[3] The novel deals with the transformation of Cade, the title character, from a loyal member of the elite police force of an authoritarian interplanetary regime into an individualistic rebel.

Kornbluth and Merril crafted the novel to appeal to Astounding SF editor John W. Campbell, using Fritz Leiber's Gather, Darkness!

[3] Basil Davenport praised Gunner Cade in The New York Times, calling it "a first-rate melodrama of the neo-Graustarkian school which is one of the shapes of interplanetary fiction.

[4] Michael Moorcock found the novel "a good, intelligently written adventure SF tale, which at times gives a very real impression of a possible future society.

[6] Samuel R. Delany remembers that "Brutal and authority-fixated Cade's transformation, as he learns compassion, to understand human rights and a higher sense of ethics, was as powerful to me as a thirteen-year-old reader as anything I'd read.

Kornbluth and Merril's nightmarish capitalism treats humans, minerals, and foodstuffs as commodities that are used brutally, unthinkingly, without regard to consequences".

Takeoff is certainly the superior work, a joy to read and well worth the slog through the murk of Gunner Cade to get to it.