Elon Musk Says This Soviet-Born American Sci-Fi Writer Had 'Major Influence' On Him

Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that the science fiction writer Issac Asimov was a “major influence” on him.

What Happened: Asimov, who authored the “Foundation” series of books, which won him the Hugo Award, also wrote “Nightfall,” which was voted the best science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

On Wednesday, Musk reacted to a post that pointed out that the Foundation series by Asimov was a book recommendation from him

He said, “Had a major influence on me” in response.

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Why It Matters: This is not the first time Musk has professed his love for Asimov’s writing. He recommended to his more than 129 million followers on Twitter that they read the Foundation series in the “order that they were written.”

In a 2017 interview, he told RollingStone that he was “raised by books.”

Talking about Asimov, who was born in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1920, Musk then said, “Asimov certainly was influential because he was seriously paralleling Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but he applied that to a sort of modern galactic empire.”

“The lesson I drew from that is you should try to take the set of actions that are likely to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a dark age and reduce the length of a dark age if there is one.”

The billionaire entrepreneur, who heads SpaceX, has since then touched on the vulnerability of Earth multiple times and called for the colonization of Mars.

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