When a film becomes so immensely popular they achieve pop culture status, such as The Planet of the Apes, (1968's version with Charlton Heston of course) and the many different reincarnations that follow, nothing can match it... including ironically the book which originated all the hubbub. Now a return to this novel and examine the quality of, not an even contest since countless hundreds of millions have viewed the motion picture, with relatively speaking a few million read the publication I'm guessing. A futuristic couple Jinn and Phyllis acting appropriately bored, while taking a soothing, leisurely vacation in remote , dark, endless Space still strangely enthralling in the distant year of A.D. 2500 ...
They quite unexpectedly arrive upon an object outside their spaceship. Curious the pair retreats the item and memories go back to the days of sailing ships on the high seas of Earth, come forth with a rush . A message in a bottle is found, imagine; the manuscript is in the ancient language of the third rock from the Sun, French ...However Jinn having been well educated there and can read the papers though, he uncovers the author's name... written by Ulysse Merou and telling of an expedition from our world to the giant star Betelgeuse, 642 light years from good old Earth, their object was to explore planets suspected of orbiting that legendary star, maybe find life. Along with journalist Merou , are botanist Professor Antellet and physician Arthur Levain, when landing on one of the four planets discovered, they surprisingly meet humanoid like mutes, harmless creatures, primitives to be honest and easily dominated by the spacemen. Soon however the Earthmen, along with the natives are ambushed by...Apes more human than humans , no exaggeration either nor dream brutal reality sets in quickly and consequences begin ...Slaughtering them these intelligent ape-like animals; the men run for their lives but are soon captured, separated from his friends Ulysse is put in a humiliating cage with enchanting Nova a female mute he has befriended. This planet of the apes looks at Merou like a lowly animal in a zoo, leaving this upside down place is the ultimate goal of Ulysse, a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there. A fine satire of the silliness of our world's numerous foibles and downright if I may say the old- fashioned word evil, everything changes but all remains the same...

Dobrze się czyta, ciekawa konstrukcja świata i aspekt filozoficzny faktycznie zmuszający do przemyśleń. Książką się średnio zestarzała, zwłaszcza w kwestii opisywania kobiet, co było dość męczące zwłaszcza na początku, potem już człowiek się przyzwyczaja. Końcowy plot twist tak samo świetny jak w przypadku ekranizacji. 3.5, bo nie jestem w stanie wykrzesać więcej.

3.5*

ENGLISH (Planet of the Apes) / ITALIANO

«Jinn and Phyllis were spending a wonderful holiday in space, as far away as possible from the inhabited stars»

A couple of tourists on an interplanetary trip runs into a bottle drifting in the space. They obtain in this way a manuscript in which is told the story of Ulysse Mérou, a French journalist, and his space journey toward the Betelgeuse star, 300 light years far away from Earth.

I fell in love with this novel after half a page. Simple, addictive, shocking. The core of the science fiction.

Vote: 9

«Jinn e Phyllis stavano passando delle meravigliose vacanze nello spazio, il più lontano possibile dagli astri abitati»

Una coppia di turisti in gita nello spazio si imbatte in una bottiglia alla deriva nello spazio. Vengono così in possesso di un manoscritto nel quale è narrata la storia di Ulisse Mèrou, giornalista francese, e del suo viaggio spaziale verso il sistema solare di Betelgeuse, distante 300 anni luce dalla Terra.

Mi sono innamorato di questo romanzo dopo mezza pagina. Semplice, coinvolgente e sconvolgente. L'essenza della fantascienza.

Voto: 9

“Planet of the Apes” is one of those books that’s hard to approach without bringing along the baggage of the original 60s film adaptation or the less-than-successful remake a few years ago. The original film is such a part of our pop-culture concsiousness that it’s almost impossible to separate it from what we have here.

This is one of those books that is what it is–no more, no less.

I could spend several paragraphs detailing the differences between the movie and the book, but that would be kind of pointless and wouldn’t tell you much about the book as a whole. That said, Boulle’s original novel is a social satire, as advertises and it’s one of what I’d classify as a fairly light, “bubble-gum” sci-fi read. It has just enough in there to make you think while reading it, but it’s not going to stay with you long after you’ve finished the final pages.

The thing is that not a lot of the characters have much depth. They’re all in here to be part of the satire of modern life and humanity’s relationship with each other and animals. For a satire that wants to point out how drawing distinctions based on external apperances isn’t a great thing, you’d think it would have a bit more depth to the characters. Add to that that the central narrator has a tendency to become a bit pompous in his relation of events and you’ve got a story that works, quite frankly, better as a movie than it does as a novel. I’d even go so far as to say that without the series of movies, this is one novel that would have faded in memory long ago, remembered by some who read it for a few of the twists in the final pages but not much more.

It’s not to say I hated this novel. But it’s not to say I loved it or found it nearly as compelling as some of the mid-range works by Issac Asimov or Orson Scott Card.

It was a largish bottle and its neck had been carefully sealed. A roll of paper could be seen inside.

Newly-weds take their private space-yacht on a trip around the Solar System, some hundreds of years into the future. As improbable as it sounds, they come across a message in a bottle. This opening scene may sound a little silly, but the message within has become one of the most famous ideas in the science-fiction genre.

I am confining this manuscript to space, not with the intention of saving myself, but to help, perhaps, to avert the appalling scourge that is menacing the human race. Lord have pity on us! ...

It’s also a little silly for me to warn about spoilers. I don’t believe there’s any serious SF reader who doesn’t know what it’s all about: Mankind devolves right back into savagery while Apes uplift themselves into an industrialized, science-focused civilization.
I saw the original movie adaptation when I was 7 or 8 years old and, as you can imagine, it made a terrible impression on me, as well as starting me on a lifelong passion for speculative fiction, alongside other childhood favorites like Jules Verne and H G Wells.
Pierre Boulle deserves to have his name mentioned alongside these classic masters based mostly on this single idea of challenging the long-established theory that Man is the true apex of evolution and thus it has dominion over all the ‘lesser’ critters.

My recent re-read of the novel was a pleasant surprise, after the less than stellar prologue about finding a lost bottle in the vast emptiness of space. Boulle is a good storyteller who doesn’t waste time on superfluous descriptions or flashy special effects. The narrative is streamlined and focused on the essential aspects of his reversal of the ‘natural’ order of species supremacy. For me, it was a real page-turner, despite the fact that the author is less interested in action than in moral and social debate.

“What’s the encephalic section?” I asked in alarm.
“That’s where we perform certain extremely tricky operations on the brain: grafting; observation and alteration of the nervous centers; partial and even total ablation.”
“And you carry out these experiments on men!”
“Of course. Man’s brain, like the rest of his anatomy, is the one that bears the closest resemblance to ours.”

Ulysse Merou, the protagonist of the novel and the writer of the cautionary message found in the space bottle, is a journalist invited to participate in a voyage to distant star Betelgeuse in the year 2500. Since he is not the captain or the main scientist of the expedition, his first person narrative is more concerned with facts than with speculation. After the exploring crew crashes on an unknown but habitable planet, they came across a savage humanoid tribe that doesn’t have the power of speech, where our hero acquires a beautiful female companion he names Nova. Soon afterwards they are all hunted down and captured by well organized apes, mostly gorillas, and taken prisoners to a sort of prison / research station compound.

I had had to resort to force to keep her quiet. After receiving a few thundering slaps across her beautiful face, she had eventually calmed down. I had allowed myself to indulge in this brutal behavior almost without thinking; afterwards I felt sorry, but she appeared not to hold it against me.

The way Ulysse Merou deals with Nova is probably the only thing in the story that hasn’t aged all that well, with the gender roles of the 1950s having suffered their own reversals and reassessments. Luckily, such instants of tone deaf interactions are extremely rare in the book and are overshadowed by the efforts to define intelligence and to discuss the ethics of animal testing in laboratories.

Ulysse establishes contact with scientist Zira and with her boyfriend Cornelius. They are chimpanzees and we learn that in the social structure of this new planet, chimps are the ones with the brains, gorillas the ones with the muscles and orangutans the ones with the bureaucracy and political power. I thought this was an over-simplification of the way the ape brains function, but it does make following the events in the novel easier to follow.
The important thing is that the apes society mimics the bad habits of our own human built one, with prejudices and misguided arrogance standing in the way of true communication and of compassion between species. Ulysse and Zira do manage to break the barrier of dogmatic thinking, but even for them the deeply imprinted racial memories are impossible to ignore: ‘You are so ugly!’ exclaims the ape when the human apparently is moved to embrace Zira.

“What is happening could have been foreseen. A cerebral laziness has taken hold of us. No more books; even detective novels have now become too great an intellectual effort. No more games; at the most a hand or two of cards. Even the childish motion picture does not tempt us any more. Meanwhile the apes are meditating in silence. Their brain is developing in solitary reflection ... and they are talking”

500 years seems like a short span of time for us to lose all the benefits of civilization and intelligence and for another species to be uplifted. Nevertheless, the cautionary nature of the story remains powerful and has captured the imagination of several generations of readers since its initial publication.
The numerous movie and comic book adaptations have certainly helped [I actually like the ending from the Charlton Heston movie better that the solution in the novel] but I am not so interested in watching the latest franchise reboot due to the focus on action and special effects instead of the exchange of ideas.

4.49 stars, so rounded down to 4. I would not have said this was a translation (not that I think my French is now good enough to read this in its native language) as it flowed so well.
I have seen a number of film versions both old and new so knew roughly what to expect story wise, but I was not expecting the tenderness and emotion. You get odd hints through out that it is not a new book, it has Mid 20th century aspects, but despite this the SciFi is still good, as you would expect from the "Golden Age".
Allegorical certainly, but still an excellent book

"Nos han quitado las trompetas, los tambores y los uniformes; también, seguramente, las armas... No, no tienen armas. ¡Oh, humillación cruel, injuria suprema! He aquí su ejército que llega y no lleva otras armas que látigos"

La novela tiene una trama muy interesante, el astronauta Ulises Mérou (en las películas es reemplazado descaradamente con uno estadounidense), francés junto con dos estudiosos más y un mono llegan en el año 2500 a un planeta (Soror) cerca a la estrella Betelgeuse, donde al caer se dan cuenta que viven en un mundo donde los monos son los civilizados y los humanos las bestias por decirlo así.
El relato es muy dinámico y para darle más dramatismo está contado en primera persona por el mismo Ulises, cosa que le da más fuerza y una especie de terror a lo que él va encontrando. Allí se encuentra con que los monos están divididos en especies pero que esto lleva a su vez a rangos sociales. Los gorilas suelen ser los dominadores y dirigentes, los chimpancés los científicos y los orangutanes los sabiondos. Es encontrado por la científica Zira y luego presentado a su prometido el investigador Cornelius. Ulises tratará de sobrevivir en este nuevo mundo y su desenlace es lo que uno más ansía conocer.
Habiendo visto casi todas las películas que se sucedieron (Creo más de 7) de este único libro, debo decir que la obra me gustó y en parte tengo mis conflictos con las películas. La novela en sí obviamente es original y de idea muy buena, me gustó cómo en parte se explica el origen de este planeta de los Simios, criticando fuertemente la degeneración humana, el conformismo, y muchos otros aspectos que tienen interpretación actual.
Las partes negativas fueron obviamente el estilo de Ciencia ficción que utiliza, considerando la hora actual con nuevos avances y algunas explicaciones que pueden parecer ridículas de ese mundo. Así mismo no estoy muy seguro de la intención que tuvo el autor con el inicio y final de la novela que para mí le quitan seriedad al discurso, aunque tal vez enfatiza postulados de la teoría de la relatividad, pero creo que como construcción final hace a la novela un poco satírica.

I got this audio book, excellently read by Greg Wise (despite the not quite American accents for the apes on Soros), included in my Premium Plus membership on Audible.

3.5 stars rounded down. There are some dated attitudes in this book, but otherwise, I thought it was quite interesting and entertaining.

The discussion that on Earth Homo sapiens sapiens gains dominance and intelligence but on Soros it's 3 species of apes (gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans) that develop sentient intelligence and language and the humans are the "animals", is interesting, but troubling. And the shocker at the end making it all the more troubling. The idea that apes/monkey's can't really think for themselves but just imitate is a bit absurd, if you ask me, but what do I know. More interesting is the idea that without stimulation humans (and monkeys presumably) will revert to bestiality. I don’t believe it could happen, but it’s good food for thought. Confine people, provide them with food but nothing else and they will eventually lose every scrap of intelligence including language. It might happen to many but there would be a strong resistance, I’m sure.

So in fourth grade we had an assignment to write our favorite author. Being a dork, I went for Pierre Boulle because he had written the only book I knew of that let you put on a gorilla mask and run around like you'd taken over the world. Imagine my surprise when one day a letter from Paris arrived in the mail from none other than the very tolerant Mr. Boulle (then about sixty), who answered such probing questions as "Why are Jinn and Phyllis not in the movie?" (There's an opening narrative frame featuring two swinging astronauts having a holiday in space....) I still have the letter Mr. B sent me (yes, it's framed, but no, it's not hanging on a wall). Unfortunately, I don't have the two or three subsequent letters where he even more tolerantly entertained my endless ideas for even more Planet of the Ape-sequels. And Lord knows I fear the thought that somewhere in some French library a scholar is poring over scratchy Michigan penmanship wondering what the hell the author of THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI was doing wasting his time with fan letters from nine-year olds. Please, God, don't letter there ever be a scholarly edition of Mr. B's correspondence.

Anyway, the other day AMC ran the entire PoftheA marathon, but I was busy (reading!), so I didn't watch. Still, it reminded me that it'd been more than 30 years since I read this, so I went and dug it out. For Roddy McDowell fans, be prepared: this is not your father's Charleton Heston. Yes, there's Drs. Cornelius and Zira, and the stratified ape society, but there's no "get your stinking paws off of me, you damned dirty ape"---and no statue of liberty surprise ending (Pierre Boulle was French, remember). This is a fast-paced, literate satire that tweaks human vanity, science, classism, and Peter Tork---well, ok there's no Peter Tork. But he's about the only thing in 50s/60s society that doesn't get a ribbing. Fun stuff, inevitably tainted by boyhood nostalgia.

I am sure many are well-versed with the 1968 classic film with Charlton Heston and that famous line that gets replayed. The basis for that classic, the work that paved the way for so many spinoffs and franchise episodes and adaptations and became a part of pop culture, is Pierre Boulle’s 1963 science fiction original novel Planet of the Apes.

One thing readers must know if they happen to have watched the film is that the film and the novel are entirely different animals (if you’ll pardon the poor choice of words). The novel opens with a message in a bottle being found which happens to be written by Ulysse, a man who thus begins his extraordinary narrative of what takes place on the mysterious Betelgeuse, a star 300 light years away from Earth.

“We were launched on an adventure a thousand times more extraordinary than that of the first terrestrial navigators and were preparing ourselves to confront the wonders of interstellar travel that have fired the imaginations of several generations of poets.”

As we all know, soon after arriving on Soror, a shocking truth becomes apparent to the three astronauts: in this society, humans are the animals and beasts, while the apes are intelligent and rule over the humans. Ulysse and his two colleagues are soon captured and separated, and Ulysse, in his captivity, witnesses and experiences the startling and horrifying aspects of this upside-down world.

Many of the apes are researchers and scientists, and the humans their subjects, and this plays a role in Ulysse’s motivations to uncover the truth. Ulysse manages to befriend a woman named Nova and find a few allies in Zira and Cornelius, two apes who work in the research department, but will Ulysse be able to unlock these truths before it is too late?

I think the elements of science fiction, social commentary, and an upside-down dystopian world work so well in tandem together in this novel to not only make a very thought-provoking work, but make for an engaging work to see how things pan out for Ulysse and his fellow astronauts once they arrive on the planet Soror. How does mankind fit into this world and how did they in the past?

The author uses a certain level of irony in creating this world to investigate themes and morality that have deep implications. There are questions this novel asks and delves into: “what is truly civilized? “what is intelligent?” Boulle makes the case that there are factors in intelligence that we should never take for granted.

This book is such an easy to read, digestible, and quite engrossing and introspective work from the beginning to end. It’s definitely has become one of my favorites and I look forward to moving on in the series and reading “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” if I can locate a copy. This is a book that definitely is as good and amazing as the film.

Досить довго під час читання я був впевнений, що це буде 5, але ніт.
Це дуже талановита фантастична антиутопія.
Досить цікавий опис устрою тоталітарного суспільства (мавп).
Але десь на останній третині книги з'явилося відчуття, що я читаю не ту книгу, від якої всі в захваті. Я визнаю, що це може бути моя оптика, але я так бачу.
Спочатку підбішувало оце "людина - вінець творіння" і ставлення до природи виключно як до джерела ресурсів.
Але це врівноважувалось описами дослідів на людях як дзеркалкою дослідів на тваринах. І це дійсно було круто.
В той же час постійно било в очі зневажливе ставлення до мавп як до виду. Оця образа як це нижчі посміли піднятися.
Все стало набагато гіршим коли пішли описи, коли мавпи "захопили владу".
Особисто мені воно надто сильно відгонило расизмом. Оцим месіанством білої людини. "Ми так добре ставилися до своєї прислуги, а вони посміли повстати проти своїх хазяїв." Враховуючи час написання книги (це якраз період боротьби за громадянські права в Америці, проголошення незалежності колишніми колоніями Африки та Азії) не побачити колоніальну оптику дуже важко.
Разом з тим, написано дійсно дуже талановито. Тому менше 4 не можу поставити.