Imagine a mesmerizing, virtually infinite universe composed of streams of data, where matters of life and death are decided behind the scenes by monstrous mega-corporations.... It's called "network TV."
On 15 February, William Gibson - author of Neuromancer, Count Zero, Idoru, and other genre-defining works of cyberpunk fiction - will make his TV scriptwriting debut with "Kill Switch," an episode of The X-Files which Gibson promises will contain "many obvious pokes and prods at high-end academic cyberculture."
Gibson declared that the episode "will have more to offer the Wired reader" than any show that's ever been on television, and confessed that he's surprised that the show's producers left in some of the more esoteric references in the dialog. "There are some jokes in there," he mused, "that aren't going to work for the man in the street."
Though tight-lipped about the particulars of the script, Gibson says "Kill Switch" will shy away from the "giant backstory" of the series - a labyrinthine meta-conspiracy involving alien abduction, genetic manipulation, and shadow governments - and take agents Scully and Mulder into a world that recalls the dark visions of filmmaker David Cronenberg. "At least, I hope it does," Gibson said modestly from his home in Vancouver.
The plot of "Kill Switch," says Gibson, will hinge on a startling notion of artificial life, and will also feature sophisticated and highly realistic use of robotics. "It's a big-production episode for the series," Gibson noted.
Recent reports in the press have speculated that "Kill Switch," being filmed this week in British Columbia, will be a "virtual-reality nightmare," but Gibson says that viewers shouldn't tune in for slick graphics, but for "Phil Dickian is-it-real? stuff." (The hallucinatory novels of Philip K. Dick provided the imaginative seeds for such totems of contemporary science fiction as Blade Runner and Total Recall.)
Gibson credits his 15-year-old daughter with introducing him to the series, which he calls "quintessentially postmodern television." The episode was commissioned two years ago by series creator Chris Carter, whom Gibson "kept running into" on flights between Los Angeles and Vancouver, where both Carter and Gibson reside. ("The business-section seats on the planes down to LA are 90 percent X-Files," Gibson observed.)
Gibson co-authored "Kill Switch" with Tom Maddox, who teaches fiction writing and works with learning-disabled students at Washington's Evergreen State College, and has known the 49-year-old novelist since the Neuromancer days.
Gibson, who surfs the Web but doesn't use email, was a devoted watcher of Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone series when he was a teenager. His favorite episodes of The X-Files are the "ones that are thoroughly around the bend," like the one called "War of the Coprophages" (killer cockroaches that may be from outer space), and the infamous cringe-fest called "Home" (incest, inbreeding, hideous deformations).
Rather than the stories that elaborate on the UFO-related Big Lie, Gibson says he prefers the X-Files stories that engage "other kinds of Fortean artifacts ... like the ones where Mulder goes off into the woods and finds dope-smoking Sasquatches."
"The X-Files hits a note of sublime weirdness and humor that is unprecedented in network television," says Gibson. It taps the main vein of the zeitgeist because "we're at a point where the popular mind is questioning the nature of reality," he adds, saying that the series is uniquely "positioned to appropriate the most diverse elements of popular culture."
The white-knuckled metaparanoia of the show's "trust no one" ethic appeals to contemporary audiences because "a lot of people don't believe in politics, but they believe in conspiracies - conspiracy theory has replaced politics in people's minds."
Gibson, who says his ideal television channel would feature live feeds from luggage X-ray machines in airports all over the world, admitted that he doesn't watch much TV these days.
"My favorite is the Quebec rock music channel. The presenters are much sexier than on MTV, and it's in French, and I don't speak a word of French," he explained. "So whatever banalities they're uttering are incomprehensible to me."
