Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light is one of my favourite SFF novels and, I would argue, one of the all-time-great SFF novels. This is a hill I’d happily die on, at least over a couple of beers with fellow readers and writers.

Anyway,, this following, quoting heavily from Wikipedia, may be common knowledge, but it did slightly blow my tiny mind. Here we go:

“In 1979 it was announced that Lord of Light would be made into a 50 million dollar film. It was planned that the sets for the movie would be made permanent and become the core of a science fiction theme park to be built in Aurora, Colorado. Comic book artist Jack Kirby was contracted to produce artwork for set design. However, due to legal problems the project was never completed”

So far, so bonkers. A science fiction theme park? What’s not to like. Then we get to the good bit:

“Parts of the unmade film project—the script and Kirby’s set designs—were subsequently acquired by the CIA as cover for the “Canadian Caper“: the exfiltration of six US diplomatic staff trapped by the Iranian hostage crisis (in Tehran but outside the embassy compound). The rescue team pretended to be scouting a location in Iran for shooting a Hollywood film from the script, which they had renamed Argo.The story of the rescue effort was later adapted into the 2012 film Argo.”

Of course they did! You could not make this up. Truth is always stranger than fiction.

Take it easy.