Space Cadet

What Hacker News says

1. shagieOct 2025
   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 question.

   Btw, there's a new book in the series. The Shattering Peace was released in September.

   thread
2. TMWNNAug 2023
   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 it gratefully. "You're a pal, Matt, I've been living on my own fat ever since breakfast -- and that's risky. Say, your telephone is sounding. "Oh!" Matt fumbled in his pouch and got out his phone. "Hello?"

   >The phone "was limited by its short range to the neighborhood of an earth-side [i.e. terrestrial] relay office".

   I especially find this part insightful:

   >A cadet avoids having to talk to his family while traveling by packing his phone in luggage.

   Show morethread
3. TMWNNSep 2022
   >It is baffling that Bradbury was able to write The Murderer in 1953.

   I thought I had a decent grasp of science fiction classics of that era. After reading the story, I too am baffled, both by my having missed this story, and in the same way you are.

   >I am not aware of a 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 my own fat ever since breakfast -- and that's risky. Say, your telephone is sounding. "Oh!" Matt fumbled in his pouch and got out his phone. "Hello?"

   >The phone "was limited by its short range to the neighborhood of an earth-side [i.e. terrestrial] relay office".

   I especially find this part insightful:

   >A cadet avoids having to talk to his family while traveling by packing his phone in luggage.

   Show morethread
4. JJMcJMay 2022
   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 idea. Nobody could complete the instructions. They wanted to see what people did.

   How do people react to frustration and bad orders?

   There is plenty of frustration in software work, and a good %age of incomprehensible or incorrect specifications.

   Show morethread
5. tkgallyMay 2022
   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 wanted to. (Our hero doesn’t.)

   In the next, the test-taker is asked to solve a puzzle with complex rules, and the purpose is to measure how long it takes him to figure out that there is no possible solution.

   Our hero doesn’t notice the hidden purpose of either test, while most readers probably do. It’s a clever narrative device for a novel aimed at clever young people.

   The text of that passage is below. Search for “beans”.

   https://raheinlein.wordpress.com/novels/space-cadet/

   Show morethread
6. eesmithFeb 2019
   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 radical ideas.

   thread