The Real Science Behind the X Files: Microbes, Meteorites, and Mutants

Virologist Simon doubles as the science adviser for television's The X-Files, helping agents Scully and Mulder's adventures fit, or at least approach, plausibility. Her informative book cuts back and forth between X-Files script excerpts, behind-the-scenes anecdotes of her work on the series and accounts of the real-life counterparts and inspirations for the show's many biological plot devices. Where, for instance, Scully and Mulder find a town whose citizens stay young through cannibalism, Simon explains the real consequences when people eat people: a rare brain ailment caused by rogue proteins called prions. Simon (who teaches at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst) likes to remind readers that professional scientists watch The X-Files and look for mistakes. For one episode, Simon insisted that the correct DNA code for a certain virus, rather than just random letters, appear on a geneticist's computer. A visiting professor at her university used the episode in a lecture: he expected to mock the show, and was stunned when a database search showed that The X-Files got it right. When Scully developed cancer, the tests she underwent were real, but their results arrived unrealistically fast: as a result, Simon says, some biochemists tell their colleagues to ""call Scully"" when an experiment goes slowly. ""X-philes"" who enjoy these and similar stories will learn plenty of biology in the bargain; among the other hot fields and ideas Simon explains are extraterrestrial bacteria, cloning, genetic mutations, biological warfare, the ominous decline in the world's population of frogs and the likelihood of extending the human life span. Agent, Esmond Harmsworth at Zachary Shuster. (Oct.)