***** - Excellent
**** - Good
*** - Okay
** - Bad
* - Terrible
+ - Half-star
The X-Files: Fight the Future
Chris Carter, adapted by Elizabeth Hand
Harper
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***
DESCRIPTION: For five years, FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully worked to uncover a global conspiracy aimed at enabling an alien invasion, investigating the so-called
X-files. After their office is burned and the X-files are shut down (at the end of the fifth season of the TV show), they are reassigned to the anti-terrorist unit. Mulder and
Scully stumble upon a major piece of the alien/conspiracy puzzle in Dallas, when a bomb threat is called in for the wrong building. Mulder plays a hunch and finds the real
device, but barely gets the place evacuated before the Big Bang reduces the site to rubble. This is no ordinary terrorist attack, however. Bodies that were dead before the
explosion, a dangerous mutation of the "black-oil" alien virus, and yet more cover-ups and set-ups by the Consortium await the duo.
This is the novelization of The X-Files: Fight the Future, the movie based on the hit sci-fi TV show The X-Files.
REVIEW: When I buy the written adaptation of a movie, I do so because a good book can do something a camera cannot: it gets inside the characters. Ideally, the book
adds depth and history, even if it's just by including what was left on the cutting room floor. For instance, the novel of Star Trek: Generations included the torture
scenes wherein the evil doctor was proven to be evil, using an implant to stop and start LaForge's heart. The sequence must've been filmed and subsequently dropped, since there
are a few lines that made no sense in the movie until I read the book and discovered that they referred to those very scenes. But that's another universe altogether. At least,
that's my view of the reason for novelizations: to enhance, not simply recount, the movie experience. Intellectually, I know that they're just another part of a franchise's
publicity/money machine, but that doesn't make them inherently bad! Apparently, my views aren't shared by everyone... such as the authors of this story. This book reads like
someone sat in the theater and took notes, then went home and wrote just what they saw. Only the shallowest stabs were made at tackling the thought processes of the characters,
and then nothing that wasn't immediately obvious. I almost got the feeling that Hand didn't want to modify or elaborate on anything which Carter handed her, perhaps afraid of
being accused of messing with his universe, so she just stuck to the script. Unfortunately, in a novel, a movie script isn't much help. Authors can't rely on camera angles,
background music, and skilled actors to breathe life into a story. They have to do that themselves, using just the tools of the English language. Either Hand isn't the world's
most dynamic writer, or Carter's ideas work far better as screenplays than straight, written fiction. While this book is certainly readable, it added nothing to my enjoyment of
the movie or the franchise. X-philes should save themselves the time and money and just buy the DVD.
You might also enjoy:
The Animorphs series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - Parasitic aliens are invading Earth, and only five children have the power to stop them)
Ender series (Orson Scott Card, Fiction - A child prodigy trains to save Earth from alien invaders, then finds his legacy shunned after the war)
Tripods: When the Tripods Came (John Christopher, YA Fiction - Teens witness an alien invasion)
The Supernaturalist (Eoin Colfer, YA Fiction - After a near-death experience, a boy learns to see invisible parasitic beings)
Quozl (Alan Dean Foster, YA Fiction - A multigenerational colony ship lands on a planet inhabited by hostile, backwards creatures known as "humans")
The Shadow Children sequence (Margaret Peterson Haddix, YA Fiction - A totalitarian nation of the future bans third children)
The Watchers series (Peter Lerangis, YA Fiction - Under the eye of unseen observers, children find their lives turned upside-down)
Roswell High series (Melinda Metz, YA Fiction - Four teenagers at Roswell High School hide extraordinary abilities and origins)
The Visitors trilogy (Rodman Philbrick, YA Fiction - After a UFO crashes in the hills, three kids notice very suspicious activity)
Old Man's War (John Scalzi, Fiction - Humans fight for colony worlds in a galaxy teeming with hundreds of alien species and countless ways to be killed)
The X-Files: Fight the Future
(1998 movie DVD)
The X-Files - The Complete First Season (Slim Set)
(DVD)
Return to Top of Page - Return to Book Review List
Return to Brightdreamer Books Home
Brightdreamer Books is created and maintained by TBW, a.k.a. "Brightdreamer."
E-mail: tbweber AT comcast DOT net. (Remove spaces, replace AT with "@" and DOT with "." - please put "Brightdreamer Books" in the subject line, or your e-mail may be deleted as
spam! Thank you!