Oh, Lord. Rules of fiction? Again: Philip Roth starts out with a fantastic premise that Lindbergh wins the election in 1940 against FDR and proceeds from there with history that never happened. Dan Brown starts with a premise that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and proceeds to distort known recorded history. (Actually, he starts from the end, in the 21st century, but let's never mind that.) You see no problem with that? If you read historical fiction, the literary kind, you'd see and acknowledge that certain rules of, let's call it, decency are being followed, even if they are unwritten. The author is free to build plots around known historical events, respecting the foundations of known history. Paranoid conspiracy theories, revisionist history, such as this book, are by and for the unlearned, unread fools, me thinks. In the end, when writing historical fiction literary authors (as opposed to hacks)have generally respected what's known and invented around that, meditated around that and mused around that. No one, to my knowledge has written down these rules, but unless you are writing fantasy or a dystopia, your readers expect you to follow them. Makes sense? No? It's FICTION, people!
Lord Baltar, what did you think of those two pieces of "fiction"? Michael Moore tried to present them as both factual documentaries, (as I recall), when he was challenged on some bogus edited quotes, he recanted and stated they were fictional accounts.