Here's the transcript of our first unreal-time chat conducted with sci-fi author Tom Maddox on Shop Talk, our conferencing area. We plan on doing more "Geek-in-Residence" chats in the future with computer and digital culture luminaries. If you haven't checked out Shop Talk, please do. We give away cool prizes periodically to lure people inside. Never mind what your mother told you about not taking candy from strangers, come here little geekboy and riot grrrl...

Welcome to Street Tech's first unreal-time chat. We don't know about you, but we think real-time chat sucks and is a waste of time and bandwidth. The idea here is to conduct a chat over the course of a week. That way, you can post questions at your leisure and our guests can respond at theirs.

Our first guest is sci-fi author Tom Maddox. Tom is the author of the underappreciated 1991 novel HALO which deals with a future where artificial intelligence and virtual reality have smudged the margins between human and machine, the real and virtual, spirit and flesh.

Besides writing HALO, Tom has also contributed to a number of sci-fi anthologies such as the hugely influencial Mirrorshades: A Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by Bruce Sterling and Larry McCaffrey's Storming the Reality Studio. He also edited a column on the Internet for the perennial sci-fi mag Locus in the early '90s. Tom's other claim to fame is that he dreamt up the concept of ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics) used in William Gibson's cyberpunk novels. Tom lives in Olympia, Washington and teaches writing at Evergreen State College.

Most recently, Tom collaborated with William Gibson on the Kill Switch episode of the X-Files. The episode dealt with themes that are recurrent in both writers' work: sentient artificial intelligence, the lure of leaving this mortal coil for the silicon matrix, and ghosts in the machine.

If you have questions for Tom about the X-Files episode or his other work, please post them here. He'll be joining us tomorrow (Tuesday) through Friday. Please make him welcome.

Also, if you are new to Shop Talk, please read the Shop Talk Help doc I've prepared. For other questions about using Shop Talk, click on the "Help" button at the top of this page.

Well Tom, I guess the first set of questions would be the obvious ones:

• How did you come to co-write this episode with Gibson?

• How does co-writing work, anyway? Did you brainstorm ideas together first? Did you work on different parts of the story? Did one person do most of the writing while the other made content suggestions?

• What was it like working with Chris Carter and company?

• Did you get within stalking distance of Gillian Anderson?

I'm curious about the way one writes science-fiction teleplays that are set in the present. How do you decide what's "believable" without getting so technical you alienate a huge chunk of the audience?

It seems like this would be harder when set in the present, than in say, Star Trek, where you could make up just about anything as long as it had an explanation that was consistent within the story.

Is it?

I'm curious about Tom's views on modern cyberpunk authors and the genre in general.

Obviously it's changed a lot since Sterling and Gibson first broke ground, and I'm interested in who Tom is reading, and what he thinks the future holds for the cyberpunk fiction in general.

Tom, Welcome. I took the liberty of combining all of your posts into one. They didn't thread and I'm afraid that new users to Shop Talk may not be able to figure out how to read all of the separate posts.

Hello all.

My apologies: I'm a little late getting on to reply to questions. I've been on the road, or more properly, in the air (and boy are my arms tired -- old joke).

I'll take a first crack at some of these, but to answer them all even semi-properly would take a long, difficult essay.

First, how'd this episode come to be?

Gibson and I have been friends since the early '80s, and we'd talked over the years about a couple of kinds of collaboration, but nothing came of it until a while back we were on the phone one night after X-Files was on and one of us said -- can't remember who -- it would be cool to do an episode.

So Bill called up X-F Productions in Vancouver and went down and watched them shoot, met Chris Carter and told him that he and a friend were interested in doing an X-Files, asked if Chris would be interested. He said yes; we spent a morning with him talking ideas, and he gave us the go-ahead.

This ended up taking way more time than anyone had anticipated. We had agreement on about 3/4 of an outline when Chris got involved in a new series, Millenium, and the feature film. Our script went into something on the order of temporal stasis, but someone from the X-Files would call one of us every now and then and say, really guys, this is gonna happen.

And eventually it did. The feature film got shot, Chris turned Millenium over to Wong and Morgan, and we hammered out the rest of the outline with him and Frank Spotni.

On 3/3/98 12:58:41 PM, Tim Tate wrote:

>I'm curious about the way one writes science-fiction
>teleplays that are set in the present. How do you decide
>what's "believable" without getting so technical you
>alienate a huge chunk of the audience?

You do the best you can within the severe constraints of the medium.

The first rule is, it's got to be visual. So, if something's *not* visual, you still have to find something to look at that makes some kind of sense.

The next rule is, it can't require deep explanation, so you simplify or over-simplify and hope that the complexity of the idea comes through in the general narrative.

>It seems like this would be harder when set in the
>present, than in say, Star Trek, where you could make up
>just about anything as long as it had an explanation that was
>consistent within the story.

>Is it?

I haven't written a Star Trek, so I can't say. But part of the fun in working closer to the Real is the challenge -- to make things different enough to be interesting, realistic enough to be believable.

On 3/3/98 10:17:16 AM, Peter Cohen wrote:

>I'm curious about Tom's views on modern cyberpunk authors
>and the genre in general.

>Obviously it's changed a lot since Sterling and Gibson
>first broke ground, and I'm interested in who Tom is
>reading, and what he thinks the future holds for the
>cyberpunk fiction in general.

I guess I don't know that there is a cyberpunk genre at present. The work Gibson's doing perhaps qualifies, also maybe Bruce's last book, Holy Fire (which I think is his best).

I don't read much sf, and that's the truth. My favorite writers have always come more from outside sf, and that's still true.

And I read more non-fiction than fiction. For instance, I just finished S. Pinker's The Language Instinct, which is a great book, and I'm always interested in stuff in brain research and cognitive science. Really I'm looking more for stuff to make fiction out of than fiction.

Tom

Tom,

How important is the use of realistic science as plot devices to the success of the genre you write in?

What I mean by realistic science are plot devices based upon scientific developments we can envision in the near term. Stuff you, William Gibson and Neal Stephenson use (man-machine interfaces, neural implants, etc.). As opposed to the stuff in the popular space operas (teleportation, faster then light travel, instantaneous communications) that are not based on any credible scientific theory.

I think that much of the genre's popularity has to do with it's relavence to the reader. It doesn't require a mental leap of faith or suspension of our known universe. It's much closer to a reality we can envision. As a result the characters are more compelling and the works more appealing.

As anecdotal evidence of this I notice that friends who do not like science fiction liked Snow Crash after they read it. And the X-Files is much more popular then the cluster of Roddenbery inspired Star Trek drivel. That's probably unfair since X-Files suffers from excellent writing (except for that bad Stephen King episode).

Do you think I'm off base on this?

Jim -- (who always thought Roddenbery is a hack compared to P.K. Dick).

P.S. If you think this is difficult to read, it was more difficult to write.

Don't know why Jim's post is now after Tom's response that I posted. Damn this WebBoard is flaky sometimes.

For the record, please make sure you use the "Reply to: 'The Tom Maddox Unreal-time Chat'" at the bottom of the last post in the thread.

If you get to the end of a post and there's no "Reply to" link (and I have *no* idea why this happens), click on the arrow in front of the conference title in the Conferences frame at left (if the conf isn't already expanded). Click on the cross in front The Tom Maddox topic. Click on the last post in the thread. The "Reply to:" link will appear.

Sorry for all the hassle.

Jesus, Gareth, it looks like we need a secret decoder ring to post -- is this another of the many benefits of Javascript?

Picking up on some earlier stuff, now that I have a few minutes--

Working with Chris Carter & Co. was great. He's kind of scary, actually, hyperfocused, incredibly energetic, and like that. But he's as little like the stereotype of a Hollywood producer as you can imagine. No bullshit, total politeness.

As to co-writing: it was totally collaborative, from first ideas to final product. Ideas were so thoroughly *processed* that for most of them, I don't remember who first suggested what.

When it came time to write the script (and we and the producers had agreed upon a detailed scene-by-scene outline), each of us worked with the scenes we felt most like we had a handle on, then drafts went back and forth several times to get rewritten.

We got close enough to Gillian Anderson to get the full charisma hit, which was con

Tom, where'd ya go? You trailed off there mid-sentence. Must be the jetlag...or Javascript not taking kindly to being snickered at.

Re: the WebBoard decoder ring. It's true it's a finicky son of a bitch. The thing to remember with WebBoard is that it cost sixty bucks! Sixty bucks to add several BBSes to your website. There's conferencing software that's better, but nothing that offers more useful features for the money. So, we cope with its less-than-charming antics.

My trail-off was javascript fighting back (unless my jet lag was a *lot* worse than I thought).

I was going to say that Gillian Armstrong's charisma is considerable, I believe.

As it is.

Tom

So Tom, were there things that you had in the script that didn't make it into the show? If so, what?

Were there things that Carter put in that you all didn't write?

A little piece in Entertainment Weekly claimed that the female hacker was a satirization of Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider character, and the creator of the AI program was a way of "imagining what might have happened if Bill Gates had become an embittered hard-driven loser instead of hitting it Microsoft big." It was unclear whether these were the writer's own fantasies or something coming from you all. How did you all perceive these characters?

[I like how, on at least one Web BBS about the X-files, the female hacker is being referred to as "the raccoon chick."]

Did you all spend time on the set?

How long did it take from the time they started shooting to the time they finished? And did you get to see the completed version before broadcast?

And off the subject of "Kill Switch" for a second: How did the concept of ICE come about and how did it end up in Gibson's sprawl books?

On 3/5/98 1:42:23 AM, Gareth Branwyn wrote:

>So Tom, were there things that you had in the script that
>didn't make it into the show? If so, what?

A whole bunch of things. I've got a stack of them, so does Gibson.

>Were there things that Carter put in that you all didn't
>write?

Sure. "Bite me" was his, first and last.

>A little piece in "Entertainment Weekly" claimed that the female hacker
>was a satirization of Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider character,

If so, it's news to all of us. She changed this way and that as the plot evolved, but I never heard Lara Croft mentioned.

>and the creator of the AI program was a way of "imagining what
>might have happened if Bill Gates had become an embittered
>hard-driven loser instead of hitting it Microsoft big."

Well, that's one interpretation, but it's not mine. There was a point where we had what we referred to as the "Bill Head" fronting for the AI, but it disappeared somewhere along the line. It would have been a familiar looking cartoon head that communicated with the outside world.

>It was unclear whether these were the writer's own fantasies or
>something coming from you all.

The writer's own, I think. Not that I minded that article, which said good things about our episode and HALO -- so he is obviously a writer of exceptional talent and discernment, eh?

>[I like how, on at least one Web BBS about the X-files, the
>female hacker is being referred to as "the raccoon chick."]

That happened in production. We wrote her originally as a goth and were both startled when she appeared in Daryl Hannah Drag. Frohike's right, of course -- she is hot.

>Did you all spend time on the set?

Yeah, we spent a couple of days. More fun than a barrel of monkeys. We saw some of the hospital scene, Mulder in the trailer, and much of the teaser. They built a diner inside a warehouse, tacked a false front on it, and messed it up nicely with a couple of hundred or more "squibs".

>How long did it take from the time they started shooting to
>the time they finished?

Almost three weeks. By television time, it took forever to shoot. The interior of the trailer, despite being a special set not in the trailer at all, was a bitch to work in.

The actors were all extraordinarily competent -- they all hit their lines and marks every time except for Fido the robot, who at one point ran over Mulder as he emerged from the trapdoor and at another charged the camera. They built Fido from scratch, which amazed us -- we'd figured on some retrofitted and suitably decorated Radio Shack thingie, but we got a really amazing little robot.

>And did you get to see the completed version before
>broadcast?

Nope. I talked to one of the producers on Friday, and they will hadn't laid in a few of the effects and computer inserts.

>And off the subject of "Kill Switch" for a second: How did
>the concept of ICE come about and how did it end up in
>Gibson's sprawl books?

When we first met, Gibson saw the idea in a manuscript of mine and asked if he could steal it -- I said sure. My manuscript stayed in the drawer where it belonged, and ICE went into Neuromancer. I was surprised to be credited for it, still more surprised that it became

Goddammit! WebBoard bit off the end of your post again! I have no idea what's up with that. I'm SO embarrassed. It's like having an unruly child beating up on a guest in your house.

One question that seems to be on the minds of X-philes, as I toured online discussions after the episode: Who built the bot, the trailer, etc? It seemed obvious to me that it was David and Raccoon girl. Doesn't someone say in the episode that the AI built it? Maybe that's what threw people off.

And then there was what several people on Shop Talk said we were all thinking when Maulder found the trailer and the T3 line: "Cut the damn T3 cable!" He had his trusty Leatherman, after all.

And...ah...where was the "kill switch," anyway?

Got this off of an X-Files website. Thought you might find it interesting:

The recently aired episode, Kill Switch (written by William Gibson and Tom Maddox), has done what Chinga failed to do - win the hearts of the viewers. While Chinga was dismissed by X-Philes and slammed by the critics, Kill Switch won over the positive reviews and reactions. Well, what would you expect in a show where Scully kickboxes a room of sexy young nurses? Reactions included, "To all of you who have dissed season five consistently, if THIS episode doesn't get you back into the XF fold, I'm afraid that nothing ever will." and "I hope whoever wrote this writes some more." Also, one X-Phile took this opportunity to slam Stephen King, "I hope Stephen King was watching and taking notes. On second thought, maybe not. He'd probably rewrite it with stock characters, a Maine setting and a lame ending and sell it to UPN."

BTW, Tom: Were those porn stars who played the nurses? I love the porn subtext of the Maulder character. And the fact that he only has a couch to sleep on in his apartment.

Have you gotten any other offers for TV scripts? Do you and Gibson have any plans to collaborate in the future?

Whatever happened to Walls of Light? Wasn't that the name of your second novel?

One thing I've been curious about is this:

You describe screenplay writing as having to be visual. Does this mean you include specifics on certain shots such as angle, scope, or other treatments?

BTW, about Chinga, did you know that, in colloquial Latin-American Spanish, it is the 3rd person infinitive of to fuck?

On 3/6/98 1:49:22 AM, Alberto Gaitan wrote:

>One thing I've been curious about is this:
> >You describe screenplay writing as having to be
>visual. Does this mean you include specifics on certain
>shots such as angle, scope, or other treatments?

Sure, among other things. Though we knew in this instance that the director, Rob Bowman, would be a hell of a lot better about that stuff than we were -- he's done more than 25 episodes and the feature film, so he doesn't need us to tell him how to shoot a scene.

It's more like this: the scenes have to *be* visual. Meaning has to be visible. That accounts for some of the hokum we see in sf films and tv shows (maybe even in ours).

>BTW, about Chinga, did you know that, in colloquial
>Latin-American Spanish, it is the 3rd person infinitive of
>to fuck?

Well, I know it's a form of the verb -- the one I've heard is "chinga tu madre," which wouldn't seem to be an infinitive. The grammar of "fuck" is somewhat mysterious anyway. Take the phrase "fuck you." What is the person, voice, or in fact *meaning* of it?

By the way, I have to include some ending material here for the line-eater, which old Usenet hands will remember but which now seems to have incarnated in Javascript

Not sure if I'm giving this interface the proper secret handshake, but this is the only way I've found to be able to quote the questions.

On 3/6/98 12:00:51 AM, Gareth Branwyn wrote:

>Got this off of an X-Files website. Thought you might
>find it interesting:

[ego-gratifying response omitted]

>BTW, Tom: Were those porn stars who played the nurses?

I'd be very surprised if they were. Sounds like you've tapped into someone's adolescent fantasy (not that I'm opposed to adolescent fantasies). I met two of the actors (Nurse Nancy and another), and they were both serious pros of the usual sort.

>Have you gotten any other offers for TV scripts? Do you and
>Gibson have any plans to collaborate in the future?

Maybe and maybe.

>Whatever happened to Walls of Light? Wasn't that the name
>of your second novel?

My second novel has suffered through a number of things, title changes among them. Walls of Light was one title, Mystified another. Fuck if I know what it will actually be.

I had a series of ugly life traumas not long after I was seriously into writing the book -- including a semi-psychotic breakup of an 18 year relationship, deaths in the family, and *extensive* heart surgery.

When I returned to the manuscript I'd started, I was someone else (the previous me had perhaps croaked on the operating table during the several hours when my heart was stopped -- it's a theory), and I no longer loved or could continue what I had started.

I have hopes, however. I can now claim the book I'm writing

Gesus! Extensive heart surgery? Thank gopod you're all right.

I certainly hope we see another novel from you. At the risk of you having to omit another ego-gratifying response, I have to say how much I enjoyed HALO. There were some moments of real beauty in there and the garage futurism was right on. I loved the idea of the Interface Collective. It's the first book I read where I felt I caught a glimpse of the transcendent possibilities of virtual worlds.

BTW: Tom's book HALO is sadly out-of-print, but he's dipped into his personal stash and offered us some autographed copies. We'll be doing a drawing of topic participants the first of next week.

>Sounds like you've tapped into someone's adolescent fantasy (not
>that I'm opposed to adolescent fantasies).

Well, if I have, it's Chris Carter's (or someone else on the show). He's had several porn actors guest star, and of course, Maulder's a lifetime subscriber to Celebrity Skin.

On 3/6/98 2:25:46 AM, Tom Maddox wrote:

>an infinitive. The grammar of "fuck" is somewhat
>mysterious anyway. Take the phrase "fuck you." What
>is the person, voice, or in fact *meaning* of it?

It all comes down to the fine art of cornholing. Specifically, primate buggery.

I remember reading an essay about this very subject a year or two ago (I wish I had an attribution for you- it was great reading). The etymology of the phrase was taken to be "I fuck you," and was traced back to roots in studied primate behavior, where alpha-dominant males of some species of ape will sexually abuse more passive males in their groups to reenforce their leadership: "Welcome to the jungle. I am Kong and you will be my bitch. Now bend over and pick up my bananas."

You know, kind of like prison, the army and boys' schools. :-)

In other words, it's a verbal display of dominance and complete disregard for the other person's (or chimp's) point of view.

So, Tom, what's next for you? Are you writing anything we can look forward to soon? Maybe with your new-found fame, someone'll see the wisdom in reprinting HALO. Hey, I wonder what Steve Brown's doing in his voluminous spare time? He did such a smashing job on Shirley's two books.

Thanks so much for dropping by, Tom. Good luck with all of your future projects. And hopefully, we'll get some more cool tech soon for you to play with and review for Street Tech (in case folks here don't know, Tom reviewed the eMate for us).

Gareth

[Tom sent us a box o' HALOs, so we'll be giving them away in a drawing soon.]

A box of HALO's, now that is an image to delight the imagination, so to speak. Is it sitting under your desk glowing and humming? When you open the box, do the flaps turn back with the lilt of harp strings? Are these HALOs likely to inspire the wearer to lofty deeds of kindness and charity? Or are these HALOs more like the type worn by archangels, tarnished and dented from battle? Where does one find HALOs nowadays? Do they come with full documentation and warranty? So much to consider when contemplating a box o' HALOs.

Ah, the halos. They signify, of course, above all--but not simply. We ask that the circle be unbroken because we know that often it is.

And boxed? Just a temporary storage, a hedge against the inevitable decay--

The page becomes illegible, or its message unintelligible, or both.

One possible sequence in my next novel involves the destruction of Halo, a gratuitous act of profound disinterest, like burning down a city to destroy a piece of paper.

Maybe, maybe not.

Tom and the rest of the X-Files rabble out there,

You might find the article in today's NY TIMES of interest. It is a nice peek into the directing side of the show, with some insights into the basic Carter philosophy for the show. There's even one photo of Gillian to tease you boys a bit. http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/tv-xfiles.html

Thanks for that pointer, Chuck. That was a nice piece.

>"This show is about emotional reality rather than dramatic reality," he
>said. "That's why, if this show hadn't been done well, we would have
>been laughed off the air a long time ago.

Boy isn't that the truth.

We wanted to give 5 copies of HALO away and there were 5 people who contributed to this conversation, so:

Tim Tate
Peter Cohen
Jim Jacobus
Alberto Gaitan
Chuck Hinckley

COME ON DOWN! You're the winners of a rare, out-of-print, autographed copy of Tom's book, destined to be a collector's item.

Please email me your smailing addresses.

And thanks for participating in this, and all the other discussions on Shop Talk. You guys make this a fun place to hang out.

On 3/10/98 10:12:00 AM, Chuck Hinckley wrote:

>Tom and the rest of the X-Files rabble out there, > >You might find the article in today's NY TIMES of interest.
>It is a nice peek into the directing side of the show,
>with some insights into the basic Carter philosophy for
>the show.

Yeah, Rob Bowman was our director, and he is indeed good. He's also a very nice guy, entirely unlike the stereotype of a dictatorial director. He even seemed to care what the writers thought of a scene, which shocked me.

Tom

(line-eater fodder

Tom,

I am eagerly awaiting my copy of HALO. I had already placed a request for it with my library system, but I much prefer this option. For those not lucky enough to have won their own copy, this is an option, just ask your local library to locate a copy for you.

I want to thank the academy and it's members (Gareth) for recognizing my body of work, it has been a long hard struggle, in a medium that can be very hard on alternative POV. I would like to thank all of the little people who have made this possible, Bile Bill Gates, Monica Lewinski, the Subdudes, Wm. Kotzwinkle.........................

Can you believe that the spell checker doesn't know how to spell Monica Lewinski