When I read Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, I was impressed at the get-go because the author starts with real events—the war with Algeria waged by France under DeGaulle—and continues the plot from there to make a tense, taut thriller. Other thrillers by the same author often followed the same scheme.

Mixing real events into our fiction can help make the fiction seem more real. If the author can get the reader thinking, “Could this really happen?” or even “This could really happen,” the reader’s interest invariably increases. But there are dangers.

Subsequent events in the real world might overtake those included events, for example, and make the fiction based on them seem less real. And the fiction writer cannot change the outcome of those real events in the real world.

A case in point: The painting in Rembrandt’s Angel, “An Angel with Titus’ Features,” is a real Rembrandt. It has never been recovered. My fictional character Esther Brookstone becomes obsessed with recovering it. [Spoiler alert.] If she had recovered it, as some readers wanted, that would contradict the fact that the painting is still missing. (This is one reason why the Botticelli painting in Son of Thunder, the sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel, is completely fictional, although Sandro could have painted such a painting.)

Another real event in Rembrandt’s Angel that was dangerous to include is BREXIT. It’s happening as you read this article, of course (and PM might receive a no confidence vote as I write this), and Esther comments about it as if it were in the past, but I’ll be in hot water if somehow the Brits change their mind and stay in the E.U.! (That’s possible after Parliament’s torpedoing May’s withdrawal plan.)

Forsyth played it safe. His plot was about an assassin whose identity the French and Brits never discover. In other words, we, the readers, can neither confirm nor deny his real existence, or his death, for that matter. All I can say is that so far my two examples that were more dangerous for me to include in my novel haven’t yet caused problems—the painting hasn’t been recovered and BREXIT is still on track, for good or bad (Esther seems indifferent about it).

[Spoiler alert.] That some readers expressed dismay that Esther didn’t recover the painting by the end of the book is a bit curious. She won big in other ways, as most readers of the book well know, particularly in putting her romance with Bastiann van Coevorden on more solid ground. In other words, that painting was just a lead-in to the rest of the plot, just like the war with Algeria in Forsyth’s book. But those readers’ reactions taught me a valuable lesson: one should never presume when it comes to readers’ tastes.

You’d think we could avoid all those problems if we write sci-fi. Events haven’t happened yet, so there’s no danger. We can make them up at will, right? Maybe wrong. It depends on how close those future events are to the present. In Soldiers of God, a president is assassinated when making a motivational speech about the U.S. returning to space exploration. She speaks of Titan’s frozen methane dunes; they’re for real. (We can bicker about whether her PowerPoint slide showing them is legit, but this is still a mix of reality and fiction.) In More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, colonization of Mars is considered. I thought I made an error when stating that the shuttle colonists used to land on Mars  employed parachutes, so I was happy to see that the latest Mars rover to land there also used them. My worry was about physics: Mars atmosphere is tenuous. (That’s why the storm at the beginning of Weir’s The Martian is a bit far-fetched, but only in the damage it does.) Real, present or near-future events can be dangerous for sci-fi writers too.

The lesson here is simple: writers have to be careful when using real events, or even real places, in a work of fiction. Has anyone really looked for track 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station described in the Harry Potter books? That station is real, of course, and a major rail hub in London.

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Comments are always welcome!

Son of Thunder. This sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel will feature the 21^st century Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot clones Esther Brookstone, now ex-Scotland Inspector from the Art and Antiques Division, and Bastiann van Coevorden, Esther’s paramour and Interpol agent, as they meet the Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli and Christ’s disciple St. John the Divine, all without time travel! (See a pre-release excerpt in the blog category of that name.) Coming from Penmore Press this year.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

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