Space Cadet
by Robert A. Heinlein · first published 1948
7mentions
0recommended by
6HN commenters
2010–2025first – last mentioned
100% neutral
A young man reports for the final tests for appointment as a cadet in the Interplanetary Patrol, survives the tests, studies in the school ship, and goes on a regular Patrol vessel and encounters danger on Venus.
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I was reminded of Space Cadet, too. Reading that passage again (for the first time in fifty years), I see that there were at least two tests with hidden purposes. One is a simple task where the test-taker could easily cheat if he…
on “IBM's Asshole Test” ↗…more prescient bit of science fiction. Bradbury knew how people worked and what we'd try to make. While not a start-to-finish prophecy like "The Murderer", from Wikipedia's article on Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet: >The novel contains an early description of a mobile phone: >>Matt dug a candy bar out of his pouch, split it and gave half to Jarman, who accepted it gratefully. "You're a pal, Matt, I've been living…
on “Harrison Bergeron (1961)” ↗From Wikipedia's article on Robert Heinlein's Space Cadet <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Cadet> (1948): >The novel contains an early description of a mobile phone: >>Matt dug a candy bar out of his pouch, split it and gave half to Jarman, who accepted…
on “1919 Cartoon Depicting the Use of a ‘Pocket Telephone’” ↗In Robert Heinlein's early juvenile novel Space Cadet, the applicants are given a device and a set of instructions. The instructions make no sense for the device in question. Assuming this is based on something real life, I suppose it was the same underlying…
on “IBM's Asshole Test” ↗This conversation, while interesting, is no longer connected with Heinlein and increasingly farther from something I can meaningful contribute to. To bring it back to Heinlein, a quote from "Space Cadet": > The staple recreation in the Randolph, as it is in all boarding schools, was the bull session. The talk ranged through every possible subject and was kept spiced by Arensa's original and usually…
on “Sci-Fi Author Robert Heinlein Was Basically MacGyver” ↗The mission of the overall site: "Your imagination has been captured by the roaring rockets from Heinlein's SPACE CADET or the Polaris from TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET. But are such rockets possible? How does one go about defining the performance of these atomic-powered cruisers? "This document gives some hints and equations…
on “Weapons For Space Wars” ↗IIRC, it started out as a reimagining of Space Cadet by Heinlein but instead of the young it was with the old. After the first book, he then goes to explore all the questions that it brought up. The question of identity (to me) seems like the most reoccurring…
on “Space Elevator” ↗