Tom Corbett is the main character in a series of Tom Corbett — Space Cadet stories that were depicted in television, radio, books, comic books, comic strips, coloring books, punch-out books and View-Master reels in the 1950s.
The stories followed the adventures of Tom Corbett, Astro, and Roger Manning, cadets at the Space Academy as they train to become members of the elite Solar Guard. The action takes place at the Academy in classrooms and bunkroom, aboard their training ship the rocket cruiser Polaris, and on alien worlds, both within our solar system and in orbit around nearby stars.
By the standards of the day, it was much more accurate than most media science fiction. Mars was a desert, Venus a jungle, and the asteroids a haunt of space pirates, but at least planets circled suns and there was no air in space.
Contrast this with The Twilight Zone, years later, where people could live on asteroids wearing ordinary clothes, or Lost in Space, years after that, where a spaceship could be passing "Jupiter and Andromeda" at the same time.
Before Star Trek, Tom Corbett — Space Cadet was the most scientifically accurate series on television, in part due to official science advisor Willy Ley
The name Carey Rockwell was a pseudonym used by Grosset & Dunlap.
It is unknown who wrote the books, or even if there was only one writer.
It is interesting to note, however, that while much of the content was original, a number of scenes and plot points were taken from the television series of the same name.
The famous German-American rocket scientist Willy Ley served as technical adviser to the series.
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet was thought to be based on characters in Robert Heinlein's juvenile novel SPACE CADET published in 1948. The similarity of the main characters in SPACE CADET to characters in Tom Corbett was developed as an early page to show Mr. Heinlein's influence on the series. However, the development of the Tom Corbett enterprise may be a more complex evolution than a single source.
A letter from Robert and Virginia Heinlein stated that Mr. Heinlein did not write or develop any of the Tom Corbett series; they only received compensation for the use of the “Space Cadet” title.
SF author Joseph Greene and Rockhill's Stanley Wolfe had licensed “Space Cadet” from the Heinlein's for either publicity of the Heinlein name or to avoid any copyright problems that might arise from the 1948 novel. Joseph Greene had developed a similar space hero called Tom Ranger that may have influenced the early development of the series and scripted several of the Tom Corbett comic-books.
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