[UA] [OT] The Calcutta Chromosome

[Mario]

I thought somebody in this list could be interested in this book: 'The
Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery', by
Amitav Ghosh.

Set on India, the book is about the 'secret history' behind the
discovery of the malaria vaccine. There's an indian cult for whom
secrecy is not only a need, is also one of their key beliefs: They are
convinced that the act of revealing information means that same
information is changed. So certain information can be revealed in a
certain way, to generate specific changes. And their big secret is a
bizarre form of immortality, a sort of 'memory transfer' using a mutated
malaria parasite to backup and rewrite neural structures.

The entire novel is written like a puzzle: Pieces of info are revealed
in different times to different characters; by the end of the novel, the
main characters - and the reader - understand the whole picture, or at
least, the part of the picture they were supposed to understand. The
book is rather good (though once finished, a second read may be needed
to fully understand the plot) and I recommend it heartily.

ObUA: Even if it's best suited for OTE, it would work well for an
Unexplained UA scenario. There's the cult, whose members form a sort of
low-level conspiracy (beggars, servants, lab assistants...). There's the
immortality issue (which I suppose it would work for a game with genetic
vampires and spontaneous combustion), and no supernatural stuff at all. 

Given the beliefs of the cult, characters would be finding little hints
in the form of old documents, fragments of diaries, small notes casually
discovered, each one a piece of the puzzle. And then, they finally
discover that this info is being revealed to them because they have been
chosen by the cultists to become the next incarnations of the cult
leaders...

Mario Magallanes-Ribeiro Merino, aka "The Bastard"
--
"Hey, I had to use all my last names to get that nickname"

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua