Alex Garland says Elon Musk's real-world projects like Tesla and SpaceX shape how he writes science fiction. He's most drawn to space travel and the idea that humanity needs to expand beyond Earth, and he owns a Tesla himself.
Drawing inspiration from real life. So for, for devs, for ex machina, look at characters like Elon Musk. What do you think about the various big technological efforts of Elon Musk and others like him and that he's involved with, such as Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink. Do you see any, any of that technology potentially defining the future worlds you create in your work? So Tesla is automation, SpaceX is space exploration. Neuralink is brain machine interface, somehow merger of biological and electric systems.
In a way I'm influenced by that almost by definition because that's the world I live in and this is the thing that's happening in that world and I also feel supportive of it. So I think amongst various things Elon Musk has done, I'm almost sure he's done a very, very good thing with Tesla for all of us. It's really kicked all the other car manufacturers in the face, it's kicked the fossil fuel industry in the face and they needed kicking in the face and he's done it. And so that's the world he's part of creating. And I live in that world, just bought a Tesla in fact. And so does that play into whatever I then make? In some ways it does, partly because I try to be a writer who quite often filmmakers are in some ways fixated on the films they grew up with and they sort of remake those films. In some ways I've always tried to avoid that. And so I look to the real world to get inspiration and as much as possible, sort of by living, I think. And so, so yeah, I'm sure.
Which of the directions do you find most exciting?
Space travel.
Space travel. So you haven't really explored space travel in your work. You've said, you've said something like if, if you had unlimited amount of money, I think on a Reddit AMA that you would make like a multi year series Space wars or something like that. So what, what is it that excites you about space exploration?
Well, because if we have any sort of long term future, it's that it just simply is that if energy and matter are linked up in the way we think they're linked up, we'll run out if we don't move. So we gotta move. But also how can we not. It's built into us to, to do it or die trying. I was on Easter Island a few months ago, which is, as I'm sure you know, in the middle of the Pacific and, and difficult for people to have got to. But they got there and I did think a lot about the way those boats must have set out into something like space. It was the ocean and how sort of fundamental that was to the way we are. And it's the one that most excites me because it's the one I want most to happen. It's the thing. It's the place where we could get to as humans. Like, in a way, I could live with us never really fully unlocking the nature of consciousness. I'd like to know. I'm really curious, but if we never leave the solar system and if we never get further out into this galaxy or maybe even galaxies beyond our galaxy, that. That would. That feels sad to me because. Because it's so limiting.
Yeah. There's something hopeful and beautiful about reaching out, any kind of exploration, reaching out across Earth centuries ago and then reaching out into space. So what do you think about colonization of Mars? So going to Mars, does that excite you, the idea of a human being stepping foot on Mars?
It does. It absolutely does. But in terms of what would really excite me, it would be leaving the solar system. In as much as that, I just think. I think we already know quite a lot about Mars and. But yes, listen, if it happened, that would be. I hope I see it in my lifetime. I really hope I see it in my lifetime. It would be a wonderful thing.
