Fake Writer @ Wired News Has a Book, Too

At first, I was willing to let the Wired News/Philip Chien controversy go by without a mention, because no matter how egregious a reporter fabricating sources may be, the news-and-magazine industry isn’t really our beat. But then, FishbowlNY discovered that Chien’s doing a Florida book tour later this month to promote Columbia, his account of the NASA space shuttle mission that burned up on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. The book’s lo-fi home page goes for the hard sell: “It’s one of history’s most memorable events—you know where you were, how you found out, and what you felt.” Well, no, actually, that’s the Challenger explosion you’re thinking of… No word yet on whether those events will go on as scheduled, but we’ve got a call into Springer Verlag, the publisher of Columbia, to see if they’re planning to take a closer look at the book’s contents…

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