How Science Fiction and Midcentury Angst Shaped Elon Musk
A historian traces the Tesla founder’s passion for space exploration and other futuristic pursuits to dystopian novels and a grandfather’s eccentric convictions.
Joshua Haldeman, circa 1926, left, and grandson Elon Musk, during a “Saturday Night Live” skit in May, bear a striking resemblance.
Source: Haldeman Papers/NBC
Where does Elon Musk get his ideas from? What is he trying to achieve and who does he want to be? Many of us are desperate to understand the world’s richest man, whose electric vehicle maker Tesla is now, according to the stock market, worth a trillion dollars. Jill Lepore, a historian at Harvard University, suggests Musk was shaped by his adolescent love of science fiction and the strange, science-obsessed politics of his Canadian grandfather.
Joshua Haldeman was a flamboyant character. Trained as a chiropractor, he performed in rodeos and sought adventure as an amateur archaeologist and pilot. After emigrating to South Africa with his family, he led a series of expeditions to find the mythical Lost City of the Kalahari. He died in 1974, when Elon was still a small child, but a photo shows that grandfather and grandson bear an uncanny resemblance.