MARS UPDATE: This is good news:

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, on a two-year mission to study the Martian atmosphere and surface, and search for water, pulled off a dangerous and tricky maneuver known as “orbit insertion” and began circling the red planet Friday.

I’ve just been reading Boundary, a Mars-exploration novel by Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor. (Not bad, not up to Flint’s usual standards though). Any Mars news is good for someone with a Mars novel, I suppose, but I wonder if the new discoveries will undercut their story. I’m pretty sure that more stories about Mars have been rendered scientifically obsolete than just about any other variety of science fiction.