Wired.com presents

The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

And here is your host, David Barr Curtley.

Hello, and welcome to episode 154 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Ashley Vance, author of the new book Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and The Quest for

a Fantastic Future.

It's a biography of South African-born entrepreneur Elon Musk, who made over $100 million as one of the founders of PayPal,

then used that money to help launch leading companies in the fields of solar energy,

electric cars, and private spaceflight.

Musk is also a big fan of science fiction and comic books,

and credits them with inspiring his mission to help save the world through new technology.

And now here's our interview with Ashley Vance.

All right, so we're here with Ashley Vance.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

Okay, so you say in your book that you were initially a bit skeptical about Elon Musk.

Could you tell us about that?

Yeah, for sure.

You know, I guess I've covered Silicon

Valley for about 15 years for a few different places. I worked at the New York Times and at Business

Week. And I don't know, Elon always struck me as kind of the guy who talked the biggest,

but didn't always deliver on what he was talking about. I felt like I'd

...