Trivia / The Killing Star

• Science Marches On: While still a very hard scifi story, The Killing Star has some aspects that haven't aged well.
  • Pluto-Charon is mentioned as a set of twin planets and Ceres is said to have never been viewed as anything more than a large asteroid in the eyes of humanity. In the years since the book was written, Pluto has been found to have five moons and both worlds have been reclassified as Dwarf Planets.
  • Jurassic Park-style cloning of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, as well as Jesus and other people from ancient times, is presented as being an ordinary fact of life by 2076. We now know that DNA has a half-life of around 521 years, which means no fossils from before human history have any usable genetic material in them.
  • The wreck of the Titanic has survived, albeit half-buried in the ocean floor after a thwarted attempt to raise it, for well over 160 years after its sinking. New studies after the book was published found that the ship is slowly being broken down by metal-eating bacteria and will likely be gone by 2030. Possibly justified in that burying it could've delayed this effect.