Truth versus Art

There’s been a slow-burning furor over dishonesty in “creative nonfiction,” most recently in this Fact vs. Artistic License in Creative Nonfiction post. Now and then someone accuses me of making stuff up in my books. For the record, here’s the truth.

I lie. I make stuff up all the time. But not technical stuff.

One technique I use in each tech book is to create a narrator. The narrator is not me. I don’t actually blackmail coworkers, as the narrator of Network Flow Analysis recommends. The narr...