[UA] The mysterious case

[Stuart Anderson]

Timothy Toner wrote:

> Of course, all of this is an homage to Kiss Me Deadly, the first 'glowing
> briefcase' movie.  In that movie, the MacGuffin was thinly veiled--given the
> proximity of the Rosenbergs' trial for selling A-bomb secrets to the
> Russians, it's all about the H-bomb.

    I've tried running UA dozens of different ways with several different
combinations of peole. Everything from creepy fairy tale allegory to wacky
technothriller paranoia. The game is so good that even though it has a fairly
specific setting, you can monkey with it a great deal and still get very
satisfying results. We talk a lot about the feel of the OU, or how to convey it
to players, or lots and lots of books and movies that seem to be tuned in. But
when I drift off the theme, I try to make time to catch Kiss Me Deadly. Noir
with a hinky edge. The only movie where Mike Hammer seems as genuinely fucked up
as he is in the books. Several Spillaine books have small underground networks
of people the narrators hate--usually communists and homosexuals. One of my
favorite Hammer books is Vengence is Mine, where Mike realizes a transvestite
has been turning him on through the whole book. That one was written in 50.
Reminds me of Greg's gay S&M metaphor for the OU. I don't know where I was
really going with that, but it seems to touch on a couple or three recent topics
at once.
    This list tends to have a higher demand for literary quality than most. And
Spillane doesn't really float to the top there. But even though he's copying
better writers, and decades of lesser writers copied him, there's still
something almost original in his books. They have a seditious little UA vibe to
them that might be worth looking at, if you have a couple bucks for the used
bookstore. Get old ones. Don't bother with the recent 'hurricane' books.
_________________________________________________
--Stu
"He belonged to that particular race of men who
were their adversaries' greatest champions." Eco
http://www.users.qwest.net/~stuartanderson



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