Planet of the Apes

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Summary: It is just a story?
Review: I know different media calls for different handling of the story. And most movies do not live up to the book. However some exceed the book. Surprise neither movie can live up to the book. If you thought that the movie versions are insightful, surprising and shocking the first time you see it. Then you defiantly have lower expectations than the reader does. Especially with such a blotched ending. I will not go into the technical or psychological differences, as you will want to discover these for your self as you read "Planet of the Apes"
While sailing around in their solar energy powered spaceship, a bottle is picked up. In the bottle is the message. And the story unfolds. Whether you believe it or not is up to you.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent
Review: As other reviewers have noted, the plot of the book differs from the first movie in some significant ways, but the differences don't change the feel of the story, nor the potency. Ulysse Mérou, a journalist, joins an expedition into the stars. Arriving on an Earth-like planet, they discover humans acting like animals, and apes acting like people. Through Mérou's struggles to survive, we are treated to a fascinating indictment of societal and cultural stagnation that is a possibility even today. An important point for me is when Cornelius (an ape scientist) is expounding on the planet's cultures, and he explores the lack of progress. He theorizes it is because the apes having been copying only themselves, and not thinking outside the box. This is certainly happening today, in politics and in arts & culture. The book does have a dated feel, but this, for me, doesn't take away from the story. And the surprising ending was something I never expected.

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Summary: Very Jules Verne, and not it a good way
Review: With all the media hype out I decided to return to the source and get the straight picture. I was disappointed with this novel on a few levels. First it is obvious that Boulle was heavily influenced by his follow French countryman Jules Verne. The hero is a reporter like so many Verne novels. However Boulle does not seem to be able to pull off the adventurous story telling of Verne. The storyline IS intriguing, and one feels the conflict when the hero chooses the civilized ape life and turns his back on the human savages. But we are treated to many simplistic plot advancments like when he lets the apes know he is a rational being. I also found the "deus ex machina" of the human brain scan to reveal the planets history to be very weak. Liked the intro with the two space travelers in the solar sailor, best science part of the whole book.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't get enough credit
Review: Despite the huge pop culture phenomenon that has come about as a result of this book, many are people are unaware that it all sprang from a book, and one written in French at that. This book is truly good on it's own. Even if you've never seen any of the movies (old or new), you will still like this. Seeing the movies first will probably only make you appreciate it more. It's quite a bit different from any of them. The inspiration was taken from this, it wasn't an adaptation. But this book is a classic. Written in a clear, lucid, smooth, and very readable style, this books comes off well, and is a fast and thought-provoking read. No doubt Xan Fielding deserves some credit for his translation. This book, through satire and irony, makes us realize and ask questions about ourselves. It is science fiction, I guess, but that is more used as a vechile to present Boulle's social criticism. An intriguing book. Comes very highly reccommended indeed.

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Summary: Start Here....Then Go Get The Movies!
Review: This book has some surprises and twists of its own. Of all the incarnations of "ape-lore" this is still the best: fast-paced, literate, parts of it are really funny.

I won't get into all the metaphors and satire (other reviewers below say it better than I could) but I do have to mention that the author gives a very intelligent explanation of how the planet came to be (different from the movie) and this explanation makes it a book for the mind.

Not to take anything away from the 1968 movie: it made the changes necessary and remains extremely entertaining.

However, I found the surprise ending(s) of the book even more thrilling given how nicely the story had been set up and framed.

The 2001 movie, although fun, has editing issues: they tried to add the book's twist ending onto the end of this movie...but this resulted in confusion and caused the audience to say "whaa?????" instead of "wow!"

I suspect the director's cut on DVD will spell it out better (although there are some clues at the official web site.)

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic, well written story
Review: After seeing the latest film version of this story I was inspired to read the original novel. It has become one of my all time favorites. I loved the author's style of writing and I am not sure if I should credit that to the actual author who wrote it in french or the guy who translated it.

This story had just the right amount of technical information to provide substance and a good background without overwhelming the reader with too much technical information.

In this original version the Apes are more advanced than in the recent film. The humans are less advanced, they don't even talk and seem to have little or no intelligence. The apes have a highly organized society and they do a lot of research on the humans. They are extremely interested in the main character when he shows how quickly he can learn.

The main character must save himself and his friends, if he can, and learn what he can about this ape culture and how they grew to be so intelligent while the humans seem to have disevolved. That process of discovery was very exciting reading as it touched on some interesting issues about learning, evolution, psychology, and the existence of God. I thought this book was both exciting and intelligent.

The end has its own twist that is different from the movies and all I can say is that I loved it.

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Summary: The 60's movie is based on this book, not the 2001 movie
Review: I wasn't around when the original "Planet of the Apes" came out and I never saw the Charlton Heston version before the Mark Wahlberg 2001 version of "Planet of the Apes". I'm the kind of person that needs some background on a story or saga if it exists. I wanted to read the original book to gain some insight in to Pierre Boulle's "Planet" before I saw the 2001 version. I'm really glad that I did. For the most part, this book is very different except for a few small details and the surprise ending (the ending in the book is the same as the ending in the 2001 movie -- with one extra little twist in the book). True this story is considered science fiction, but I think it is less science fiction as it is animal and human behavioral sciences and philosophical issues associated with the situation.

If you've seen the 60's movie, you probably won't care about this book but if you are like me and didn't know the story of the "Planet", definitely get this book before seeing the 2001 version. It lets your imagination run wild as you read the book.

Rating:
Summary: The original was better
Review: I read this book back in the mid-60's, before it was made into a movie. Boulle was a well-known French writer, but this is the only thing I've ever read by him in translation. It might have been written in the late 50's even, but I can't find a publication date to find out for sure.

Anyway, although Boulle isn't really a sci-fi author, the original book was excellent, and although I did enjoy the movies that came out of it, the original book was still better. The movie altered much of the original story, for example, the main character is a French journalist, and Dr. Zaius isn't the head honcho in the book. And as another reviewer here mentioned, in the book, the gorillas are much more organized and powerful, and tend to be the ones that just go out and get things done, while the more cerebral chimps and orangs are just sitting around debating and contemplating their navels.

Another nice touch that didn't make it into the movie was the solar energy powered spaceship that used adjustable blinds to control it, which another reviewer mentioned too. However, he didn't mention that the really interesting thing is that the scientist Cavour used something similar in HG Wells' "The Men in the Moon," where adjustable shutters or flaps much like blinds are used to control the anti-gravity or bouyancy effect of the sun's rays on the anti-gravity paint. I assume Boulle got his very similar idea from Wells.

But back to the original story. Boulle uses the society of apes to poke fun at various aspects of human society. Since the different ape groups, the orangs, chimps, and gorillas symbolize different things--the intellect, the emotions, and the physical body--the outward conflicts and power struggles between the different apes becomes a metaphor for our own internal struggles--between the mind and the emotions, and the mind and the body.

Boulle's book remains a classic and still rewards reading today. If you enjoyed the movies, you'll probably like the original novel even more. Boulle was a talented French novelist and the original book still deserves to be better known, as most people are unaware a foreign writer came up with the original idea.

Rating:
Summary: brilliant
Review: I have always loved the original movie Planet of the Apes and until recently did not know it was based on a novel. Recently I picked the book up at the store and was suprised to find that this is one of the most provocative stories I have ever read and greatly exceeds the movie a thousand times over. I will try not to elaborate too much on the story (since I would waste to much time describing it because of a nasty case of literary elephantiasis, and you should probablyknow the basic plot, and if not then just read the story description on the back of the book)but rather point out what makes this book so brilliant. Given my proffesion(paleoanthropology and primatology)I have a few nitpicks to point out in the text( a few examples: the gorrillas are distinguished as the military and ruling class on soror because they are meat eaters, anyone who knows anything about gorrillas knows that 99% of their diet is plants and fruit the other percent being meat in the form of grubs and insect when they are lucky enough to find them. Also the apes are attributed to learning how to talk like humans by mimmicary, which is actually impossible since humans can speak because of an overdeveloped thyoid bone which allows us to contort low and high sounds in a much more dynamic way than most animals. And finnaly the fact that all the apes (even the orangatans who are really not apes) are thourgholy bipedal, which would really classify them as hominids since that is one of the unique physical feature that distinguishes us from our closest realatives: apes), but these really dont matter much because the book only uses science fiction to present a brilliant satire of Mankinds own nature that varies between culture and contemporary technology. The first thing to realizeinthis story is that both the Apes and Man represent the whole of mankind in its different approach to both its superiority and ignorance that creates its view of the world. The savage humans who can no longer think represent the hard to agnoledge fact that we too rose out of the same evolutionary background just as every other organism on Earth, they may look like us but we find it hard to actually believe they are in any way connected to us. The main character Ulysse represent the tragic hope Mankind has in the belief of its own superiority and kindness to nature, though we can remove ourselves from the natural world from which we rose, we are still reserved the fate of any other organism on this planet; nothing can last forever. The apes represent the shocking ability for civilized man to treat its closest genetic relative with shockingly bizzare and cruel treatment for our own strange fascination with ourselves, is it really usefull to mankind to disect and torture these creatures with insanely banal butchery to discover somthing about ourselves, even if it serves no purpose but satisfying the fruits of our most urbane musings? And finally the discovery of the origin of the Apes rise to power and dominence is an eerycommentary on the nature of man to allow itself to hope for the best without truly questioning the outcome of our ability to do nothing about what should be an obviouse threat to our own species survival( Germany during WWII is a good example). Thier is much more I could comment on but I dont think I have many more words to use in this review so I can only conclude with a reccomendation to read this book and then ask yourself wether or not that you understand the many important messages this book makes about our only key to truly ensure our species survival, and if you do not than please read the book again. Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: Sci-Fi with a French Twist
Review: This Planet, the original, is a fable about what separates humans from animals. The answer may please artists more than scientists. Other themes are also present in the book: how people treat each other, how people treat animals, brutality in general. This would make a good book discussion group choice. Boulle paces his story of future history expertly. Each chapter ends with a relevation or mystery that propells the reader onward, making this a quick read. Unlike many contemporary works, the novel is not clotted with detail. Fans of the movies may be surprised to find that here, the details of ape society match many details of contemporary society. No strange architecture or caveman attire for the humans who, like current apes, wear nothing at all. (Shame the movies didn't stick closer to the novel!) All is done with a light French touch that will surprise many hardcore sci-fi readers, not to mention fans of the decidedly Anglo movies. The most sophisticated equipment here is a solar powered space ship with blinds for controlling speed! But, that is one of the points of this very entertaining work.