Full Of Grim And Vigor From The Slightly Balmy Brain Of Writer Bruce Wagner Has Sprung Tv's Bizarre "Wild Palms," Airing This Week. Call Him The Perky Pessimist, The Happy Horror Guy.

HOLLYWOOD — It's lunchtime in the dining room of a pompous Beverly Hills hotel, and Bruce Wagner is talking about the wolf that, in the course of his fitful writing career, was always lurking nearby.

"Yeah, the wolf is some miles away now," Wagner says with a shrug. "But hey! He may come back. All you need is that test that comes back HIV-positive. Or you're at the 7-Eleven money machine feeling safe, and suddenly . . ."

The words trail off. There's a pause, then Wagner breaks into gleeful laughter that, despite the context, conveys a surprising amount of warmth. ''The wolf's always around! Listen - can you hear him now?"

And there you have the essence of novelist and screenwriter Bruce Wagner's wit and his wisdom. He may be the jolliest nihilist you'll ever meet.

The bleaker the image, the more cheerful he gets. Chunks of civilization may be falling in the yard like burning space junk, but it's all so . . . interesting. He's no rail-thin doomsayer with red-rimmed eyes and sepulchral voice. No, here is Wagner, 39, fit and energetic, his black eyes twinkling, his full lips peeling back with mirth as he catalogues the horrors waiting to descend upon us all.

He has several reasons to be so sanguine, but the most immediate explanation is that, with a degree of autonomy that still has him shaking his head, Wagner has created and written what is possibly the weirdest mini-series to kink up the usually flat airwaves of network television. That would be Wild Palms, starring Jim Belushi, based on the surreal comic strip that Wagner wrote and that until recently inhabited the back pages of Details magazine.

Palms, executive-produced by Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone in his first foray into television, premiered last night and continues through Wednesday on ABC (Channel 6).

Wild Palms is the story of patent attorney Harry Wyckoff (Belushi), hired by a TV network that uses a powerful new technology based on virtual reality. TV signals are translated into three-dimensional holographic images that appear in people's living rooms with lifelike intensity. Owned by a senator and presidential aspirant (Robert Loggia), the network is a prime tool in the villain's goal of world dominion.

Set in Los Angeles early next century, the show chronicles a rapidly deconstructing society gurgling beneath the surface of artificial reality, as the forces of good and evil clash. It's the Book of Revelation viewed through a cyberpunk lens.