Space Cadet
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| Space Cadet | |
 First Edition cover for Space Cadet |
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| Author | Robert A. Heinlein |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Clifford Geary |
| Cover artist | Clifford Geary |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Scribner's |
| Publication date | 1948 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | Rocket Ship Galileo |
| Followed by | Red Planet |
Space Cadet is a 1948 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about Matt Dodson, who joins the Space Patrol to help preserve peace in the Solar System. It was published as the second of the long running Heinlein juveniles.
The story at first appears to be a fairly imaginative and remarkably detailed exercise in translating the standard military academy story into outer space: a boy from Iowa goes to officer school, sees action and adventure, shoulders responsibilities far beyond his experience, and becomes a man. The book, however, goes on to explore some surprisingly sophisticated ethical issues through adventures that are much less militaristic than one would expect.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
In 2075, teenager Matt Dodson applies to join the prestigious Space Patrol. After a number of physical, mental and ethical tests, he is accepted as a cadet. He makes friends with fellow recruits William 'Tex' Jarman, Venus-born Oscar Jensen, and Pierre Armand from Ganymede; his first roommate is Girard Burke, the arrogant son of a wealthy spaceship builder. They are transported to the orbiting school ship PRS James Randolph for further training.
Burke eventually either resigns or is asked to leave, but the remainder do well enough to be assigned to working Patrol ships. Dodson, Jarman and Jensen ship out on the Aes Triplex. Their first real mission is to help search for a missing research vessel in the Asteroid Belt. They find it, but all aboard are dead, the unlucky victims of a fast-moving rock that punctured the ship when the armored outer airlock door was open. Before the accident, a researcher had found evidence that the planet which blew up to form the asteroids was inhabited by an intelligent species and that the explosion had been artificial. The captain of the Aes Triplex transfers half the crew to the repaired Pathfinder so that it can take news of the startling discovery back to Earth quickly. With the remainder (including all three cadets), he continues his patrol.
Then, he receives an urgent message to investigate an incident on Venus. He sends Lieutenant Thurlow and the cadets to the planet's surface. The lander touches down in a bad spot and sinks into the ground, barely giving the crew enough time to get out. Thurlow is injured and becomes comatose, forcing Jensen to take command. He contacts the sentient usually-friendly Venerians, but the entire party is taken captive. They soon find out why.
These particular natives had never seen human beings before, until old classmate Burke showed up in a prospecting ship. He had taken the matriarch of the local clan hostage when she refused to let him exploit a rich deposit of radioactive ores. The locals promptly attacked and killed his crew; Burke managed to send a message for help before being overcome by fumes and taken prisoner.
Jensen skillfully gains the matriarch's trust and the Patrolmen are released, but neither ship is flightworthy. Then the matriarch takes them to the carefully preserved Astarte, the legendary first ship to set out for Venus over a century before and thought to have been lost en route. According to the log, the crew perished from disease. The cadets recommission the ship and fly it back to (human) civilization. Dodson is initially disappointed when they are not treated as heroes--but then he realizes that what they accomplished was simply what was expected of Patrolmen.
[edit] Discussion
The Space Patrol is entrusted by the worldwide Earth government with a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and is expected to maintain a credible threat to drop them on Earth from orbit as a deterrent against breaking the peace. Matt, on a visit home, causes a family spat when his parents refuse to believe that the Patrol—and especially their son—would actually bomb Iowa. (In the 1950s, there was a great deal of discussion in the popular press of the idea that satellites could be used for bombing the surface of the Earth, and this book was in fact on the leading edge of this speculative current. While in fact no bomb-carrying satellites were ever constructed, the politics involved in Matt's quarrel with his family are still highly relevant).
The cadets are taught that they should renounce their allegiance to their country of origin and replace it by a wider allegiance to humanity as a whole and to all of the sentient species of the Solar System. They are told of four heroes/martyrs whom they should seek to emulate. Heinlein later expanded one of these anecdotes into the short story, "The Long Watch". Another tells of Rivera, who ordered the nuclear bombing of his own hometown because the dictator in power there was doing something unspecified which posed a grave enough risk to world peace. The bombing also claimed Rivera's own life, at his specific order.
The young, starry-eyed Matt feels that he should be able, if the need arises, to emulate Rivera and destroy his own Iowa hometown with his family and friends in it. But his father tells him such a "need" would never arise, since the Patrol's cosmopolitan allegiance is little more than a sham and in fact it is controlled by the United States and serves its interests. Later, Matt's mentor in the Patrol makes him consider that the Patrol acts within political realites that make his father's statement correct in practice. However in doing so, the mentor uses this scenario to force Matt to confront the personal and political issues involved in the institutional control of atomic weapons in a more mature way.
Written almost a decade before the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and at a time when non-white characters were almost entirely absent from science fiction, the book also explores the theme of racism, both literally, in discussions of the cosmopolitan racial makeup of the (all-male) Patrol, and metaphorically, in its description of conflict with the Venerians. Venus is described (incorrectly, as is now known) as an intensely hot and swampy, but nevertheless habitable, world. The Venerians are at first thought to be primitive, but it is later revealed that they have a high level of technological sophistication, though developed along radically different lines than that of humans.
There is also a subplot revolving around the issue of what it means to be a good soldier. The Patrol is presented as a thinking person's military organization (its motto is Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?), in contrast to the Marines, who are trained to prize unquestioning loyalty and bravery as the highest ideals. Discouraged by the intellectual demands of his Patrol training, Matt requests a transfer to the Marines, but is dissuaded by his mentor.
[edit] Adaptations
This juvenile novel inspired Joseph Greene of Grosset & Dunlap to develop the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet comic books, television series, radio show, comic strip, and novels that were popular in the early 1950s. Greene had originally submitted a radio script for "Tom Ranger and the Space Cadets" on January 16, 1946, but it remained unperformed when Heinlein's novel was published.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources, external links, quotations
- Space Cadet publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Robert Heinlein and the Tom Corbett Space Cadet Universe
