I loved the Fallout: New Vegas add-on Dead Money, which is about a heist in an ancient casino called the “Sierra Madre”. I therefore assumed it was based on the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which I’ve heard about but never seen. However, Dead Money writer Chris Avellone tweeted when someone asked him about this that it was based more on the book that inspired the movie.

I hadn’t even known that the movie was based on a book. So, I decided to find out about the book, and maybe pick it up if it sounded good. But then, I got to reading about the book’s author, “B. Traven“. His life is quite fascinating–or more accurately, the theories about what it might have been like are. It seems he was something of a mysterious man. (I guess I should know, right?)

I won’t attempt to summarize all the ideas people have about who he might have been, but it’s quite intriguing. I don’t know how much of it is common knowledge to you, but I was surprised that I hadn’t heard about something so interesting before.