Not only that, but Errol Musk, Elon’s father has been quoted that he read the book and named Elon after this character. And Elon’s grandfather was a member of a pro-Hitler fascist group in the '30s and '40s.
Parable of the Talents is a science fiction novel by the American writer Octavia E. Butler, published in 1998.
…
The novel is set against the backdrop of a dystopian United States that has come under the grip of a Christian fundamentalist denomination called “Christian America” led by President Andrew Steele Jarret. Seeking to restore American power and prestige, and using the slogan “Make America Great Again”, Jarret embarks on a crusade to cleanse America of non-Christian faiths.Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Talents_(novel)
Seems like a no, unfortunately.
Because, if the publishing history for von Braun’s book on Wikipedia is correct, then Errol couldn’t have heard about it when he was a child and used it as the basis for naming his son – as it wasn’t actually published until well after Elon Musk was born.
(It should be noted that the technical appendix to the book, which contained the specifications for the novel’s expedition to Mars, was published earlier: in Germany in 1952, and in English the following year – however, this appendix as it appears in Project Mars does not contain any mention of ‘Elon’.)
The article leaves it ambiguous whether Errol is embellishing or if it is true. From Errol’s quote in that article, it seems like a weird thing to make up.
When I was child we used to build rockets, and we used to read the books of Professor Hermann Oberth and Wernher von Braun, and they had these illustrated – they weren’t really comics, they were books – but they had illustrations and they were in German unfortunately.
But the adult at that time that we were with, who discovered Bennett’s comet – his name is Mr Bennett – he would tell us what the stories were saying, about going to planets and all that sort of stuff, and we could see the illustrations and everything. And Wernher von Braun’s book I think it was – his, or it could have been Oberth’s book – spoke about that the head of the Mars colony would be called the Elon.
Now I remember that, but I never thought of it as a name. [But] then when Maye and I got married I was quite amazed to discover that her father’s grandfather or something had been called Elon Haldeman, which really reminded me of the stories that we had, and so I thought ‘well yes, I’d like that name for Elon because it means something to me’.
