read the thing.
Last night I re-read it and mentally stumbled across a couple of things in the story.
At one point, Jim glances up to appreciate the view of Earth, the globe is clearly visible and the moon can been seen as a sparkling diamond as it orbits earth. Um, I am virtually certain that RAH was exercising artistic license regarding the view. Logic would have told him that since Mars looked like a star from Earth, a similar view would be the same from Mars. As a matter of fact the first picture of Earth from Mars was taken on 2014 and looks like a star twinkling away.
Later on Jim glanced up at dawn to appreciate the aurora. Um a magnetic field was only detected in 1997, so again RAH was exercising artistic license and the field is so weak that no aurora would be forthcoming at any rate.
The rest of the story was delightful with very large Martians, a small critter named Willis and a struggle between the Mars corporation and the people who were dealing with dangerous cutbacks to their safety. And the bad guys were disappeared as is appropriate. If you have never read Red Planet, give it a try, it has held up very well over the decades. Enjoy!
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