INTO ORBIT

I enjoyed Richard Eder’s fine Sept. 29 review of Mikhail Iossel’s short-story collection “Every Hunter Wants to Know,” but, as often happens with many efforts, a small factual error can slip in at the end.

Yuri Gagarin’s spacecraft was named Vostok (east), not Sputnik, meaning traveler . Sputnik I was the world’s first artificial satellite launched nearly four years before Gagarin’s 1961 pioneering orbital mission. Sputnik II carried the dog Laika into space in 1958.

MICHAEL E. KRECA, DEL MAR