Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg share a favorite author: Iain M. Banks, the Scottish science fiction writer best known for his Culture series. Banks is an odd choice for a bunch of tech billionaires. The author, who died in 2013, was a socialist and avowed hater of the super-rich. The most avowed Culture fan among the broligarchs, however, is Musk. Plenty of us like and even identify with pieces of pop culture whose politics we don’t entirely agree with. Still, the Banks Culture series is not politically coded so much as it is downright didactic. The politics of these books is not subtle, and they are also not compatible with the existence of billionaires. So it’s worth thinking about why the broligarchs have so consistently cited a socialist author as an inspiration. What do they find tantalizing about Banks’ work? Are they missing the point altogether? Read more from senior correspondent Constance Grady: https://voxdotcom.visitlink.me/gUbawx