A Brief Search for Non-fiction in Fiction

Of course you expect your fiction to be non-fiction, in the sense that it provides something autobiographical about the author. And a collaboration of father and daughter (and maybe a third uncredited author, but we'll ignore him as the title page does) must surely tell something of what goes on between them. Wouldn't it?

With "George's Secret Key to the Universe," the first of a children's trilogy, whose plot centers on a scientist and scientist-in-training daughter who hold secrets to the universe, how can one not look closely to find comparisons with the biographies of Stephen and Lucy Hawking — father, daughter and brainiac invalid, novelist daughter.

Ah, but what do you find?

** Was it because there was not enough father-child revelation that millions bought but left unread and certainly uncomprehended Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time? **