A Big Bomb

Charles Pellegrino, an author of several SF novels who also worked on Avatar, has discovered his newly published history The Last Train from Hiroshima is probably based on fraudulent information reports the New York Times. His source Joseph Fuoco supposedly had flown with the crew of a B-29 accompanying the Enola Gay on its mission to drop the first A-bomb:

But Mr. Fuoco, who died in 2008 at age 84 and lived in Westbury, N.Y., never flew on the bombing run, and he never substituted for James R. Corliss, the plane’s regular flight engineer, Mr. Corliss’s family says. They, along with angry ranks of scientists, historians and veterans, are denouncing the book and calling Mr. Fuoco an impostor.

Of course Pellegrino is no stranger to controversy, having co-authored The Jesus Family Tomb (subsequently made into a documentary by James Cameron, who has a similar plan in mind for the new Hiroshima book.) Nevertheless I am sure he is shocked, shocked I tell you.  

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]