Space Cadet

The solar system is a large, exciting and wildly dangerous place, and to bring any kind of order to it requires a special kind of man, and any special kind of man has to start somewhere. As a special kind of boy, usually. Because let’s get one thing quite clear here from the get go, there are no women space cadets, or even girl space cadets. They stay with their feet solidly on the ground of whatever planet or moon they call home and make cake.
Now that’s settled, we can get on with things. It’s the future. There are rocket ships and space travel. Mankind is colonising the solar system with the sort of sensitivity that usually applies to colonisation and, as mankind exports the necessary ingenuity and advanced thinking that making show more surviving and even thriving in the harsh environments of space and beyond, he also takes his baser elements. This is the frontier.
It requires a special sort of chap (no chapesses, I think we have established that) to keep order when your beat is millions upon millions of miles across, and before you can enter the ranks of the unimaginatively named Space Patrol that keeps order, or at least what humans consider order, across the solar system, you have to earn your place. Space is vast, rocket ships are tiny, expensive and, as we learn after the ‘unfortunate incident on the launch pad’, fragile. The men (no women, did I mention that?) of the Space Patrol are a mixture of ambassador, policeman, military, peacekeeper and explorer, and you have to be a special kind of man (not woman, not even a woman disguised as a man) to join the Space Patrol.
First step is being the right kind of boy (not girl, not even a girl disguised as a boy) judged worthy of becoming a space cadet. This involves a rigorous selection process of both physical and psychological tests designed to discover if you are plucky and clever enough to be trusted to look after others in space and hostile environments where not only is help very, very far away but you are that help.
Step forward Matt Dodson who, together with some chums, passes the tests and begins the process of rigorous training that will one day earn him a seat in Space Patrol.
Actually, the first half of the book is good stuff, told at a cracking pace. Matt is hardly flawless but to even get a place in the selection process he has to prove he’s got potential. The testing is good fun, especially when the candidates are strapped to a rocket on a rail and fired into a canyon at increasingly higher gee forces. Obviously they are not big on health and safety in the future.
Cadet school is rather less where to ray-gun an alien for maximum effect before claiming the mineral rights of the smoking corpse’s planet for Earth, and rather more about the science necessary to keep a spaceship going in space for prolonged periods.
The second half of the book is essentially the field test. A series of events land the three cadets on Venus with a broken ship, no way home and a very bleak looking future. They must rely on all their training and native intelligence, as well as the intelligence of the natives, to save themselves and get back home.
It’s all tremendously enjoyable. There’s threat and peril and plucky lads (no ladesses) winning out against all sorts of challenges and what is underlined, in bold, twice, is that it takes somebody really special to be a Space Patrolman. There’s even enough mythology about the founding of the Space Patrol and its role in an expanding sphere of mankind’s colonisation to give the reader pause and consider the deeper meaning of what it means to keep law and order at the outer reaches of civilization.
The first half of the book deals with the selection process for an elite body of men, with the second half of the book explaining just why the selection process is so rigorous.
A strong story with a straightforward plot with no surprises, but it’s no less gripping for all that. show less

The question of "what did Heinlein really think?" is open to debate. Is he a free love hippie, a la Stranger in a Strange Land? The ur-fascist militarist of Starship Troopers? The staunch survivalist of Time Enough for Love? The creepy racist and incest fan of books which shall not be mentioned?

I think that the 'real Heinlein' is on display here, in Space Cadet. Sure, it's one of his juveniles, but it deal with big issues, like what kind of people and institutions can be trusted to police a solar system and control forces which could wipe out all of humanity. The main characters are appealingly competent, well-meaning problem-solvers who through ingenuity, endurance, and diplomacy overcome the hazards of Space Patrol training, the show more asteroid belt, and the swamps of Venus. The book is solidly hard sci-fi, some hand-waving aside (waste products from nuclear rockets, the short range of radios, swamps on Venus), both in technology and sociology.

Now, the only open question I have is, is this a better book than Have Spacesuit, Will Travel? show less

I enjoyed this one much more than Rocket Ship Galileo. I think Space Cadet has stood the test of time well. Sure, you get some unavoidable examples of aged technology. Again, the failure to imagine how thoroughly computers would change everything is the main example, although I can't blame someone writing in the 40s for that. Science fiction or not, these are writers, not prophets. There are also many things we know now about the Solar System that were unknown then, so we get native Venusians and humans living there, while we now know that the temperature there is unsuitable for life. In other things, though, Heinlein makes some interesting extrapolations. The book has cell phones, for example, and teaching technology more advanced than show more anything we have now.

The novel also shows its age in the lack of women in the Space Patrol. It's exclusively a boys' club. On the other hand, the Patrol is international and everyone takes racial integration for granted, which seems normal now but for the time it was written was a bold step. Heinlein tries, and although others will disagree, I won't condemn him for not freeing himself of all the prejudices of his time.

However, what makes this work so well for me is that the writing style does not seem dated at all. The book does provide an optimistic view of the future that awaits young people as they grow up. While nowadays dystopian YA novels are prevalent, and society seems to be ready to screw young people and crush their dreams, in Space Cadet it is assumed that if you work hard and have a good attitude you can achieve success and acceptance, grow up as a person, see the universe and have a positive impact on it. Unfortunately, this may be old-fashioned in our more pessimistic age, but Heinlein works very well with this material...

I really enjoyed the training process Matt and his friends go through. It certainly reminded me of Starship Troopers but without the grumpy political lectures. Heinlein himself was at the U.S. Naval Academy, and it shows. He has a good understanding of how an organization like the Space Patrol would train youngsters to become good officers and what it would expect of them. The Cadets work hard, sometimes their workload seems impossible but never actually becomes so. They grow up and sometimes they have doubts about whether this is the path they are meant to take. I enjoyed how Matt despaired when he couldn't deal with his astrogration course, and how he felt tempted to join the marines instead, an organization also with proud traditions and a high purpose, where he wouldn't have to study so hard. The chat he had with his commanding officer then was quite good.

Another detail I enjoyed was how when Matt went home on leave he found out that he no longer really fit there. He had grown up and, although he of course still loved his family, his old home no longer felt like home.

All in all, the training process was done quite well. There was even normal banter between the teenage friends, which was something I missed in Rocket Ship Galileo. In the last part of the book we get to see Matt & company in action, with their commanding officer conveniently disabled. That part was a bit weaker. The Venusians were kind of interesting, but they sometimes seemed like the stereotypical "good savage" in the presence of colonists.

An excellent coming-of-age story and a good read even 65 years later. show less

A splendid little book, don't let yourself be kept away from it by the fact that it was written as a "juvenile" (old-speak for "young adult novel"). Heinlein's one concession to the age of his target audience is that his lead characters are, if I'm guessing right, about three to five years older than his expected readers. Their actual ages are unstated, which is clever of the old man, but we might assume they're about 18, plus or minus 2. Beyond this, the reader is expected to be able to handle any sentence and any idea that Heinlein can come up with in the course of the novel, a refreshing change from the age-appropriate nonsense fed to children today.

Though quite enjoyable and well-made, the plot through which these characters refine show more their Heinleinian virtues does not bear much scrutiny, as it is more or less a pastiche of the Three Musketeers. Suffice it to say that the plot will entertain you, just as it has been entertaining for the last two hundred years. The ideas in the book, on the other hand, are the real meat of it. Not simply the science-fiction wowie-stuff (in the first few paragraphs, we are given a cell phone and the proper etiquette of using such a device, not bad for 1948) but the constant flood of everything from ballistics and mechanics (how do you maneuver with a jet pack? how do you calculate the rate of spin of a space ship to produce one G on its outer skin?) to political philosophy (the Space Patrol has kept mankind from war for a hundred years - good or bad?) to the most basic questions of Socrates (at the Space Patrol, we believe that "a man who can think properly will necessarily behave morally" - true? or bunk?). All of this is presented in a way which requires the reader to engage with the questions in order to really engage with the novel. The result is a novel which, read by a person of even moderate intelligence, will produce a reader both smarter and more skeptical than the one who first opened the book, a real service to humanity. show less

The first sixty percent of the story follows young protagonist Matt Dodson as he undergoes rigorous training as a cadet in the Solar Patrol Space Academy. While there, he befriends fellow cadets Tex Jarman, Oscar Jensen from the Venus colony, and Pierre “Pete” Armand from Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.

Upon graduating from the Academy, Matt, Tex, and Oscar are assigned to the Patrol vessel Aes Triplex on a mission to the asteroid belt to locate the Pathfinder, a vessel reported missing during a scientific mission.

After successfully locating the lost ship, damaged as a result of a freak meteor impact, the Pathfinder is repaired and flown to Deimos, the outermost moon of Mars. Meanwhile, the Aes Triplex is assigned to investigate a deadly show more native uprising against the crew of the Gary, a merchant vessel that landed in the equatorial region of Venus. The cadets depart the Aes Triplex in a small rocket commanded by Lieutenant Thurlow, who is knocked unconscious after a perilous landing—leaving the cadets stranded in the swamps of Venus. Fortunately, Oscar is well acquainted with the customs of the amphibious natives, but can the cadets maintain peace with the rankled “Venerians” long enough to find a way off the planet and save Thurlow’s life?

Space Cadet differs from some of Heinlein’ other juvenile SF novels—such as Spaceman Jones and Citizen of the Galaxy—in that it does not offer much detail about the main protagonist’s background and is not a “rags to riches” tale. By the time we meet Matt Dodson, he has already arrived at the Academy fresh from his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa and returns home only once for a brief visit during leave. In fact, once Matt, Tex, and Oscar are assigned to the Aes Triplex, the role of the main protagonist is shared among the three.

I found that much of the first 65 percent of the book dealing with the cadets’ training could have been trimmed or condensed. Nevertheless, Space Cadet is a reasonably enjoyable adventure, especially in the final chapters dealing with the Pathfinder and the cadets’ subsequent adventures on Venus. show less

Like the other stories in Heinlein's "Scriber Juveniles" series our protagonist is an 18 year old boy who just graduated from high school. This time he's a guy who has decided to join the army. Except in the future of 2043 the Army is called the Patrol and their job is to stop war from happening (though superior fire power of course).

I struggled with how to rate this one because the idolization of national service is always dangerous, particularly for young people, and even more disturbing from someone many believe to be one of the forefathers of libertarianism.

But the story was good. I particularly liked the character of Tex and the never seen character of his uncle brodie. Great comedy.

review of
Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 7, 2015

Since I joined GoodReads in 2007 & decided to review every bk I read as a sort of intellectual exercise, I've had a rule to not let more of a backlog than 3 unreviewed bks accumulate. By the time I decided to read THIS I had that backlog of 3 & was already in the midst of reading something else. As such, I picked this as easy reading: something that wdn't drain my already endangered intellectual energy.

Heinlein published this in 1948, 5 yrs before I was born. His work was among the earliest SF I read. I've commented on him at least several times before in other reviews. He was important to me as a child but by the time I was in my mid-teens I more show more or less started to 'outgrow' him.

I was interested to read, in later yrs, Samuel Delaney commenting on Heinlein's non-racist perspective. Heinlein's definitely good for that & this bk demonstrates it well:

"Matt noticed two boys with swarthy, thin features who were wearing high, tight turbans, although dressed otherwise much like himself. Further down the walk he glimpsed a tall, handsome youth whose impassive face was shiny black." - p 7

These are the Space Cadets. Heinlein recognizes that astronauts must be judged on merit alone if the promise of the future is to bear fruit.

"'I welcome you to our fellowship. You come from many lands, some from other planets. You are of various colours and creeds. Yet you must and shall become a band of brothers.[']" - p 36

"Matt nodded. 'I know that they are described as being a gentle, unwarlike race. I can't imagine becoming really fond of them, but the spools I studied showed them as friendly.'

"'That's just race prejudice. A Venerian is easier to like than a man.'

"'Oz, that's not fair,' Tex protested. 'Matt hasn't got any race prejudice and neither have I. Take Lieutenant Peters — did it make any difference to us that he's black as the ace of spades?'" - p 134

I don't know when portable phones 1st appeared predictively in culture but this 1948 appearance strikes me as prescient: "[']Say, your telephone is sounding.' / 'Oh!' Matt fumbled in his pouch and got out his phone. 'Hello?'" (p 8) & while Heinlein was certainly forward-thinking he was surprisingly off in one prediction:

"USAF Rocket Ship Kilroy Was Here
FIRST TRUE SPACESHIP
1975A.D.
From Terra to Luna and return - Lieut. Colonel Robert deFries Sims, Commanding; Captain Saul S. Abrams; Master Sergeant Malcolm MacGregor.
None survived the return landing. Rest in Peace." - p 9

In actuality, 1969 was the date when the Apollo 11 made it to the moon & all lived on the return landing. Even Heinlein cdn't foresee such a stunning early success!

Heinlein's sense of how human nature works & how it shd be studied is tricky:

"'Excuse me, sir — but what's to keep a person from cheating by peeking?'

"The examiner smiled. 'Nothing at all. Go on to your next test.'

"Matt left, grumbling. It did not occur to him that he might not know what was being tested." - p 16

But Heinlein has ethics, this isn't the Heinlein of human interplanetary soldiers blowing away giant insects, this is the Heinlein of hopeful diplomacy:

"'It is not enough that you be skillful, clever, brave — The trustees of this awful power must each possess a meticulous sense of honour, self-discipline beyond all ambition, conceit or avarice, respect for the liberties and dignity of all creatures, and an unyielding will to do justice and give mercy. He must be a true and gentle knight.'" - p 36

This particular Heinlein strikes me as somewhat hard science:

"Getting the Bolivar from Colorado to the Randolph, and all other problems of journeying between the planets, are subject to precise and elegant mathematical solution under four laws formulated by the saintly, absent-minded Sir Isaac newton nearly four centuries earlier than the flight of the Bolivar — the three Laws of Motion and the Law of Gravitation. These laws are simple; their application in space to get from where you are to where you want to be, at the correct time with the correct course and speed, is a nightmare of complicated, fussy computation." - p 44

His description of a teacher demonstrating how to move around outside the space station in a space-suit with jet propulsion in a relatively gravity-free situation strikes me as well-thought out for 1948:

"'But I don't want to go to the Station; I want to come back to the ship.' The monkey died again; when the convulsions ceased, the sergeant was facing them. He cut in his jet and again counted ten seconds. He hung in space, motionless with respect to the ship and his class and a bout a quarter mile away. 'I'm oming in on a jet landing to save time.' The jet blasted for twenty seconds and died; he moved towards them rapidly." - p 67

I remember Heinlein as being someone who held on to what I think of as post-WWII positivity about military intervention long past its ideological erosion. Perhaps that's unfair to him. In Space Cadet he seems to have a less gung-ho attitude:

"A military hierarchy automatically places a premium on conservative behaviour and dull conformance with precedent; it tends to penalizse original and imaginative thinking. Commodore Arkwright realised that these tendencies are inherent and inescapable; he hoped to offset them a bit by setting up a course that could not be passed without original thinking.

"The method was the discussion group, made up of youngsters, oldsters, and officers. The seminar leader would chuck out some proposition that attacked a value usually regarded as axiomatic. From there on anything could be said.

"It took Matt a while to get the hang of it. At his first session the leader offered: 'Resolved: that the Patrol is a detriment and should be abolished.' Matt could hardly believe his ears.

"In rapid succession he heard it suggested that the past hundred years of Patrol-enforced peace had damaged the race, that the storm of mutations that followed atomic warfare were necessarily of net benefit under the inexorable laws of evolution, that neither the human race nor any of the other races of the system could expect to survive permanently in the universe if they forsook war, and that, in any case, the Patrol was made up of self-righteous fat-heads who mistook their own trained-in prejudices for the laws of nature." - pp 80-81

Or, maybe, this, too, is a gung-ho attitude insofar as it expresses a belief in the military's being able to be flexible (& replaceable) when that's called for for survival.

"'I know, I know — you are trained to use weapons, you are under orders, you wear a uniform. But your purpose is not to fight, but to prevent fighting, by every possible means. The Patrol is not a fighting organization; it is the repository of weapons too dangerous to entrust to military men.

"'With the development last century of mass-destruction weapons, warfare became all offense and no defense, speaking broadly. A nation could launch a horrific attack but it could not even protect its own rocket bases. Then space travel came along.

"'The space-ship is the perfect answer in a military sense to the atom bomb, and to germ warfare and weather warfare. It can deliver an attack that can't be stopped — and it is utterly impossible to attack that space-ship from the surface of a planet.'" - p 87

I found the description of astronaut training to be successfully claustrophobic. As I've probably written many times before, I was once a research volunteer for space station preparatory living in which behavior modification techniques were tried for keeping the astronaut mentally & physically stimulated in a restrictive environment. I enjoyed it. I'm not so sure I'd enjoy actually being isolated from this planet:

"Matt found himself thinking about Des Moines in a
late summer evening... with fireflies winking and the cicadas singing in the trees, and the air so thick and heavy you could cup it in your hand. Suddenly he hated the steel shell around him, with its eternal free-fall and its filtered air and its artificial lights." - p 82

Then again, Heinlein's realistic depiction of the myopic downsides of social-life-on-Earth help make the more visionary space patrol life seem attractive by contrast:

"Aunt Dora had not asked a thousand questions: she had asked just one — why had he waited so long to come to see her? Thereafter Matt found himself being informed, in detail, on the shortcomings of the new pastor, the marriage chances of several female relatives and connections, and the state of health of several older women, many of them unknown to him, including details of operations and post-operative developments." - p 92

"The Aes Triplex using an economical 'Hohmann'-type*

"*Hohmann, Dr. Walter—The Attainability of the Celestial Bodies, Munich, 1925. This pioneer work in astrogation written long before the flight of the Kilroy Was Here, remains the foundation work in its field. All subsequent work is refinement of basic principles set forth by Hohmann." - p 118

I'd never heard of Hohmann but I figured that he's an actual historical figure & not made up by Heinlein so I looked him up online: "In his spare time he devoted to celestial mechanics calculations, and in 1920 he published his book "Die Ereichbarkeit der Himmelskörper" (The Attainability of the Celestial Bodies). He developed basic principles and created advanced tools necessary for the conquest of space. His ideas were taken up for the Apollo program and the Voyager spacecraft (for example). Today he is considered a pioneer of space travel." ( http://www.att-essen.de/walter_hohmann_uk.html ) Heinlein nailed that one.

In the end, I was surprisingly impressed by this bk. Sometimes when I read something I find its influences deep w/in me already - at the core of myself. I don't think I read this when I was a kid but I certainly absorbed similar subtextual lessons from Heinlein from other bks of his. There's courage, imagination, & ethics that I can still identify w/ today. show less