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4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Great POV! Dec 03, 2007
By Al Sinerco
I picked up a copy of this book and am in the middle of reading it. It's a fictional novel based on real events in the Soviet Union's space program and opens with the success of Sputnik I. I loved the setting of the Kremlin celebration party with boasting and deal making laced with plenty of vodka. At the party a deal is made to send up another Sputnik in one month, this time with a canine passenger, to show the world Kremlin's might. All that juxtaposed against a starving little dog in the Moscow streets - and a female dog at that! And the dog is our narrator! Great POV! It seems funny and yet political, feminist and a little sad as well. I want to read more.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
an animal story for all humans Jan 26, 2008
By Ann Weiser Cornell
"Ann Weiser Cornell"
This is a wonderful book, a surprising and richly creative look at a subject
almost inaccessible to other methods of investigation,
the brief life and sad death of the first creature in space
(the Soviet dog Laika). Jan Millsapps has taken the imposing
challenge of penetrating behind the wall of official secrecy
and historical obfuscation as well as penetrating into the heart and
soul of an animal used as fodder for human experimentation
in space. There's great warmth and wit in this tale but also
an undercurrent of melancholy -- the balance between
these elements is expertly handled, and having the dog's
consciousness as the central focus of the story enables
us to experience it from a point of view that's not only
fresh but also entirely central to its themes. The bittersweet
love story that develops between Laika and the space engineer
who sends her to her death is truly poignant. This is a dog story
for adults as well as children, a political and feminist
allegory couched in an almost fairytale style, a rare combination of genres. Along
the way we learn much about the fascinating technical aspects
of early space travel and the secrecy of the USSR in the Cold War
era. Millsapps gives us this information with effortless ease
while keeping the focus of the story on human and animal emotion.
SCREWED POOCH is a literary tour de force and a good read
for anyone with curiosity about how our world first ventured
into space and what it cost us to achieve that mission. -- Joseph McBride
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Screwed Pooch provides lots of "Wow!" moments Nov 23, 2007
By G. Carr
"50's Fan"
Millsapps' Screwed Pooch is an excellent blending of history, science, and domestic intrigue. Lots of "Wow!" moments. Interesting to know what the KGB and ordinary Russians may have been up to while schoolkids in the West were diving under their desks. Laika has her say and is a true heroine. Millsapps tells a great tale.
2 of 6 found the following review helpful:
AND A SMALL FEMALE DOG SHALL LEAD THEM...... Nov 25, 2007
By Kalikiano Kalei
"Doc"
On 3 November 2007 the 50th anniversary of a historically monumental event passed virtually unnoticed by the entire world. On that date in 1957, a small mixed breed dog taken in from the mean, cold streets of Moscow was sent into orbit around the Earth in a Soviet satellite named Sputnik-2. The small mongrel, later known to the whole world as `Laika', was the first living creature to be sent into true space. Although a number of other dogs, mice, and monkeys had been sent into sub-orbital ballistic flights on short parabolic arcs into Earth's higher atmosphere prior to her flight, Laika had the historical distinction of being the earliest voyager sent on a prolonged space flight around the planet in the Earth's first artificial `moon'.
Although this event has often been compared by space historians in its significance to the Wright Brothers' first (controlled, powered, heavier-than-air) flight in 1903, and pointed out as being as historically significant as, say, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or the dropping of the world's first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, over the past 50 years since Laika's orbital flight the world has gradually all but forgotten about this early canine space pioneer. Sadly, not just this event has become submerged in the turbulent tides of recent history, but in fact virtually the entire epochal history of the US-Soviet race to land a man on the moon that resulted from Laika's flight.
Attribute this historical obliviousness to whatever influence you will. My favorite theory is that as generations of Americans have grown, since that time in the mid-50s, to become slavishly addicted to a life of material luxury undreamt of in earlier centuries, that surfeit of sensory excess has caused them to cease exercising even the smallest vestige of intelligent reflection on the quality of their lives....or the antecedent historical events that have brought them into being. For whatever reason, the story of Laika's ascent into the heavens on 3 November 1957 has apparently fallen victim to the overall, total lack of any sense of history possessed by the average American today. No small tragedy in itself, it is further proof of philosopher George Santayana's famous quote that "...those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
Writer, cinematographer, San Francisco State University professor, and creative thinker Jan Millsapps has recently taken pains to help rectify that gross obliviousness that characterises American historical awareness with the publication of a brilliantly imaginative fictional account of Laika, the small space dog passenger in Sputnik-2. Although a work of fiction, the book has been based upon meticulous research of the factual basis of the actual event. But perhaps just as importantly, Jan has managed to give the small dog known as Laika a personality that resonates radiently wise, female empathy. Laika, of course, was a female dog--a gender chosen deliberately for these pioneering bio-research space flights for reasons of hygienic convenience.
The story Jan has created is at once both melancholy and inspiring, for in addition to creating an illuminating account of the circumstances leading up to the orbital flight of Sputnik-2, she has managed to strike a subtle parallel to the importance of the female of the species (any species) in the furtherance and nurturance processes of all life on our planet. In a world dominated by the male gender, Jan has managed, in the telling of this wonderfully poignant story, to deftly highlight the important matriarchal heritage of all living species on the Earth.
As an old Berkeley radical of the 60s, who took my place next to Mario Savio in the gloriously youthful protests against the Vietnam War, I am quite well versed in that male-filtered and defined understanding of reality we characterise as `male chauvinism'. That fact notwithstanding, in the passage of years and due in no small part to the benefit of maturity, I have come also to realise that for all our vaunted male physical strength and proudly aggressive self-regard, women are indeed the stronger and more enduring of our species. There is therefore, if one accepts that logic, little if any irony in the fact that Laika, the world's first space voyager was not just a dog, but a FEMALE dog!
A fact not substantively explored in the book is that the name `Laika' has a somewhat broad meaning in Russia. Translating roughly into `barker' in the common Russian idiom, the West Siberian Laika is also a specific breed of dog native to Russia that bears startling resemblance to the Siberian Husky most of us are familiar with. The term `laika' was also used occasionally to refer to all dogs in general throughout Russia, due to this fact; thus space pioneer Laika's name was itself a rather complex blend of allusive nuances, just as her unique achievement of being the first living creature in space has acquired a complex historical regard.
Tragically, Laika's flight was conceived as a one-way voyage into orbit, with no plan for safe recovery of her capsule. In the end, and after many years had passed, it was admitted by the Russian scientists who had launched her that very little if any hard scientific advances had been achieved through her sacrifice. Laika remains the only dog (or in fact living animal) deliberately sacrificed for purely Cold War propaganda purposes by the USSR.
In creating this fictional story of Laika (and in so doing, recreating the factual basis of the event), Jan has managed to reach out to all of us on a highly empathetic level. For those of us who as children watched Laika's artificial star traverse the skies on that cold, clear November day, 50 years ago, this is an even more important book. Despite the 50th anniversary of Laika's famous flight having been almost entirely overlooked by our modern news media, Jan's work joins a small number of books on this subject of exceptional merit (such as Nick Abadzis' graphic novel, titled `Laika'). Together, they succeed in providing much important background context for understanding of the subsequent `Space Race' to land the first man on the moon (see below for a list of suggested books for further reading).
There is an old chestnut of a French saying (among many) that I am fond of: `Churchez la femme'. The expression was first coined by Alexandre Dumas in 'Le Monte-Cristo' (1857) and it had a rather aspersive context (suggesting that behind every awkward or untoward oucome of male interactions, there was likely to be found a woman). In the century and a half since Dumas inserted that phrase into the English repertoire of sophisticates, our collective social regard for women has changed substantially. In light of this, I would suggest a new meaning for the phrase: `Behind every event of substance and underlying every advance in the humane affairs of humankind, look for the woman!' This was certainly the case with regard to the little female dog that courageously led the rest of our world into the true dawn of the modern `space age', with her memorable flight into history on 3 November 1957.
OTHER SUGGESTED BOOKS FOR FURTHER READING:
`A Ball, A Dog, and a Monkey', by Michael D'Antonio, ISBN 13: 978-0-7432-9431-7, ISBN 10: 0-7432-9431-9, 2007.
`Laika', by Nick Abadzis, ISBN 13: 978-59643-302-1, ISBN 10: 1-59643-302-7, 2007
`Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space race', by Von Hardesty and Gene Eisman, ISBN 978-1-4262-0119-6, 2007
`Countdown: A History of Space Flight' by T.A. Heppenheimer, ISBN 0-471-14439-8, 1997
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