The X-Files: Perihelion | Smart bitches, crappy books

This guest review is by Crystal Anne! Crystal Anne with An E comes from a sunny climate, but prefers to remain a pale indoor cat. She enjoys reading, needlepoint, going to live music, and playing video games. She works as an autism counselor during the day, has a degree in computer science for fun, and currently serves on the advisory board of her local library.

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Okay, now that I’m sure no one gets hurt, let’s look at why we’re here.

So, in news that should surprise no one who has ever spent time with me, I am a huge nerd. Which is honestly why I keep writing. In the tradition of many GenX nerds, I had my early, extremely formative fandoms. In my case, one of the largest and most formative was The X-Files.

It had everything my budding sci-fi/horror nerd wanted from life: conspiracy theories, good action, clever writing, and beautiful people. Dana Scully was my target, and I was in love with Mulder. And like all good X-Philes, I desperately wanted to kiss them.

It was also a bonding activity in my family. My mother and sisters didn’t like the show, but my father and I were OBSESSED. Much of the time that The X-Files was on the radio, my dad was stationed at an air force base far away from us, and my dad and I would watch the show and then have a debriefing on the phone on Sunday night when it was over. There’s probably a reason my dad and I are movie buddies to this day (the last one we saw was Godzilla x Kongand we both enjoyed it immensely). We constantly recommend TV shows and movies to each other.

Which brings us to now. I was aimlessly surfing the internet, as one does, and came across a social media post from Claudia Gray celebrating the release of her new X-Files book. The same Claudia Gray who wrote my favorite Star Wars books, which I have gushed over on this forum before?!

Well, kids, she jumped. I had that on my Kindle and ordered a hardcover copy for my dad faster than you can say “The Lone Gunmen.”

The first thing that really strikes me is how well Gray understands Scully and Mulder. She understands them the same way she understood Leia Organa, with the kind of care and detail that can only come from a deep love and respect for the characters. She’s very aware of the trauma that these characters have gone through and how it would color both their worldview and how they would exist in the modern world.

Let’s start with Mulder. At the beginning of this book, the best way to describe Mulder would be “unhinged.” Neither he nor Scully are employed by the FBI, and without the purpose that the X-Files gave him, he has developed depression and often isolates himself from those he loves, especially Scully. In search of a sense of purpose, he turns to conspiracy podcasts and occasionally applies for jobs as a criminal profiler (a field in which he is known to be talented).

He also struggles with the fact that while there is so much more knowledge about the kinds of phenomena he was investigating, there is also so much noise and misinformation that it doesn’t matter. As he tells Scully, “The truth is out there, but now everything is out there.” When Scully becomes pregnant, he finds purpose, but he also finds new ways to worry about her safety and her health. That said, while he is understandably in a lot of worry mode, he is also respectful and trusting of her competence and autonomy.

Scully now works primarily as a doctor, specializing in children with genetic disorders, a choice that stems entirely from her trauma and the idea that she might be able to help children like William.

The discovery that she is pregnant brings her both shock and fear, while at the same time she is excited about the idea that she will finally have the chance to raise a child with Mulder. The shock is based on her age, while the fear is based on both her age and the fact that she has been forcibly impregnated before, and she is terrified that it has somehow happened again. She is literally afraid to be happy about this pregnancy, especially since she is in denial about her grief over the death of her son.

In the midst of all this, Mulder and Scully are approached by the same FBI that had long since written them off as irrelevant. The X-Files, long since mothballed, have become a running joke around the bureau. That said, they are once again besieged by more cases of unexplained phenomena, and suffice it to say, the next generation isn’t trained for this kind of thing. So they’re brought back in and asked to focus primarily on two cases: the murders of pregnant women in Washington, DC, and the seemingly unrelated murders that have in common the suspect literally vanishing into thin air (think Kurt Wagner).

This brings us to the second interesting point: moving The X-Files, a series from the late 90s/early 00s, into the 21st century. The X-FilesBoth as an in-universe phenomenon and as a TV show, they are a product of their time. They are based on the ideas of not trusting anyone, especially your government, and on countless conspiracy theories. Bringing them into the 21st century brings a whole new set of challenges for the agents charged with investigating them.

Seen Bigfoot? Could be a deepfake.

Man Disappears in a Puff of Smoke After Murdering Someone? Someone Probably Made That with AI.

Strange electrical phenomena occurring around this particular person? Very real possibility that they are carrying a device designed to cause that phenomenon.

Mulder and Scully have to adjust their investigative techniques. For example, Mulder reflects on how he would have combed through the smaller press newspapers in the past, because they were more likely to report on strange events in their areas. Now? Most of those smaller press newspapers are long gone, either absorbed by larger conglomerates or simply no longer in business. He has to find alternate ways to find X-Files cases and separate the real incidents from the clout-chasers and the weirdos.

Furthermore, our society offers Scully entirely new ways to be both skeptical and angry. It’s never been easier to fake paranormal phenomena, and she points out more than once that there’s plenty of technology out there that can easily replicate it, so if you want her to believe in something, you better have some empirical evidence ready. She also looks at some of the current developments in society’s view of reproductive rights and is reminded of how deeply she and Mulder have been violated, and how traumatized she still is by them.

The book is filled with fun facts for fans of the original TV series. We see several references to the agents Scully worked with when David Duchovny first left the show, as well as famous villains such as Robert Patrick Modell, Eugene Tooms, and of course and inevitably the Cigarette-Smoking Man (shout out to William B. Davis for playing one of the absolute rat bastards of the 90s).

While these are appreciated, they didn’t take me out of the story, and it’s okay if you can’t quite remember these names (a quick Google search will make that clear). The story stands on its own. I will say that the pacing slackens a bit in the middle section, but I think that’s because the book spends a LOT of time inside Mulder and Scully’s heads, both in POV and via journal entries. But if you’re here for character work, Gray does a god job in that department more often than not.

If there was one thing I wanted more of, it would probably be to see our intrepid team do more actual investigation. That interplay between their individual styles was always a highlight of the stories, and as an old-school fan, I’ll always want more of it.

As for the ending, no spoilers, but it did indicate that there are more stories to tell, and I would most likely watch them. There are always new stories to tell, and I would really like Gray to be the one to keep telling them.

Grade: A big B, because I wanted more research.