TOP SECRET: The Graphic Novel

TOP SECRET -- Based on the notes of Ayn Rand and her interviews with physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer for a screenplay about the making of the atomic bomb. Between the time Ayn Rand published The Fountainhead and embarked on Atlas Shrugged, there was another project that intrigued her. Producer Hal Wallis hired Ayn Rand to write a script for a movie about the making of the atomic bomb. While the film was never produced, what survived was a 16-page outline by Rand from January 19, 1946. Those notes inspired this adaptation of the story as a graphic novel. The story tracks her lead character, John, during Hitler’s rise, his recruitment of scientists working on the physics of the bomb abroad, through his military service, to his assignment to guard J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos. While the characters and the plot in Rand’s notes were nascent, her theme was explicit: “Man can harness the universe—but nobody can harness man!” She wanted to emphasize that the technological achievement re