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Why Elon Musk is a gift to science fiction writers

Elon Musk presents a dilemma for the liberal science fiction writer and space enthusiast. He’s everything we hate, doing everything we need to deliver a human future in space. How do you write that future without falling towards hagiography or lazy caricature?

From maracas to MAGA to Mars

Or…Why Elon Musk is a gift to science fiction writers (even if you think he’s an arsehole)

I’ve been writing this post since the staggering success of the fourth test flight of SpaceX’s Starship in June 2024. Spaceflight fans like myself are united in our agreement that Starship is on a firm path to becoming the first fully-reusable heavy lift spaceship. If it succeeds, Starship will make space accessible on a scale that it has only been dreamed of since the beginning of the Space Age.

We’re less united in our opinions of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX. Since that flight, Musk has become co-President of the USA and a global champion of fascism1It doesn’t matter whether or not he’s a fascist: if it quacks like a duck, etc.. Yet it’s very possible that his impact on the human race will be as profound as Isambard Kingdom Brunel or Henry Ford. Which is a problem, because everything I learn about him indicates that Elon Musk is a monumental arsehole.

Three faces of Elon Musk: dancing nerd, Mr Thumbs-up and Trump's lieutenant.
From maracas to MAGA: who’s got two thumbs and loves fascists now? This guy.

Gwynne who?

And for the public at large, Elon Musk IS SpaceX. Gwynne Shotwell manages the company, but no-one outside of the spaceflight industry, space industry media and enthusiasts knows who she is. It’s Musk’s Xits and public appearances that get reported, SpaceX or otherwise (and these days, it’s mostly otherwise).

This isn’t a problem for right wing and libertarian authors, who tend to have a positive view of Musk’s personal and political foibles. It’s not so great if you think that praise should not be heaped on reactionary free speech ideologues who treat women as mobile child production units and shill for the far right at every opportunity.

And he’s on an extreme spiral: the first draft of this post didn’t have to accommodate his Nazi salutes, support for extremists in the UK or campaigning for a far right party in the German general elections.

Lost in space: Elon Musk’s irony

There was a time when Musk seemed like a cheeky nerd, dancing with maracas and a mariachi band to celebrate the launch of SpaceX’s first rocket, the Falcon 1, all the way back in 2002.

His journey to space began with a plan to land a greenhouse on Mars using a Russian rocket. Frustrated in this plan, he founded his own company to make spaceflight more affordable. Falcon 1 begat Falcon 9, a partially reusable launcher that achieved these goals and stunned the spaceflight industry. All over the world, startups are following the SpaceX path while aerospace giants like Boeing and Arianespace have foundered.

Then came Elon the Tweeter, comparisons with Tony Stark and a slow descent into self-caricature. Each step displayed a growing lack of irony that’s become one of his signature moves. Despite a cameo in Iron Man 2, Musk has done his best to forge a story arc that drives in the opposite direction to Stark’s, from awkward nerd jester to the cartoonish villain manipulating a comically evil emperor.

Fully automated space fascism?

That lack of irony became familiar to fans of Iain M Banks’s science fiction novels based in the Culture. Musk declared himself a fan in 2015, using the names of three Culture spacecraft for the barges that SpaceX uses to recover its Falcon 9 booster rockets.

The Culture is a far future post-scarcity techno utopia, ruled by godlike beneficent AIs called Minds. Among fans, the Culture has the tongue-in-cheek label of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. Increasingly, it seems to represent the opposite of the beliefs Musk espouses in public. Readers frequently identify him with Joiler Veppers, the ultracapitalist antagonist of the 2010 novel, Surface Detail.

So what lead to the SpaceX barge names? Perhaps Musk was trying to curry favour with sci-fi afficionados. Maybe he was trying to impress the musician Grimes, a self-declared Culture fan with whom he would later have a child.

Some say that a figure like Musk is an unavoidable step on the the way to the Culture. Others believe that he’s simply impressed by the might of the Culture’s military power and Banks’s dazzling space opera sequences. While it may be a non-aggressive utopia, the Culture is interventionist and responds to external aggressors with overwhelming force.

The only certainty is that Banks — an avowed socialist — would not have liked Elon Musk. He would have been at best amused, but more likely appalled, by Musk’s attempt to co-opt the Culture into whatever future he envisages for humanity.

Elon Musk: a Howard Hughes for the 21st century?

The ironic Iron Man comparisons go deeper when you consider the original inspiration for the Marvel Comics character: aviation industry pioneer Howard Hughes2The MCU retconned Hughes as Stark’s father, also called Howard.. Marvel founder Stan Lee called Hughes “an inventor, an adventurer, a multi-billionaire, a ladies’ man and finally a nutcase”. Hughes set up the Hughes Aircraft Company and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He produced movies, owned film studios, casinos and airlines, flew prototype aircraft and set aviation records.

Howard Hughes poses standing beside the tail of his Hughes H-1 Racer; three-quarter right rear view of aircraft.
The OG Iron Man: aerospace billionaire oddball Howard Hughes (credit: Smithsonian Institution)

There are strange parallels between them, good and bad. Both are synonymous with creative engineering, broad scientific interests, hands-on interventions, micro-management and hostility to workers’ organisations.

They’re both notorious womanisers, though perhaps with different motives. While Hughes had no children, Musk seems intent on fathering as many children with as many women as possible.

Hughes suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, opiate addiction, neurosyphilis and brain trauma from several air crashes. Musk’s eccentric personality and narcissism are matters of public record.

History’s daredevil, today’s jester

Where Musk plays the jester, Hughes was a daredevil who risked his life and reputation piloting untested aircraft. Even though it’s very reliable, Musk has yet to fly in his the SpaceX Dragon capsule. He’s also said that he won’t join any of the pioneering voyages to Mars, although he plans to die there.

When it comes to the media, Hughes owned the RKO film studio and bought several TV stations in Las Vegas. Musk owns Xitter and has made it his personal platform.

Hughes purged anyone with suspected communist sympathies from RKO when he owned it from 1948 to 1955. Beyond this, direct involvement in politics was limited to achieving his business goals. Musk continues to drive his business and personal interests headlong into far right politics. It’s hard to say which is the tail, and which the dog.

An artist's impression of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in space.
Crew Dragon: it’s a super-reliable spaceship but Elon Musk doesn’t seem in a hurry to get on board (credit: SpaceX)

Hughes’s decline bodes ill for Elon

If the Howard Hughes comparison has anything to say about the future of Elon Musk, it heralds an inglorious ending.

For the last decade of his life, Hughes moved from one hotel to another, including stays in Las Vegas, Hollywood, Boston, the Bahamas and Nicaragua. Addicted to codeine and terrified of germs, he often lived for months on end in darkened rooms, watching the same films and eating the same meals day-after-day. He conducted business through a shady cabal of intermediaries, although his eccentric decisions saw him ousted from control of many companies that he owned.

Hughes died, perhaps fittingly, on board a private jet en route to hospital, and was so unrecognisably unwell that the FBI had to use fingerprints to identify his body.

I’m not saying that this is how Musk’s life will unfold, but he’s unlikely to become less unpleasant and extreme as he ages. Barring a titanic reversal in his fortunes, he’ll continue to exercise enormous influence on both American and global politics through his businesses, political connections and media interests.

Writing the world Musk makes

While SpaceX and Starlink grab my immediate interest, it’s when they intersect with Musk’s toxic personality and politics that fascinating possible futures begin to emerge.

SpaceX revolutionised the global spaceflight industry by dramatically reducing the cost of access to space. Starlink is the first example of what can be achieved with this, and the consequences that arise. Astronomers, cellphone operators, communications satellite owners and disaster relief workers are all impacted, for better or worse.

Emerging domestic and international rivals will challenge Musk’s companies as the off-Earth economy grows. I see the middle of the 21st century as a competition between American commercial interests, quasi-commercial projects from whatever becomes of Europe3And Musk seems keen to give Europe a 1930s restro makeover. and an increasingly imperial China.

Notwithstanding global economic collapse or World War 3, it’s very likely that SpaceX will establish a human presence on Mars. Earth orbit will be a commercially and politically contested space, and the Moon hosts a lot of useful resources in a shallow gravity well. Both the Moon and Mars are undeniably hostile environments, but Mars is a remote location where any settlement must learn to support itself without rescue or resupply on any useful timescale. If humans are to live there, their culture will reflect the demands of Mars and the character of the founding father. Like any frontier, it will be a hard place to live.

SpaceX Starships beside a domed city on Mars
Elon Musk’s Mars: a shining city on a hill, or a city of broken dreams? (credit: SpaceX)

Elon Musk is not the main character

While it’s easy to cast Musk as a villain it’s more interesting to write about the people who will live uneasily in the world he defines. The drama will unfold around women, people of colour, those who identify as LGBTQ+, or even a cis-het male who loves them.

Their lives will be written upon a tapestry of predictions that we, as authors, choose to engineer. Mars is a big planet, the solar system a vast playground for competing and allied powers. Events will be further complicated by climate change, the emergence of AI, human-brain interface technology and anti-ageing technologies. Musk has fingers in many of those pies, along with strong opinions.

It’s sometimes hard to believe that Musk is not a fictional character escaped from some absurd contemporary satire. I’m not advising to make him an actual character — that’s a quick way to libel and poverty. But like Boris Johnson or Donald Trump, he’s a great model for a character. Even if you set your story a century from now, he’ll be a historical influence, assuming he hasn’t found a way to keep going.

Come to think of it, things have gone very quiet on cloning tech. Red Dwarf did Rimmerworld, but Muskworld?

Now that’s a horror story.

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