Jeff Bezos has his left foot propped up on a fire pit, his face illuminated by the flames. A drink in his hand, he's feeling relaxed, often bursting out in that signature bellow of a laugh. Joining Bezos at the firepit that night and over the course of three days at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, California are about 200 of the world's smartest and most accomplished people–among them: two astronauts, at least one Nobel Prize winner, the former head of DARPA, NASA's former number two, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich ("BK," he's called here), MythBuster Adam Savage, Segway inventor Dean Kamen, and so on. With cigars and whiskey in their hands, these global power players are talking earnestly about Big Issues: gravitational waves, ground-breaking tools for helping the deaf perceive the world in new ways, cutting-edge robot grasping technology, hyper-efficient 3D-printed rocket engines, and AI, always AI. Welcome to Amazon's MARS Conference–or, as Bezos calls it, "Summer camp for geeks." Amazon's has numerous reasons for hosting the event.

Adam Savage is known as the long-time co-host of MythBusters, and he currently helps run the science and technology website Tested. His latest project is a science fiction interview show called Syfy25: Origin Stories, which he produced in partnership with Syfy. "Science fiction has meant so much to me over the years that the minute it got mentioned to me I was like, 'Yeah! I'm in,'" Savage says in Episode 276 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Guests include showrunners like Ron Moore and David X. Cohen, authors like Neil Gaiman and Nnedi Okorafor, and media personalities like Chris Hardwick and Kevin Smith.

Syfy's epic space show The Expanse is a smash hit among science fiction fans, drawing praise from websites like io9 and Ars Technica and from celebrities like Adam Savage. Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley also loves the show. "This is my favorite show on TV," Kirtley says in Episode 248 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "This is the most serious science fiction TV show--in terms of what hardcore science fiction fans would want in a TV show--that I've seen in a long time, possibly ever." But while the show is widely praised in many corners, it has yet to attract a wider audience.