Space Cadet
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Space Cadet is a 1948 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein about Matt Dodson, who joins the Interplanetary Patrol that keeps the peace in the solar system. The story at first appears to be a fairly unimaginative exercise in translating the standard military story into outer space: a boy from Iowa goes to boot camp, sees action, and becomes a man. The book, however, goes on to explore some surprisingly sophisticated ethical issues.
The Patrol is entrusted 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 their son) would actually bomb Iowa. (In the 1950's there was a great deal of discussion in the popular press of the idea that satellites in outer space could be used for bombing the surface of the earth, and this book was in fact on the leading edge of this speculative current. However, the laws of physics make this a dubious proposition, since a bomb in orbit cannot be "dropped" -- it is already in free fall! -- and there is a tall angular momentum barrier that makes it impossible for it to reach the Earth's surface without the expenditure of a great deal of rocket thrust.)
Written almost a decade before the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and at a time when nonwhite 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 Patrol, and metaphorically, in its description of conflict with the Venerians. The Venerians are at first thought to be primitive, but we later learn that they have a high level of technological sophistication, developed along radically different lines than that of humans. Matt and his friends avert possible war with the Venerians with some deft cultural maneuvering when a former schoolmate provokes the otherwise peace-loving matriarchical society of Venus.
There is also a subplot revolving around the issue of what it means to be a good solider. The Patrol is meant to be a kind of thinking person's military organization, as contrasted against the Marines, who are trained to believe in unquestioning loyalty and bravery as the highest ideals. Discouraged with the intellectual demands of his training for the Patrol, Matt requests a transfer to the Marines, but is dissuaded by his mentor.
This juvenile novel inspired Joseph Lawrence Greene of Grosset and Dunlap to develop the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series of TV shows that was popular in the early 1950s, as were the comic books, comic strips, novels and radio plays that were associated with it. 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.
- June 1948, Scribner, library binding, ISBN 0684124289
- August 12, 1978, Del Rey, paperback, ISBN 0345260724
- February 12, 1982, Del Rey, paperback, ISBN 0345306317
- October 12, 1985, Del Rey, paperback, ISBN 0345333977
- October 12, 1987, Del Rey, paperback reissue edition, ISBN 0345353110
- June 1, 2003, Thorndike Press, hardcover largeprint, ISBN 078625484X
A space cadet is somebody who deals with reality in a way consistent with them being under the influence of (or "spaced out" on) drugs (slang).fr:La Patrouille de l'espace