In honor of Laika's death on Sputnik 2, which was launched fifty years ago today, here is my review of NIck Abadzis's amazing graphic novel about her, Laika. I wrote this originally for Bookslut but someone else was actually assigned the book and so it got bumped. (I just send reviews to Jessa so it's not surprising that this should happen every now and again.) The official review has not appeared at the site yet - I'm probably going to run some abbreviated version of this piece in my December column because I love the book so very very much. (As some of you may remember I posted about my initial thoughts on the book already.)

My interview with Nick will run here on Monday, as part of Day #1 of the Winter Blog Blast Tour. Here's the review:

In his very detailed and near sumptuous fictionalized biography of the first living creature to orbit the earth, Nick Abadzis has written a touching story in Laika that is devastating in both its historical accuracy and emotional punch. He starts with the story of “Kudryavka� who was found as a stray and became part of the Russian space program. Abadzis reinvents those unknown early years in the dog’s life and the effect is that long before Laika is placed in her capsule, readers care deeply about this dog. Because of this early section, comparisons to such animal classics as Shiloh, The Incredible Journey and, dare I say it, Old Yeller, are spot on. But Abadzis’s book is about far more than a loveable dog; it is about why this dog was sent into space and what that mission meant to so many different people.

Abadzis has a lot of space to work with in Laika and he uses it to flesh out the personalities of all those who took part in the dog’s life. Most significantly he explores the motivations of the Chief Designer, Sergei Korolev, a man who spent time imprisoned in a Siberian gulag under Stalin and had a great deal to prove on the Sputnik project. Korolev is just the man who makes the decisions however it is Yelena Dubrovsky, the technician who dealt directly with all the space dogs and Oleg Georgivitch Gazenko, one of the leading scientists in the program who later expressed regret for Laika’s fatal trip who are really the focus of the story. (While Korolev and Gazenko are certainly real people, I’m not sure that Dubrovsky was.) Each of them comes to bond with the newly named “Laika� and feel varying degrees of compassion towards the choices that are being made for her and the other space dogs. At first everyone in the program falls back on a dedication to country and communism as excuses for the difficult decisions involving the animals. It is when the Sputnik II launch is fast-tracked however, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the USSR, that several of them face crises of conscious. The new timeline leaves no room to design a way for Laika to return to earth; a political gesture thus dooms her to death.

To provide an added dimension to their relationship, Abadzis has Dubrovsky imagine the dogs are talking to her. At one point she pets Albina and Kozyavka, who have just returned from a successful suborbital launch. As she absently asks them what it is like in space, Albina “responds� asking Dubrovsky to “let me out� and “let me go�. These interactions are all the more powerful due to the illustrations in the graphic novel which show the dogs looking at her with the trust she has engendered and show the handler clearly wavering in her resolve. Dubrovsky reminds the dog (and herself) of duty and repeats to all of them that she will take care of them. This of course turns out to be the greatest lie of all; the dogs would have done better to never trust their handlers and instead do everything they could to escape. No one was looking out for their best interests, and ultimately, no one ever truly would.

I knew what was going to happen in Laika but Abadzis still makes it impossible to not feel deeply for this little dog and the people who care about her. Laika died in Sputnik II, just as everyone involved in the project knew would happen. The surprise is that she died so quickly and suffered so much. The Soviets kept the truth about her death a secret for decades but in 2002 revealed that she did not survive past seven hours in the flight. In that time the biometric readings revealed that she suffered a great deal from heat and other trauma. It was a hard end to a life that had been spent doing what others wanted and particularly bitter as it only happened to further illusory political goals and not science.

Strangely, NASA’s official site is still incorrect on its data on Laika, writing that the dog lived ten days and actually ate while orbiting the earth*. The myth that animals in the space program were happy and healthy is still maintained there, even though there is ample evidence that all of the animals used by the US and USSR for this purpose suffered a great deal. The lie makes both programs easier to honor and celebrate perhaps, but it teaches us little about how humans and animals have interacted over the years. As Oleg Gazenko expressed in 1998, “We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog.� Laika’s story is truly a tragedy and now, because of Nick Abadzis’ intensely researched and beautifully illustrated (in full color) book, it can fully be appreciated fifty years after her sad and senseless death.

*When I wrote this a couple of months ago, I sent the NASA history site an email with links to the truth about Laika. I just checked back there and the site has changed to reflect that she died in a few hours. Maybe somebody got their hands on a copy of Nick's book and finally corrected it!