I don't think we can look at the early days of space exploration without understanding how much courage, curiosity, and determination went into figuring out whether humans could actually survive in space.
I have to admit, when I first picked up this book about Ham, I wasn’t sure how I’d get through the story.
Before Ham, there were rhesus monkeys known as Albert I through IV. These monkeys were part of Project Albert, which aimed to study the effects of space travel on living organisms. None of them survived.
Reading that part of the story is important. It shows that the risks were already known.
By the time Ham came along, there had already been loss, and the people involved in the space program had learned some lessons from those earlier attempts.
That stayed with me as I continued reading about Ham. There was already a history behind what he was being asked to do.
Before he was Ham, he was simply known as Number 65.
Captured in Cameroon in 1957, he became one of the chimpanzees brought into the U.S. space program. He was trained at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico to perform certain tasks in response to lights and sounds. The scientists needed to know whether a living being could continue to respond to commands during the stress of spaceflight before putting a human being into that situation.
I understand why they needed those answers. But found myself thinking about the flip side of that story.
Ham didn't volunteer. And it appeared, he didn't understand what was about to happen to him. He didn't know he was about to become part of something that would be remembered in the history of space exploration.
He was simply doing what he had been trained to do.
His flight lasted only about sixteen minutes.
Those sixteen minutes became an important moment in space exploration.
The more I read, the more I didn't just see Ham as the chimpanzee who made history. I saw an animal who was put into a situation he never chose and asked to do something no chimpanzee had ever done before.
I thought about the man who trained Ham. It must have been difficult to be responsible for teaching an animal to do something that was so important to the space program, while knowing the risks involved. There was a close relationship there, and I imagine it couldn't have been easy to separate the science from the animal you had come to care for.
That is another part of this story that made me stop and think. There were likely many people involved who genuinely cared about these animals—people who believed in the work they were doing and understood the risks involved. That realization made the story feel much more complicated to me, and much more human.
The writing in Ham’s Heaven is intimate and, at times, raw. It reminded me that we can be incredibly proud of what was accomplished, grateful to the people who pushed the boundaries of what was possible, and still take a moment to think about the animals who were part of that journey. Those feelings don't have to contradict one another.
For me, that is where this story becomes more than a story about space exploration. It becomes a quiet reminder about progress, compassion, and the responsibility that comes with both.
I received a copy of Ham’s Heaven from Warbler Press via Elle Liu. The novel is by Ori Gersht (translated by Joanna Chen)
ORI GERSHT is an internationally acclaimed artist known for his innovative photography and video works. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, London, he has served as Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, England. His work is in major collections, including the New York Guggenheim; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Tate, London.
JOANNA CHEN is a British-born writer and literary translator from Hebrew to English whose translations include Agi Mishol’s Less Like a Dove, Yonatan Berg’s Frayed Light (finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards), and Meir Shalev’s My Wild Garden.