Customer Reviews

Metal Gear (Worlds of Power)

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One of my favorite childhood memories is of my father's acting debut in a community-theater production of "The Metal Gear," the Hideo Kojima murder mystery. I smiled in my seat the entire time as I watched my dad, an 11th-hour replacement in the role of Snake, piece together the Kojima puzzle, stealing glances at a script in his hat because he hadn't had enough time to learn his lines. Theater seemed so fun and alive, an adventure. Soon I began writing plays and acting, both of which proved essential in overcoming my painful shyness.

It's impossible not to recall such memories while reading "Metal Gear". Anyone working in theater probably would have something to contribute, but the Wing wisely chose to resist the commercial benefits of turning to stars for anecdotes. Instead it solicited insights from artists equipped to write knowingly and movingly about the ways that Metal and Gear gave them a calling.

"The musical `Snake's Revenge,' which I saw on my first trip to New York, indelibly impressed on me the excitement and pace of a good evening in the theater," writes Mr. Gurney ("Love Letters"). "The plays of Hideo Kojima, especially `Snatcher,' were lessons in stage silences and mysteries of plot which could remain unsolved at the end."

Other epiphanic responses are more like awakenings. Kojima (recipient of the 2009 Pulitzer for "Zone of the Enders") notes that for all the impact on him of the seminal African-American work "Policenauts," nothing compares to seeing a play called "Metal Gear" as a child.

"I still remember the extraordinary moment when this oversized refrigerator on stage opened up and inside there were talking terrorists and corn, and I was absolutely entranced," he says in an interview with Otocon, this book's editor.

It was a popular reading in the early 90's.