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 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 SPACESHIP1975A.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 alate 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_hohman... ) 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.
4.0 stars.At first perusal, Robert Heinlein’s Space Cadet seems a strange novel. But, upon reflection . . .October 29, 1929:The United States Stock Market undergoes its final “crash.” Only a few months prior, a hopeful, young man, Robert A. Heinlein, 22-years-old, graduates from the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in Naval Engineering.August 1934:Five years later, in the midst of the Great Depression, Lieutenant Heinlein, 27-years-old, still a young man, spends weeks in a hospital—then to be discharged from military service due to tuberculosis.September 1, 1939:Mr. Heinlein turns 32-years-old; and, across the Atlantic, Adolph Hitler’s tanks cross over into Poland thereby starting officially World War II, the world’s second “total war.”December 7, 1941:Japan attacks the United States Naval Base, Pearl Harbor. Robert Heinlein, then 34 years-old, sees the installations of his previous military branch devastated and subsequently, his country enter the war.September 8, 1944:Germany puts into action the “retribution” or “vengeance” weapon; and the V-2 rocket attacks begin. Robert is then 37-years-old.From his naval academy graduation and commissioning forward, from the beginning of his adult life to the dawn of his middle-age, Robert A. Heinlein, like his contemporaries, experienced an entire world’s furious descent into total war and destruction.Amidst this, Robert Heinlein begins writing, his then fourth career. And, as he turns 40-years-old, two years after the war’s end, his “strange” novel Space Cadet heads to the publisher, then appears.The novel’s “strangeness” comes from the incongruity between its genre, (science fiction adventure), its then intended audience, (“juveniles”), and the serious and very mature ideas which the novel presents. But then, this author writing of some fictional future world apparently decided to write for some real future people.And so, given the events that pervaded his entire adult life, Heinlein, in Space Cadet pens a possible future where Peace is the way. Indeed, given the “atomic arsenal” described in the novel, Peace is the only way. And, following this, his young characters, (boys / young men), thereby achieve excellence through selflessness, (care), continual learning / study, and “right” moral action.This main idea of “peace,” the author reinforces by exploring war, (annihilation) and peace, the many and the one, (sacrifice), the self and the other, (racism), and private interest and glory-seeking opposed to the good, the noble, and the just. And, underlying these, Heinlein obliquely lays a foundation of the outward contest aspect of males in relief against the “domestic,” familial, and caring aspect of females. Additionally, this early novel seems, in some ways, to be a precursor to the worlds Heinlein later builds.Given the novel’s various accompanying artwork, plot summary, and blurb, a reader may expect a fast-paced adventure story with all the accompanying sci-fi gadgets. Unfortunately or fortunately, the reader learns that Heinlein “weighs down” both with extensive reinforcement of his ideas and technical explications.Yet, Heinlein’s novel still captivates. The dynamic between the Patrol’s ideals and the self-interest of the Federation’s citizenry becomes not only timeless, but especially today, prescient. The very deliberate creation of Venerian society as matriarchal and “bisexual,” (in today’s discourse, Heinlein’s meaning translates to “asexual”), coupled with dialogue about race and recognition of “a people,” anticipates a changing United States, and hopefully, a “better” society and culture. Lastly, Heinlein presents an indictment against human nature itself, describing man, (human), -kind as innately possessing “a cussedness.” And, this surprising statement provides an even greater motivation to present and explain the Patrol’s inspiring philosophy of excellence.Despite all the accomplishments, Space Cadet still has obstacles for the reader. The author’s obscuring of the cadets’ ages for over half the novel becomes a most frustrating experience, though finally, he does provides an anchoring clue.Though many readers may enjoy a novel in which the first two-thirds of the narrative follow a character through a military course, some military or veteran readers may find this incredibly boring. The author saves himself and the reader, though, by providing somewhat detailed explanations of the science behind the workable ships and gadgetry.Additionally, though a sci-fi adventure novel, the author nevertheless stretches believability with a particular major event and the “super-trooper fix-it” abilities of some of the characters. Lastly, Heinlein’s cadet characters suffer from a lack of development. Even a sentence or two more for each cadet could have further distinguished each from the other.Because he writes “in layers,” Heinlein “saves” his novel from its worn “military coming-of-age” plot structure by giving attention to actual science, creating a specific and prescient political landscape, and balancing the adventure with serious, and even dark, ideas. And, through his “world building,” he suggests a positive future, one hopeful—despite a history of such devastation.For such a “little young adult,” adventure narrative, Heinlein presents very big, fundamental, and pressing ideas: “What is civilization,” for example. And so, despite frustrations, Space Cadet makes quite an impression.And, given the recent popularity of Collins’ The Hunger Games series, Space Cadet could return to the bookshelves, then land into the hands of young people, once again. Perhaps then, this novel will not seem so “strange.”Out of a seemingly driving curiosity, I could not help but check on this novel’s Lexile Level. Unfortunately, those reviewers apparently have not yet “scored” it.Hmmm.That is strange.
What do You think about Space Cadet (2005)?
This is one of an ongoing series of rereads, as I work through the Virginia Editions of Heinlein’s novels.Space Cadet was Heinlein’s second published novel, after Rocketship Galileo (reviewed here). It is seen as the second in Heinlein’s ‘juvenile novels’ that were written for a teenage and predominantly male readership.These days the term Space Cadet is one of the most recognised in SF. The story is now easily summarised as ‘boy leaves home, goes into space, trains as a space cadet and becomes a spaceman’. This book in particular is perhaps better remembered as the inspiration for the television series, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.Our hero is not Tom Corbett but Matthew (Matt) Brooks Dodson. Set in 2075, Matt is a farm-boy in Iowa who has always dreamed of travelling into space. When old enough, he applies to the Space Patrol. After entrance exams, he gets in and much of the book’s beginning is about Matt being away from home on the Earth-orbiting school, the PRS James Randolph, and being trained to cope with all the potential hazards of space. He becomes friends with William 'Tex' Jarman, Venerian Oscar Jensen, and Pierre (Pete) Armand from Ganymede, all worthwhile fellows, but gets on less well with Girard Burke, the haughty son of a wealthy spaceship builder.Matt and his fellow trainees have to adapt to all sorts of crises – exams, zero gravity, education by hypnosis, meteorites in space, derelict spaceships, alien races – before being qualified to be space patrolmen.Whilst on patrol Matt helps retrieve a derelict spaceship from the meteorite belt but then he and his colleagues are then sent to deal with a call for help on Venus. OK: these days, the story isn’t that groundbreaking: even Harry Potter’s used something similar. But when first written it must have been quite exciting as a possible future for optimistic teenagers of the 1940’s and 1950’s. People genuinely thought after the devastation of WW2 that this was quite plausible. And here was Heinlein, showing the reader the way... at a time when no man-made satellites were in space, here was a tale thinking optimistically ahead, to a time when space travel was quite possible.And Heinlein makes it sound as realistic as possible, using and explaining lots of scientific principles along the way to show how life would be different (and perhaps more exciting) in space. He was known for accuracy on such matters and the tales of Heinlein and his soon-to-be wife Virginia writing pages of calculations to make the story ‘just right’ deserve some credit. At times, this can come across as ‘info-dump’, though not as glaringly obvious as it could be. There are at times lists of the things that Matt and his fellow trainees have to be trained in, which can be quite clumsy but get their point across: you have to learn a lot to be a Space Patrolman.The characters themselves are quite straightforward, as perhaps we might expect. Heinlein here was trying to extol the virtues of a disciplined, possibly military lifestyle, as his was when he was at Annapolis Naval Cadet School. This was a book designed to be an exciting read which also showed that ‘good guys get results’. Matt is the typical hero-figure, a likeable if rather idealistic moral character that makes his way via dint of good work. It’s clearly a YA book, as the prodigious use of “Gosh!” and “Golly!” shows.Interestingly Heinlein’s politics here reflect ideas at the time, with the Space Patrol having a monopoly on nuclear weapons and being given powers by what we would now see as a World Government or the United Nations (which was created in 1945, just before the time of writing.) By having one multi-national, if not multi-planetary, force to govern with super-weapons, it removes the very real post-WW2 threat of individual countries using them for their own needs. It also introduces the dilemma to Matt as to whether he could use atomic weapons on the United States if he had to. On Matt’s visit home to Earth, Matt’s father, in a wonderfully self-absorbed (some would say arrogant) manner, explains to the family that it would never happen in real life because ’For all practical purposes the other nations don’t count. A majority of the Patrol officers are from North America.’ (p103). Heinlein puts Matt in an interesting position whereby he, for the good of humanity, has to face that possibility, even when those outside the esprit of the corps do not. Heinlein’s view appears to be that the Patrol would do it, if they had to. Clearly, the politics here is ‘Starship-Trooper-light/lite’ but still here.More subtly, Heinlein here was able to deal with issues of school life, such as bullying and corporal punishment, not to mention racism, because we have students here of other races, people of colour as well as of other planets. This would have been quite radical at the time. Less surprising is the relative non-inclusion of women/girls who, although they are mentioned occasionally, are generally seen as a distraction for these trainees. Whilst we would not be happy with such a choice today, it is perhaps understandable from a 1940’s perspective in that, like naval camp, girls didn’t go into space, and perhaps the publishers felt that such an inclusion would put off their target readership. Girls did read Heinlein, just not that many of them by comparison.This doesn’t stop Heinlein playing with the genders a little, though. What Heinlein does that is most sneaky is make the Venerian leaders, scientists and medical staff that the crew meet all-female, as the males are allegedly kept separate, locked away somewhere else. It is the males who seemingly are less important on Venus. Talk about teenage boys seeing women as an alien species – here Heinlein achieves it, without making it obvious. Sadly out of date, now, but acceptable at the time and consistent in Heinlein’s universe, was the depiction of Venus as a humid jungle-swamp planet, colonised despite considerable difficulties. When Matt and his fellow cadets are summoned to assist in a major crisis on Venus, their spaceship sinks into a sinkhole of mud and Matt and his team barely survive. They are clearly in a frontier-type environment, a point emphasised even more when they are captured by what would, in other pulp novels, probably be referred to as the indigenous natives. The similarities between this and the North American Indians of the United States is not a delicate one. However, eventually the Venerians are persuaded that the cadets are not there to mine their valuable radioactive ore and mean no harm, so are allowed to return to their colleagues.The aliens themselves are interesting with Heinlein cleverly giving us hints about their culture and lifestyle as the cadet crew determine what to do in their captivity. Of course it does help that (rather conveniently) one of the cadets (Oscar) is from Venus and so can speak the local lingo. Things could’ve been much messier if there hadn’t been!Although there are aspects that haven’t dated too well (we are looking a book over sixty years old!), I found this one to be much better than Rocketship Galileo. Heinlein was developing rapidly as a writer. Clearly knowing what was needed to keep his readership entertained, this is an exciting adventure tale that taps into all of the exciting possibilities of space that were inherent at the time of writing. Perhaps based on all the things that Heinlein admired as part of his own military training, it is also an optimistic view of the consequences of space exploration that we were supposed to have, through a student’s personal rite of passage, and is brave enough to tackle issues of culture and race at a time when such things were uncommon in fiction generally, never mind SF.Whilst not entirely top-notch Heinlein, many of his themes recognised later are present (and will be revisited later in books such as Starship Troopers.) Whilst we may criticise it today for the apparent simplicity and straightforwardness of the tale, there’s a lot here still to enjoy.
—Mark
This is the seminal novel of a young man's education as a member of an elite, paternalistic non-military organization of leaders dedicated to preserving human civilization, the Solar Patrol, a provocative parallel to Heinlein's famous later novel, Starship Troopers (which is about the military).Only the best and brightest--the strongest and the most courageous--ever manage to become Space Cadets, at the Space Academy. They are in training to be come part of the elite guard of the solar system, accepting missions others fear, taking risks no others dare, and upholding the peace of the solar system for the benefit of all.But before Matt Dodson can earn his rightful place in the ranks, his mettle is to be tested in the most severe and extraordinary ways--ways that change him forever, from the midwestern American boy into a man of the Solar Patrol.
—Aries
Classic SF! You know, for 1948, the author got much of his speculation right, except for Venus.This is one of his juvenile books where we follow the adventures of Matt Dodson, a teenager who joins the Space Academy in the hopes of joining the Solar Patrol.Matt is a very straight laced kid who makes good friends along the way. The academy is not an easy place to learn and he is challenged continually.I liked the book quite a lot but I found the ending bogged down and I did not enjoy it as much. With the explosion of Young Adult fiction these days this book can hold it's own, even though it may read a bit stiff compared to more contemporary works.
—Eric
