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Comment by shiven | Hacker News Reader

Apologies from the get go for my negative-sounding questions, but the skeptic in me wonders:

1. Is this biography in any way vetted by Elon Musk or anyone who has first-hand knowledge of events described here?

2. If not, then how is this anything more than anec-data, wikipedia and googling thrown together in a fantasy narrative?

3. If it is not vouchsafed by the principal, real, living person about whom this book claims to be about, then perhaps a disclaimer about it being a work of fiction should be on the cover itself...

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People write unauthorized biographies all the time. There's no reason to assume that just because a biography isn't authorized by its subject that it's inherently less reliable. They can even be more reliable; the subject may require the biographer to agree to respect certain no-go zones in their life in order to gain authorization, or the biographer may come to unduly identify with the subject after spending lots of time with them and write a book with a sympathetic slant. Another biographer writing from outside the subject's personal bubble can avoid these risks and restrictions.

Which is not to say that all unauthorized biographies are automatically great, just that you should evaluate them based on the quality of the author's research rather than just on whether or not they've been authorized by the subject.

An unofficial biography is not the same thing as a work of fiction. In fact, it might be less fictional than an account by that person. So long as the author has not invented anything he put's into the book and has fact-checked all of his claims, then it's at least as much a biography as nearly every book you've ever read about a now dead historical figure.

There are plenty of non-authorized biographies around, which no one would think to call "fiction". Not being vetted by the subject does not preclude accurate research.

Basically, it looks like you're implying the author is making stuff up. If that's indeed what you're trying to say, it's fine. But please state it outright.

I believe that you can draw conclusions from the combined 407 sources that you couldn't have done if you read them individually, which by the way takes at least 4 weeks. You can't explain everything needed in a single article.

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