The facts of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life that were included in this novel were drawn from a variety of sources, including the incredible American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin and the beautiful The House at Otowi Bridge by Peggy Pond Church. Further research included reading J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century by David C. Cassidy, 109 East Palace by Jennet Conant, Our Southwest by Erna Fergusson, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Priscilla J. McMillan, The Manhattan Project by Stephane Groueff, An Atomic Love Story by Shirley Streshinsky and Patricia Klaus, and Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections, edited by Alice Kimball Smith and Charles Weiner.
This work also draws from Oppenheimer’s own writing, most notably his papers ‘On Massive Neutron Cores’ (co-written with G. M. Volkoff), ‘On Continued Gravitational Contraction’ (co-written with H. Synder), and his two books, Science and the Common Understanding and The Open Mind.
The poetic passages, which include George Herbert, Charles Baudelaire, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Donne, and T. S. Eliot, were all taken from various public domain websites. The parts of the Bhagavad Gita are a combination of Stephen Mitchell’s (2000) and Arthur W. Ryder’s (1929) translations.