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Remote Viewing Novel Links Star Wars Actor, Indiana Jones Writer

“We’re in an era where people are looking for ways to compete without dropping bombs,” Williams noted. “And this is one of the avenues people are examining. So I, at least, found it a very intriguing kind of subject matter, especially for television.”

The end of the government research programs also offered a bonus to writers. “After the C.I.A.’s top secret program ended, these people [the remote viewers] were finally free to talk,” MacGregor said. “Some of them set up Web sites, and they were very accessible and open to talking about what they had been involved with.”

Williams and MacGregor decided to focus their initial efforts on a book that would combine the realities of remote viewing with the eclectic, action-oriented character Williams wanted to play. The resulting novel, PSI/Net, debuted at DragonCon on July 1.

“PSI/Net takes up where the C.I.A.’s remote viewing program ended in November 1995,” MacGregor told reporters at the book’s DragonCon launch. “The idea is, even though the government supposedly is no longer involved in psychic espionage, the psychics — most of whom were military officers who retired when the program ended — still have their abilities.”

The book follows the story of one particular retired Air Force major and remote viewer, Trent Calloway. “Trent has an experience in which he sees numbers that related to the numbers used in the remote viewing program,” MacGregor continued. “For him, those numbers translated to the White House, but the White House five days in the future, after a backpack nuclear bomb had exploded in Washington, D.C.”

This gives Trent five days to convince the Secret Service and the F.B.I. that his vision is real, and stop the bombers.

Williams views Trent as a kind of centrifugal force. “He’s the pivotal character around which everything revolves,” Williams said. As an actor, Williams relishes the internal conflicts Trent develops as a result of being both a military man and a remote viewer.

To raise the potential for external conflicts, Williams and MacGregor did take one liberty with their research. “One of the differences between the actual program and the one in the book is that [the fictional remote viewers] were given a drug to enhance their psychic abilities, which allowed us to move up a notch or two in their abilities. As a result the whole group are connected in a psychic nexus, and it’s driving them crazy — especially when they’re split into two groups, and one of the groups becomes involved in the bombing,” MacGregor said.