Isaac Asimov has been one of the great influences of Jeff Bezos’s life. Two years ago, when the world’s richest man and Amazon founder unveiled his space company’s design for a lunar lander, he played a 1975 video clip in which the biochemist-turned-science-fiction writer converses with Bezos’s Princeton professor Gerard O’Neill about the possibilities of colonising space. A week later, The Economist wrote: “Mr Bezos is open about his

( Originally published on Mar 15, 2021 )