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A Salute to Space Cadets, Then and Now
May. 10th, 2022 12:53 pmIn his column on Tor.com, James Nicoll recently wrote:
"While hardly the first space patrol novel, Heinlein’s coming-of-age tale may be one of the best known."
Indeed, Space Cadet is, as they say over on another Web site, the Trope-Namer.
As they began production of what would become their multimedia juggernaut, the creators of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet paid Heinlein for the broadcast rights to his novel. He would not be involved in the shows, nor would his name appear in the credits, nor would their characters and plots bear more than a passing resemblance to his story, but he received fifty dollars a week.
The TV show was prominent, though not first, among a wave of US TV space adventures in the early 1950s. "Space Cadet" entered the language, somewhat as a synechdoche for all these shows and their characters.
This is my favorite thing to make an N-gram plot of. The phrase "Space Cadet" peaks in frequency in 1952 at 25.5 per billion words, declining as the craze ebbs and the shows are canceled. By 1970 it has sunk to 1.65 per billion words, even though the nonfictional Space Age is well underway.
But wait! In the 1980s, "Space Cadet" begins to climb in frequency again! A new generation has begun to employ it. By 2010, it is back to half its 1952 frequency.
What gives? I credit Moon Unit Zappa. In her 1982 novelty record "Valley Girl," she says, "Like, my mother is, like, a TOTAL space cadet!"
Ms. Zappa revived the phrase with a new meaning: "a flaky, lightheaded, or forgetful person," says the Merriam-Webster dictionary site. Nowadays this is nearly always the intended meaning, with "student in an academy for officers in a spacegoing military organization" a distant second.
It would not surprise me much if the "lightheaded person" meaning arose, but with low frequency, in the years before 1982. But I have not investigated this conjecture. I am pretty confident that the post-1982 boost in "Space Cadet" popularity is due to the Zappa Family Singers.
Meanwhile, a lot of people have been wondering when the United States Space Force is going to establish its own service academy. If and when this occurs, we already know one public-image problem its students are going to be facing.
"While hardly the first space patrol novel, Heinlein’s coming-of-age tale may be one of the best known."
Indeed, Space Cadet is, as they say over on another Web site, the Trope-Namer.
As they began production of what would become their multimedia juggernaut, the creators of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet paid Heinlein for the broadcast rights to his novel. He would not be involved in the shows, nor would his name appear in the credits, nor would their characters and plots bear more than a passing resemblance to his story, but he received fifty dollars a week.
The TV show was prominent, though not first, among a wave of US TV space adventures in the early 1950s. "Space Cadet" entered the language, somewhat as a synechdoche for all these shows and their characters.
This is my favorite thing to make an N-gram plot of. The phrase "Space Cadet" peaks in frequency in 1952 at 25.5 per billion words, declining as the craze ebbs and the shows are canceled. By 1970 it has sunk to 1.65 per billion words, even though the nonfictional Space Age is well underway.
But wait! In the 1980s, "Space Cadet" begins to climb in frequency again! A new generation has begun to employ it. By 2010, it is back to half its 1952 frequency.
What gives? I credit Moon Unit Zappa. In her 1982 novelty record "Valley Girl," she says, "Like, my mother is, like, a TOTAL space cadet!"
Ms. Zappa revived the phrase with a new meaning: "a flaky, lightheaded, or forgetful person," says the Merriam-Webster dictionary site. Nowadays this is nearly always the intended meaning, with "student in an academy for officers in a spacegoing military organization" a distant second.
It would not surprise me much if the "lightheaded person" meaning arose, but with low frequency, in the years before 1982. But I have not investigated this conjecture. I am pretty confident that the post-1982 boost in "Space Cadet" popularity is due to the Zappa Family Singers.
Meanwhile, a lot of people have been wondering when the United States Space Force is going to establish its own service academy. If and when this occurs, we already know one public-image problem its students are going to be facing.
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