Living in the X-Files

But this summer, while finishing my latest book, I returned to a very different kind of television: a show rooted in the schlock science-fiction of an earlier age but pointing in the direction of the sleek, edgy TV to come. I’m speaking of The X-Files, the 1990s Fox phenom that at its peak commanded the attention of something like a fifth of U.S. households. And for good reason: It is a show suffused with delicious paranoia, clever sociopolitical commentary, and a strangely memorable kind of pathos. Rewatching the entire series in a few weeks, I was struck by how effective it was, and is—and how its political themes jibe with our current moment.