Written and Presented by Jill Lepore

Streaming on BBC Sounds

Elon Musk is intent on shaping our future, but this podcast series explores how Science Fiction shaped him.

With apologies to Benjamin Franklin, ‘in this world nothing is certain except death, taxes… and that there are too many tedious podcasts about Trump and Elon Musk, all broadly saying the same stuff over and over and over again.’

Luckily however, Harvard History Professor Jill Lepore has found a fresh perspective, which Sci-Fi Bulletin regulars – even those allergic to politics – might find interesting.  We all know Musk is a geek, a rocket nut, a steroidal business man and ‘Tech-Bro’, but perhaps most influential of all is his love of SF and Superhero fiction.

Although Musk’s description of himself as ‘Dark Gothic MAGA’ seems superficially to refer to a specific U.S. far right tendency, in the first episode of X Man, Lepore suggests a more nuanced subtext, where Musk is identifying with Bruce Wayne – specifically Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight iteration – where Batman is as much a projection of Gotham’s corruption as its saviour. The oft-observed resemblance between certain Tesla models and the Batmobile is far more than a stylistic idiosyncrasy. There are also wry observations as to why Musk is definitely from the DC universe and not the Marvel one.

In the second episode, Dimension X, the analysis takes a more surprising turn digging into the influence of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the young Musk growing up in apartheid South Africa. If this seems unlikely, Lepore makes a good case for her theories, and by the end I sadly imagined poor Douglas Adams spinning at Improbability Drive speeds in his metaphorical grave.

Verdict: Whether or not you’re a fan of Musk or he sends a chill down your spine, X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story is an absorbing listen – if not an alarming one for anyone wanting their dystopias to stay firmly in the fictional realm. I’m already nervous for next week’s episode: Planet B. 9/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com