Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are turning science fiction into a legitimate business.

Key Highlights

• Elon Musk of Tesla and Jeff Bezos of Amazon are both capitalists, yet they also like the writings of Iain M. Banks, a Scottish anarcho-communist.
• Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk believe that mankind's migration to space is just a matter of time
• Despite widespread acclaim as one of the greatest science fiction shows ever created, The Expanse's production was suspended in 2018 after only three seasons.
• A crowdfunded resuscitation campaign brought it to the attention of Bezos, who heroically arranged for Amazon to take over production duties as a fan. "

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Elon Musk of Tesla and Jeff Bezos of Amazon are both capitalists, yet they also like the writings of Iain M. Banks, a Scottish anarcho-communist. Banks, a science fiction legend who died in 2013, wrote the Culture series, which included a dozen novels and short tales about The Culture, a highly evolved space society that lives in artificial homes across the Milky Way.

The Culture operates in a post-scarcity economy, which means that commodities are mass-produced with minimal human labour and made available at a low or no cost.Artificial intelligence is in charge of society, so humans no longer need to work. Karl Marx dreamed of a utopia, and The Culture is that utopia. Human beings who are no longer employed have unrestricted opportunities to realise their full potential.

In 2018, Musk tweeted, "If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best articulated by Iain Banks." Musk has named his three droneships (custom-built ocean platforms where rockets land after putting spacecraft into orbit) "Of Course I Still Love You," "Just Read the Instructions," and "A Shortfall of Gravitas," all of which are references to sentient spaceships from the Culture series. For his part, Bezos has been attempting to raise funds for an Amazon Studios adaptation of the first novel in the series, Consider Phlebas (1987), which he describes as a "big personal favourite."

On the other hand, both moneybags would have been considered bad company by banks. After parliamentarians failed to impeach Prime Minister Tony Blair after the 2003 Iraq invasion, Banks cut up his UK passport and mailed it to 10 Downing Street, an ardent socialist who opposed union-busting billionaires like Musk and Bezos. He stated he considered "crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife Dockyard," but decided against it because the passport concept was less violent.

Surely, it isn't Banks' ideology that motivates Musk and Bezos; rather, it is his unique vision of what life will be like once humanity has reached the stars. Both men believe it is only a matter of time until humanity migrates to space. "On this planet, we will run out of energy." It's only arithmetic. "It's going to happen," Bezos declared in 2019, as he unveiled a lunar lander created by Blue Origin, the spaceflight business he started in 2000 after consulting science-fiction author Neal Stephenson.

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SpaceX was created by Musk in 2002. What is his overarching philosophy? "It's really straightforward and heavily influenced by Douglas Adams and Isaac Asimov," he wrote on Twitter in 2018. "The Foundation series... was essential in the establishment of SpaceX." Adams is the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, while Asimov is the creator of the bestselling Foundation series. In 2018, SpaceX flew three Foundation books into orbit aboard a Tesla Roadster. Apparently, Musk's notion of giving a pleasant homage

Since acquiring the wherewithal, Musk and Bezos have been putting science fiction to work. According to Musk, they are "accumulating resources to assist in extending life to other planets and extending the light of consciousness to the stars."

They do, however, have divergent perspectives on humanity's post-Earth destiny. Musk is focusing on colonising Mars and developing a highly efficient transportation system in which settlers travel in gigantic capsules through underground vacuum tunnels, much like Banks described. Musk is already on board with Hyperloop, and his first Mars journey carrying humans is scheduled to launch in 2026.

Aerospace engineer Rand Simberg explained. "He is what Asimov would term a planetary chauvinist." "He believes that humans require planets. He aspires to be a species with multiple planets. I suppose that is quite lovely. However, Bezos has a more expansive perspective. "

Bezos, convinced that finding a planet as hospitable as Earth is near-impossible, plans to build planet-sized floating space stations in the solar system with weather similar to "Maui on its best days." He will refer to them as "O'Neill Stations," after American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill, who proposed the first human-habitable space habitats.

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While Bezos is neither a writer nor an artist, flashes of his pretty vast vision may be seen in The Expanse, a science fiction series that Amazon Prime has been streaming since 2019. The Expanse is based on James S.A. Corey's nine-book series set 200 years in the future. Humanity has colonised a large portion of the solar system, and Mars and Earth have developed into economic and military rivals who cooperate only to exploit the "belters"—a working-class population driven to survive in the underdeveloped asteroid belt. It is a planet similar to ours, but with a futuristic set of geopolitical, social, economic, and cultural issues.

Despite widespread acclaim as one of the greatest science fiction shows ever created, The Expanse's production was suspended in 2018 after only three seasons. A crowdfunded resuscitation campaign brought it to the attention of Bezos, who heroically arranged for Amazon to take over production duties as a fan. "Jeff Bezos was receiving emails from everyone from George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones) to industry titans like the founder of Craigslist, all of whom were writing to say, There is this show that is so great that you have to see it, you have to buy it, and you have to save it," said Jennifer Salke, Amazon Studios' chief.

The Expanse is currently in its sixth and ostensibly last season. The conclusion will be available on January 14. As with the Culture series, Bezos may be accused of failing to appreciate The Expanse's actual profundity, but no one can blame him for being impressed by its immense scope.

In 2019, Bezos stated, "The solar system is easily capable of supporting a trillion individuals," the year he delivered a public address outlining Blue Origin's space mission and Amazon began producing The Expanse. "With a trillion people, we would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts, as well as virtually unlimited resources." That is the world in which I wish to raise my great-great-grandchildren. 

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