A new story has arrived from the mind ofDavid Duchovny, best known for his work onThe X-Files. Besides acting as one of the series leads, Fox Mulder, Duchovny also assisted in writing or co-writing several episodes. Such as “The Unnatural,” which was also directed by him. He has also been promoting his new book,The Reservoir.
PerKGW,The Reservoiris a dark story but contains Duchovny’s humor throughout. It follows a Wall Street veteran named Ridley who “devolves into madness while taking photos from his apartment window overlooking the reservoir in New York City’s Central Park.”
“He starts to recognize a pattern across the way on Fifth Avenue, like flashing lights,” Duchovny said. “Like maybe there’s a Rapunzel or damsel in distress, or somebody who’s communicating to him across the divide of the park and the pandemic; the park being like a moat. Actually, what he’s done is he’s contracted COVID and he’s descending into delirium. That also keys into the delirium of all of us, at this point, and all the conspiracy theories and the reservoir being the symbol of like the unconscious underneath it.”
Duchovny is also penning an original graphic novel about sentient alien life among the stars. TitledKepler, Duchovny co-wrote the book alongside comic industry veteran Phillip Sevy, who also handled the illustrations, letters, and colors. The story unfolds on the titular planet where homo sapiens (which translates as “wise man”) have gone extinct, and in their place, other hominid species have thrived. However, the peaceful existence of Kepler is threatened by the sudden return of “benevolent space gods.”
The Bendaem are beings who leave nothing but chaos in their wake. West, a 16-year-old Neanderthal with a mixed hominid heritage, is Kepler’s only hope of exposing the gods and preventing global extinction. With themes of colonialism, religion, history, adolescence, and environmental disaster, Kepler sounds like it might be a must-read for fans of allegorical science fiction works like 1968’sPlanet of the Apes.
“What if we, humans got another chance with a fresh new world we hadn’t depleted and polluted? What if we entered into a new phase of colonization, space colonization — would we have learned from our genocidal colonial past? And what if, instead of indigenous peoples we were displacing and decimating, we came upon other types of hominids from our distant earth past? Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other intelligent evolving primates native to Kepler. Would we treat them as the evolutionary brothers and sisters they are? Or would we play God and try to remake them and this planet in our own image? I guess this graphic novel is my working out the answer to those questions,” Duchovny writes over an email withForbes.
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The Truth is Out There
OnThe X-Files, aliens had a largely antagonist role, with a few exceptions, such as in “The Unnatural,” working with a shadowy government agency to prepare Eath for eventual colonization. It sounds as if Duchovny is going in the other direction withKepler, which sounds like it’ll be more likeStarship Troopers, where humans are the evil alien invaders. Quite a change from most science fiction works.
“I’ve seen the company shifting and pivoting away from a lot of licensed books to returning to their roots of cutting edge, genre-pushing creator owned books. I’m excited to be on the forefront of their shift back to new books and ideas. To be able to do an original book with the company that gave voice to so many comic auteurs like Mike Mignola, Frank Miller, Gerard Way, and Jeff Lemire is a very exciting thing,” said Sevy during a 2019 interview, while discussing the topic of Dark Horse.
The hardcover edition ofKeplerwill arrive in comic shops on November 16 and in general bookstores on November 29. It is currently available to pre-order at $19.99. Besides this, Duchovny has written several other books as well. Such asMiss Subways: A Novel, Bucky F*ucking Dent,andHoly Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale
