U.S. Prof Says Eleon Musk Aping Characters In Heinlein Sci-Fi Novel

Elon Musk says “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” is one of his favorite books. That checks out: The novel is about a lunar colony that bravely cuts off resources to its starving Earth dependents.

Photo Insert: “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert A. Heinlein

Musk styles himself as a character out of science fiction, posing as an ingenious inventor who will send a crewed mission to Mars by 2029 or imagining himself as Isaac Asimov’s Hari Seldon, a farseeing visionary planning ahead centuries to protect the human species from existential threats, Prof. Jordan S. Carroll wrote for Jacobin magazine.

Even his geeky humor seems inspired by his love for Douglas Adams’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

But while he may take inspiration from science fiction, as Jill Lepore has observed, he’s a bad reader of the genre. He idolizes Kim Stanley Robinson and Iain M. Banks while ignoring their socialist politics, and he overlooks major speculative traditions such as feminist and Afrofuturist science fiction.

Like many Silicon Valley CEOs, he primarily sees science fiction as a repository of cool inventions waiting to be created.

Musk engages with most science fiction in a superficial manner, but he is a very careful reader of one author: Robert A. Heinlein. He named Heinlein’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” from 1966 as one of his favorite novels.

The novel is a libertarian classic second only to Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” in its propaganda value for neoliberal capitalism. It inspired the creation of the Heinlein Prize for Accomplishments in Commercial Space Activities, which Musk won in 2011. Jeff Bezos is another recent winner.

The Heinlein novel popularized the motto “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” often used by defenders of capitalism and opponents of progressive taxation and social programs. It’s about a lunar colony that frees itself, via advanced and cleverly applied technology, from the resource-sucking parasitism of Earth and its welfare dependents.

In this instance, it appears that Musk correctly caught the author’s drift. Heinlein filled his fiction with loudmouthed men who claim to be accomplished polymaths. They boss everyone around, make decisions on a whim, and ignore advice regardless of the consequences. In other words, they act just like the CEO of Tesla, Inc.

Likewise, Musk often attracts investors through publicity stunts rather than proven science and engineering, a self-marketing strategy that puts him, as Colby Cosh has pointed out, in the same dubious company as Heinlein’s space entrepreneur D. D. Harriman in his story “The Man Who Sold The Moon.”

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic