I know it's easy to joke about a SV twist, but there's actually a novel, _Radiance_ by Carter Scholz ( http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-radiance ), where da Vinci's letter to Sforz is a big theme, as it encapsulates the troubled relationship of science to the military, which repeats throughout history and especially in Silicon Valley and the national nuclear labs descending from the Manhattan Project. It's bleak, but it's one of my favorite novels.