“The heroes of the books I read … always felt a duty to save the world,” he told The New Yorker. For those who’ve already read the books and seen the movies but are still hurting for more Middle Earth, Amazon is working on a Lord of the Rings TV series.

2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

In this comedic sci-fi book, a supercomputer finds the “answer” to a meaningful life: the number 42. To Musk, who read this as a young teenager in South Africa, the book was instrumental to his thinking. He was so enamoured with it that when he launched his Tesla Roadster into space in February, he put the words “Don’t Panic!” – which graced the cover of some early editions of the book – on the car’s centre screen.

When asked in a 2015 interview about his favourite spaceship from science fiction, he said: “I’d have to say that would be the one in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that is powered by the improbability drive.”

4. Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down by J.E. Gordon

When Musk started SpaceX, he was coming from a coding background, but took it upon himself to learn the fundamentals of rocket science. One of the books that helped him was Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down, a popular take on structural engineering by J.E. Gordon, a British materials scientist.

“It is really, really good if you want a primer on structural design,” Musk said in an interview with KCRW, a southern California radio station.

Because of his interest in rocket mechanics, Musk got intimately involved with the planning and design of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. He has served as the chief designer at SpaceX as well as CEO.

“The reason I ended up being the chief engineer or chief designer was not because I wanted to – it’s because I couldn’t hire anyone; nobody good would join,” Musk said during a talk in 2017 about how he plans to colonise Mars.

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4. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

Musk has repeatedly described Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers and an accomplished inventor, as one of his heroes.

Franklin was one of the first to prove that lightning is electricity in his famous kite experiment, which led to the invention of the lightning rod. He is also credited with inventing bifocals: glasses with two distinct optical lenses.

In this biography of Franklin, “you can see how he was an entrepreneur”, Musk said in an interview with Foundation, a platform for non-profits working on climate change issues. “He was an entrepreneur. He started from nothing. He was just a runaway kid.”

5. Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark

In Musk’s quest to learn and master complicated subjects, Ignition was crucial in helping him get a handle on rockets, he said.

John D. Clark was an American chemist who was active in the development of rocket fuels in the 1960s and 70s. The book is an account of the growth of the field and an explanation of how the science works.

Musk took the book’s lesson to heart when he was working on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket system. SpaceX used cryogenically cooled RP-1, a type of kerosene used in jets, and liquid oxygen to combust the fuel used to launch the rocket.

6. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

Musk has repeatedly warned against the dangers of unchecked artificial intelligence. “We need to be super careful with AI,” he tweeted in 2014, adding that it’s “potentially more dangerous than nukes”.

In a documentary about artificial intelligence called Do You Trust This Computer?, Musk said AI could be used to create an “immortal dictator from which we could never escape”.

To find out why these risks are so scary, Musk says it’s worth reading Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence, which makes the daring inquiry into what would happen if computational intelligence surpassed human intelligence.

7. Our Final Invention by James Barrat

Our Final Invention gives still more warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Musk called the book a “worthy read” in a 2014 tweet.

Barrat takes a close look at the potential future of AI, weighing its advantages and disadvantages. On his website, Barrat says the book is at least partly “about AI’s catastrophic downside, one you’ll never hear about from Google, Apple, IBM and DARPA (the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the US Department of Defence)”.

Musk agrees. “AI doesn’t have to be evil to destroy humanity – if AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it, no hard feelings,” he said in a documentary about artificial intelligence.

8. The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov

In addition to The Lord of the Rings books, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series made up part of Musk’s early interest in science fiction and fantasy. The books centre on the fall of the fictional Galactic Empire, which consists of millions of planets settled by humans across the Milky Way.

The stories may have had a huge influence on Musk’s career trajectory. Here’s what he said about the series in a 2013 interview with The Guardian: “The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China.

“We’re obviously in a very upwards cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not. There could be some series of events that cause that technology level to decline.

“Given that this is the first time in 4.5 billion years where it’s been possible for humanity to extend life beyond Earth, it seems like we’d be wise to act while the window was open and not count on the fact it will be open a long time.”

9. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

This award-winning science fiction novel, published in 1966, paints a picture of a dystopia not too far in the future. It’s exactly the kind of vivid fantasy world that would satisfy an active imagination like Musk’s.

In the book, several people have been exiled from Earth to the moon, where they have created a libertarian society. In the year 2076, a group of rebels – including a supercomputer named Mike and a one-armed computer technician – leads the lunar colony’s revolution against its Earth-bound rulers.

In an interview at an MIT symposium in 2014, Musk said the book was Heinlein’s best work.

10. Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Merchants of Doubt – now also a documentary – was written by two historians of science.

They make the case that scientists with political and industry connections have obscured the facts surrounding a series of public health issues, including tobacco, pesticide use and holes in the ozone layer.

Musk recommended the book at a conference in 2013 and later pointed to the book’s key takeaway in a tweet, saying that the same forces that denied that smoking caused cancer were denying the danger of climate change.

11. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark

If you’re sensing a theme among the books on this list, it’s that Musk is really into exploring the future of artificial intelligence.

In Life 3.0, the MIT professor Max Tegmark writes about how to keep artificial intelligence beneficial for human life and ensure that technological progress remains aligned with humanity’s goals for the future.

It’s one of the few books Musk recommends that deal with the possibility of AI as a force for good rather than evil.

12. Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

Musk is a big fan of Walter Isaacson’s works. In a 2012 interview, Musk recommended Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein, a man who left a profound mark on science and human history.

The book is based on Einstein’s personal letters and explores how he went from a young, frustrated patent officer to a Nobel Prize winner. It’s a story that likely inspired Musk.