Space Cadet, by Robert Heinlein
This is the last of the Heinleins I got from the library. I’ve probably had about enough. If they had Have Spacesuit Will Travel, I’d give it a go, but they only have an audio download. I’m not good with audio. My attention wanders and it’s not nearly so easy to scan back to where I was last paying attention.
Space Cadet was published right after the last one I read. This copy from the library is very new, like 2005. The title and the new condition of the book made me have a more favorable position from the start. Though I do wonder if anything was changed in its publication history.
I’ll cut here, since I have to cut somewhere and it might as well be here.
Plot
The year is.. oh well, who cares, it’s in this century though, and, for a wonder, actually set in our future. (Did you know men landed on Venus in 1971? Bet you didn’t.) Matthew Dodson or Dodgson or.. well, their names aren’t important, he goes for final exams to get into the Patrol. Some are mental, some are physical, most are psychological. He meets some other guys. A whole bunch of people wash out, but he and the other guys he’s with pass and sign up.
And then they learn how to be in the Patrol and all about space and stuff. Then they go on a mission, and of course it finally comes down to the three of them (Heinlein have something for threes?) being all alone and responsible for saving themselves and their injured superior. And Venus is inhabited by sentient all-female frogs. Or something.
(End Plot)
I rather like stories about exams, especially mental and psychological ones and stories about schools. Even stories about the military to some extent (limited extent– O’Brien, Feintuch, Novak now). It was also in limited POV from Matt’s POV.
That is, it was. Until it stopped being. Then it started to annoy me. He gets through all of his exams and is sworn in and then bam.. for some reason we’re listening in on a brief convo with two superiors. That’s the end of a chapter. Then the next chapter we get some exposition about the Patrol, which wouldn’t be so bad, except that for some unknown reason, it’s in present tense. It’s jarring. And thus annoying.
From then on, I don’t trust him to stick to a point of view, though he mostly does, but not nearly as effectively as he did in the first few chapters. He keeps interrupting with present-tense exposition about this boring thing and that boring thing. Trajectories and fuel consumption or whatever he feels like talking about. I wouldn’t call it hard science fiction. I’d just call it boring details no one cares about. Takes two pages just to land a ship. And also he’d slip now and then into a point of view comment from some other character. STOP IT!!
I don’t know if he learned better POV control later on.. Podkayne was all diary entries, so each entry was forced to be one point of view. Though I think he made a poor choice in having the brother make some covert entries and then to get the last word in at the end. So.. hard to say if he’d learned anything 15 years later.
Atomic power is still all the rage in powering ships and in protecting the Earth. The Patrol is basically sitting watchdog over the Earth with some atom bombs ready to drop on any country or people that act up. But some of the asteroids floating around are from a planet that got blown up by atomic devices of some sort!! So.. atomic power is good, but also bad!
Naturally the Patrol is all men. There are very few chicks in the story. There’s a random nurse, Matt’s mother, some chick while they’re on leave who gives them a flyer inviting them to a church social, a female voice over a com, and a whole planet full of native sentient amphibians. The female amphibians seem to be in charge and we never learn where the male ones are, though we’re assured that the race is ‘bisexual’. So.. that’s a relief.
There’s probably some feminist study you could do with this race (which is, coincidentally, on Venus). Mostly, though, you can be annoyed by Matt’s mother. And by his father, who says “Your mother, you know. I try to protect her. Women get worked up so easily.” They were talking at dinner about the atomic bombs in orbit over their heads and how Matt was part of a crew to haul them in and do a check on them. Jee, guys, you send your kid off to join the Patrol, don’t you think you should find out what they actually do first? She’s right to be a bit worried, but she overreacts and isn’t swayed by reason at all. And you can see how well his father handled it.
Let’s see.. what else.. Oh, smoking. These characters must insist on smoking in closed environments. Dudes, the bunches of plants you have on board are not going to do much about all the toxic chemicals given off by your smoking! Surprised they weren’t growing tobacco and weed as their oxygen crop.
All people in the Patrol start walking like chimpanzees when they’re on Earth. Because apparently they get soooo used to being graceful in zero gravity in a matter of months that they forget decades of walking upright.
One of Matt’s friends has an uncle, whom we hear a lot about, but never meet. Which makes the Heinlein Uncle count 3 for 3. One wonders what Heinlein was up to with his uncle. Or his nephews.
Summary
So.. this one is readable. If you’re not too annoyed by POV problems, boring exposition, and bad female characterization. There’s not too much to sink your teeth into and chew on though. Harry Potter’s got more plot before he even gets to Hogwarts.
