Martin's
House of X
The X-Files Fiction of Martin Ross

For nine years, I retreated UPSTAIRS each Sunday after darkfall, abandoning my computer in a trancelike state to watch David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Robert Patrick, and Annabeth Gish pursue aliens, werewolves, cryptic creatures, telekinetic children, and a better eighth season contract. As an adjunct to my spooked-out viewing, I began to put pixels to PC to ply that postmodern form of hybrid literature -- the "fanfic."

The fanfic, you say, your spectacles sliding to the tip of your elevated noses (actually, I know that wouldn't work, gravity-wise). "This is what lit'rature is coming to?" you ask in an Oxfordian tone, hoisting your 1931 sherry with a meticulously manicured pinkie at a rakishly cynical angle. "This is what the likes of Dickens and Faulkner and Bellow burned the midnight oil for, so that middle-aged ne'er-do-wells might scribble peaons to their favorite commercial, yish, television (shudder) program?" you query as you prepare to crack open a stimulating novel by Joyce Carol Oates or warm up the scantly used telly for this month's PBS pledge night?

Well, duh, yeah. I was at first astonished by the thousands of tales spun on the Internet to complement the televised chronicles of Agents Mulder and Scully. Perhaps this phenomenon can be explained by the rich diversity of themes the show has explored, from tabloid extraterrestrial lore and government conspiracies to the powers of the human mind unchained to the mysteries of nature and the roots of our religious beliefs. Or, given the volume of so-called "shipper" stories out there, focusing on the potentially passionate relationship between the agents, maybe it's the show's rich and complex characters.I simply find the X-Files to be the best drama on TV today, respect to Law and Order and ER.

I'm a TV throwback of sorts, and when I decided to try my hand at the fanfic, I was interested in melding my favorite sci-fi sleuths with my favorite investigators of my teen years -- fumbling but ingenuous cop Columbo, witty private eye Jim Rockford, and Carl Kolchak, who as The Night Stalker, offered up a creepy-but-funny progenitorto the X-Files. Eventually, I launched my own fictional 10th season, 10X , which completes my version of the X-Files saga and answers key questions about the nature of humanity, the planet, and maybe God (what fun, huh?).

Now, draw a fine cognac (or Sprite or double half-caff latte or whatever, jeez), and prepare to read the fanfic of a middle-aged X-phile, published by the good graces of fellow philes (phellow?):


CAPISTRANO
CROSSOVER/MOTW
Somewhere around the second half of Season 7, I discovered the world of fanfic through The X-Philes, a site maintained by a student named Stacy. It was home to a half-dozen female writers -- other students, I suspect -- and I was grateful when they proved open to a 40-year-old amateur's first work of Internet fiction. For this first tale, I decided to go back to the televisic roots of the X-Files and
Carl Kolchak, the original Night Stalker, a Chicago reporter who in the mid-70s encountered vampires, werewolves, rogue robots, and gruesome golem with regularity. Darren McGavin was cast as Arthur Dales as an homage to the intrepid Kolchak.



WEREWOLVES OF BURBANK
CROSSOVER/MYSTERY
James Scott Rockford (of Rockford Files fame) was the king of cool for us '70s kids -- the greatest private eye ever to be beaten senseless on behalf of an ungrateful client. Whether he was looking for a missing heiress or dealing with corrupt smalltown politicians or pulling off a million-dollar scam on some corporate scumbag, Rockford always knew what to say and how to say it in a way that would get him punched in the nose. My story finds Rockford entangled with a pop music superstar, greedy showbiz agents, tough guy cops, a demon monster, and a pair of federal agents named Mulder and Scully.



MURDER WITH A FUTURE
CROSSOVER/MYSTERY
The greatest TV detective of all time? Get outta here! Lt. Columbo , LAPD. The first time I saw this show, back in junior high, I thought this was the heighth of the television art -- the clever cat-and-mouse games, the deliciously elitist villains sowing their own murderous destructions at the hands of clumsy proletariat Columbo. Well, I had a thought, years ago: What if they got Shirley MacLaine, made her a Hollywood psychic, and set Columbo on her trail. Well, they never did it, the maladroits, so I wrote this tale of detection teaming the good lieutenant with Agents Mulder and Scully.


TOMODACHI

SEQUEL/MYSTERY
The first of my non-crossover stories features Robert Patrick Modell, a maladjusted maniac known as The Pusher, who is into Samurai lore and who can psychically talk anyone into doing his bidding or even, in one case, having a heart attack. The Pusher was featured on two episodes of The X-Files, "Pusher" and "Kitsunegari." When I found a site devoted (somewhat disturbingly) to Modell, I posited to them this scenario: What if Agent Mulder woke up one morning, went to work, found himself partnered with The Pusher, and had no idea anything was amiss? The story within the story deals with past life regression and murder in the pharmaceutical industry.


WHEN HARRY
MET SCULLY

HUMOR
One of the most common type of X-Files fanfic is the "shipper story," devoted to exploring and or expanding the emotional relationship between Mulder and Scully. Well, I felt a bit left out, so I applied myself to the task. However, I'm not the most adept at things romantic, so I took a different slant and composed a sort of X-Files chick flick/supernatural comedy. Substitute Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock for Gillian Anderson and Tom Hanks or Hugh Grant for David Duchovny.



SOUL SURVIVOR
HUMOR/CASEFILE
I HATE reality shows. This involves taking a diverse group of real people with workaday jobs such as performance artist or aromacolorist and narcissistic personalities, placing them together in a claustrophobic environment where their vapidity and egos will begin to collide, and then listen to their self-conscious ramblings to the cameraman. If you can't tell, I think it's just FAB!! Actually, though, I did think it would make for an interesting narrative experiment and a good way to explore the nearly psychic connection between our Mulder and Scully.


SAMPLER
CASEFILE
A few years back, I accompanied the wife on a week's odyssey to Pigeon Forge and Nashville, Tenn. I will admit at this juncture I'm no big country fan: Waylon and Willie sounds to me like a urinary exam gone terrrribly wrong. But I remembered the 50-50 partnership that is marriage, kept murmuring "barbecue" to myself, and started plotting this tale of murder and magic in Music City. This is what I'd call meat-and-potatoes X-Files: A serial killer, folklore-steeped intrigue, and some supernatural comeuppance for the villain. Yee-haw.


KENNETH ETIAM  
HILDAY/CASEFILE
This is a Christmas tale about a man who finds himself in a situation similar to Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life," but with nightmarish implications. Fox Mulder takes the Clarence the Angel role here, with partner Scully a concerned observer. But this is no "ordinary" X-file, as I hope you will discover.


DEFRAG

CASEFILE
Since an early age, I've loved the old-fashioned Ellery Queen/Agatha Christie-style whodunit, especially what's known as the "locked room murder" -- the homicide committed in a room sealed from the inside or in the snow, with no footprints surrounding the body, or in a space station with no other astronauts around to have committed the deed. This is my attempt at the locked room, with an old-fashioned dying clue and a mansion full of suspects thrown in. For a new-fangled touch, the victims is a Bill Gates sort of fellow, and my Sherlocks are no other than our good agents, Mulder and Scully. So pull up an armchair and see if you can figure out who or what dunit...                        


REMISSION
SEQUEL/POST-REQUIEM*
My mother, Jean Ross, died on Mother's Day 1993. She was a scientist at a time when a lot of women wouldn't have felt welcome in the field. She had a wry sense of humor, but woe to anyone who injured or slighted her family. If you had Jean Ross in your corner, you had a formidable champion. Cancer was about the only foe she couldn't face down in my lifetime. I married in 1993, months after my mother's death. My wife as well has been my champion, and each year, she walks for cancer victims and survivors. So when I decided to write a solo case for Agent Dana Scully, something a bit more reflective and somber than is my normal style, I focused on two factors my mother had in common with Scully: Her scientific acumen and her battle with cancer. For this story, I brought back an old X-Files nemesis, Leonard Betts.



CANARY
CASEFILE/SEQUEL/POST-REQUIEM*
The resignation and departure of Agent Fox Mulder in Season Eight sent X-Files fans into a chronic stage of anxiety. The recent announcement that the X-Files would be closed at the end of this season elicited varying reactions: Resigned satisfaction from those who couldn't accept Scully without Mulder or the Files without either; frustration from others (myself included) who believe John Doggett was a worthy heir to the files and that the storytelling of Chris Carter and company was still in top form. But enough, already. We all wonder where Mulder is right now (no, not sipping margaritas with Tea Leoni), and I speculated that he just wouldn't be able to stay from the weird and phantasmagorial. But how does former Agent Mulder cope without a gun or official sanction? To answer that, we travel from 31 million B.C. to the remote reaches of man's future and learn a little about a distinctly Illinoisan phenomenon called the Tully monster...


LOVE, HONOR, AND OBEAH
CROSSOVER/MYSTERY
As my own "series," 10X, came to a conclusion at the end of 2003, Vickie generously invited me on board her own universe, Virtual Season. This story, written for a VS crossover challenge, is somewhat lighter and banterish. In what I feel to be a fitting touch, Love, Honor, and Obeah -- a story of witchcraft and the law -- features one of the stars of my XF Sunday replacement, The Practice. Read how ethically challenged Boston attorney Alan Shore, with the aid of our agents, defends a man who killed to protect his family from sorcery.


ASURYA LOKAS

HOLIDAY/HUMOR
This one, another short-short, was written for a VS Valentine's Day challenge. Mulder and Scully's parallel universe romance offered the backdrop for a story of post-911 paranoia, Eastern religion, and an impossible "murder" motivated by, well, it's a Valentine's story, right?...






MOA A MOANA
CASEFILE
My first full-length adventure in the VS universe, and probably my best-researched tale. Inspired by a recent Hawaiian vacation, this is a real fish story complete with genetically engineered "killer(?)" tuna, CIA experimentation, and island "little people." As for the title, look it up for a chuckle...


BANSHEE
PREQUEL
In honor of St. Patrick, we take you back to an early episode in the life of Fox Mulder, Oxford crinimal psychology prodigy, and his old flame, Phoebe Green, as he investigates a banshee in Dublin and a mystery that literally screams to be solved...



TRICK OR TREATISE
HOLIDAY/CASEFILE
As Virtual Season 12 commences, we find our intrepid agents knocking once again at the door to the unknown, on Halloween night. This time around, I lampoon the world of academics as I unravel this tale of serial murder and ancient ritual...


DARK MEAT
HOLIDAY/HUMOR
Mix Thanksgiving with a mildly demented family not unlike my in-laws, crazed gobblers, retro ghosts, and two visiting FBI agents, and you have a holiday tale flavored by my vocational interest in agriculture...


SLIM DICKENS
HOLIDAY/CASEFILE
I love time travel stories -- all those twisty, sinister, neck-snapping anomalies. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure may be one of my favorite riffs on the theme. So when I set out to write my VS12 buddies a Yuletide story, I decided to rewrite history with a zany, time-torturing Christmas Carol...


DOCKED
CASEFILE
One of my favorite X-Files X-periments was Kill Switch, that great William Gibson story of artificial intelligence and virtual life, with one of the greatest opening acts ever on TV. I tapped my own inside perspective on Congress and current affairs to compose this cyberspace adventure...


THE BICOASTAL, BILOCATED,
FLY-BY MURDER CASE

CROSSOVER/MYSTERY
Columbo meets Mulder again, this time in a tale of two horror writers, a killer who apparently can be two places at once, and a coupla guys who like to bust impossible crimes...


COLD FILE
CROSSOVER/MYSTERY
Here is a crossed-up salute to Philly Town, which I visited recently. Mulder and Scully help Det. Lilly Rush and the other members of Philadelphia's Cold Case Squad solve a murder and a radical bombing during the Summer of '69...


NICHTOPHOBIA
CASEFILE
Dark is fun, and this one is straight from the backside of the moon, asking cosmic questions about fate, genetics, violence, and the human soul. Plus, Vickie at VS12 generously allowed me to pull a fast one, offering an alternate world version of one of the key moments of Season Nine...


FIRST STRIKE
CASEFILE/HUMOR
Despite covering high school football and basketball for nearly five years on a daily paper, I must admit I'm no jockhead. But like all transplanted Central Illinoisans, I just gotta love the Cubbies -- the Chicago Cubs. But the Cubs enjoy a true love-hate relationship with the public, and thereby hangs my tale of baseball, homicide, and, yes, the supernatural...


COLONIAL MODERN
HOLIDAY/CASEFILE
Thanksgiving again, and Mulder and Scully must solve a series of small-town new England murders if they hope to make it home for turkey time...


STAR OF THE EAST
HOLIDAY
One of the pivotal moments in The X-Files was Mulder's final revelations regarding the fate of his missing sister in Sein Und Zeit/Closure, and I felt Anthony Heald (Harold Piller) turned in one of the series' best, most touching guest performances. Here, Mulder and Piller are reunited on Christmas Eve, with a parallel universe assist from DETECTIVE John Doggett...



GOD AND BAD PLANNING
CROSSOVER/MYSTERY
Crossover time again: This time, Mulder and Scully cross sabers and scalpels with Dr. Greg House, he of the world's most brilliant diagnostic mind and the planet's worst bedside manner. Plus, as the Law and Order folk say, we rip our story from recent headlines, adding a soupcon of lycanthropy...


LIED TO THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT ABOUT
UFO ABDUCTION

CROSSOVER/HUMOR
Two crossovers for one: Earl Hickey, the likable if incorrigible trailer park king of My Name Is Earl, runs afoul of Mulder, Scully, shrewish ex-wife Joy, and a pizza-loving alien...


DOGGED
CASEFILE/HUMOR
I am the most sports-deficient geek in Central Illinois. Thus, when I sought to submit a story for the annual VS sports special, I turned to the quasi-sport of competitive eating for quite possibly the grossest story I have yet writ...


Z1372
CASEFILE/CROSSOVER
Crossover craziness; a Bruckheimer buffet. CSI's Gil Grissom, Without a Trace's Jack Malone, and Cold Case's Lilly Rush and Will Jeffries lend a hand in a cross-country case of serial abduction, radical amnesiacs, Nazi secrets, and Mulder's own demons...


FRIDAY
CASEFILE
Take a little bit of Quentin Tarantino, a soupcon of David E. Kelley, and a touch of Ed McBain -- the father of the multi-plotted "modular" cop novel -- and you've got this tale of three agents pursuing three cases on a single Friday night.


AN XMAS CAROL
HOLIDAY/HUMOR/CROSSFILE
Morris Fletcher is back out on the loose/In a story inspired by one Dr. Suess/Dr. House makes a house call to Scully's dismay/And a fellow named Modell's having a bad day...




MACK'D
CROSSOVER/MYSTERY
The NYPD's most eccentric genius pairs up with the FBI's oddest agent to solve a Broadway murder with supernatural elements straight out of a Shakespeare tragedy, in this Criminal Intent crossover.


JUDGMENT CALL
cROSSOVER/MYSTERY
Raines was a six-episode wonder from NBC, with Jeff Goldblum funny and touching as a detective who talks to his dead imaginary victims. In this crossover, Raines teams up with Mulder to solve the murder of a judge who appears less imaginary than the average victim.



DOUBLE PLAY
CASEFILE
Another baseball story, once again played against my beloved Chicagoland. Chicagoland also is an epicenter of quantum research, via the Argonne National Laboratory, and therein lies the rub. Batter up!




FACETIME
CROSSOVER/MYSTERY
LAPD Deputy Police Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson is one of the greatest detectival creations on TV since Robert Goren, and since she lives in La-La Land and with one of LA's most diligent and patient FBI agents, it figured she'd lock horns with Fox Mulder. It's a case of facelifts, demons, and suspect virgins.




FILE X
cROSSOVER/HUMOR
The Sitcom and Dramatic Universes are seperated by a tissue-thin membrane. Here, Mulder and Scully pierce that membrane to investigate a mystical fishfall at the "The Office."



DOMINION
MOTW
Here's a story I reconfigured from my 10X site, reshaping the story of marine monstrosity and Melvillean obsession for the wiles of Mulder and Scully. This tale actually cobbles together some very strange-but-true scraps of actual postwar history and cryptozoology.




THE HOOK
HUMOR
Boys' night out, and you gotta know Mulder and his pals would run into the weird and uncanny even on a fishing trip.



FOOD FOR THOTH
HOLIDAY/CASEFILE/SEMI-CROSSOVER
It's Thanksgiving, and once again Mulder and Scully have to miss supper, this time for a case of ancient relics, modern physics, and a touch of nostalgia. Bones fans be advised -- or beware.



EL HABLAR
CON LOS MUERTOS
CASEFILE
Even on vacation, amateur detectives, cops, and paranormal investigators can't seek to avoid running into a little overtime. Welcome to the Mexican resort of Cozumel and to the celebration of The Day of the Dead.



RED FLAG
CASEFILE
Recently took my second trip to China, which is changing quicker than actresses behind stage at a '30s musical. Mulder and Scully are on bodyguard/detective duty with a traveling Cabinet official when a swarm of "skyfish" swoop down to grab some international headlines.

AND COMING SOON...