Planet of the Apes

Rating:
Summary: Get your stinkin' paws on this book! Hail Zaius!
Review: I could never have imagined how different the original book is from the movie. A few examples: 1.The hero is a french journalist not an American astronaut. His sensibilities are decidedly un-Heston-esque. 2.The gorillas are more a force to be reckoned with, not only becuase of their brute power but because they are the most organized. While the other apes,the scientists,scholars etc. are busy debating and postulating, the gorillas just go out and get things done. They are the most effective administrators. 3.The satire in the book hits the same targets as the movie,(Science,Religion,Gov't,Academia) it just hits harder. 4.The book is funnier than the movie, but the villains are just as menacing. 5.Zaius isn't the top dog! A shocking revelation to be sure, but there is an ape even more highly placed than Doc. Z!

They're both very good. I was happy to find out that I could enjoy the movie and the book independantly of each other.

Rating:
Summary: This will freak you out!
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I had wanted to read the original novel before the new movie came out at the end of July. I was always a fan of the original movies. If you have seen the original movies you will notice small bits and pieces that were taken out from the book. Otherwise the novel and the original movies seemed to have quite different elements to me. The ending was quite a trip and the last page was a shock.

This is an excellent story that stands up well on its own and is different enough from the movies to incent any fan of the genre or social commentary to pick it up.

Rating:
Summary: Think the movie was good?
Review: Well try this on for size. This is easily one of the best science fictions I have ever read. It moves at a breakneck pace, tells a unique and compelling story about a human who becomes a celebrity on a planet of talking apes, and has a wonderful twist ending (no, NOT the one from the movie). I like the movie well enough, but this book tell's a refreshingly different story that is quite frankly better. I'm not sure what Tim Burton has planned for us, but with the movie and this great book, he has a tough act to follow.

Rating:
Summary: Richblue2
Review: Expecting the dark tones of the movie, I was taken off-guard by the Jules-Verne type first person narrative. We see more of the apes reactions and hatred toward humans in the movie while the book focuses on the lone intelligent man, Ulysse. We only hear of the apes attitudes from Zira and Cornelius, and then only at the time when action must be taken. Ulysse almost blissfully accepts his position and attempts to blend in, while Taylor is in a constant struggle for survival among a hostile species. The ending of the book came as a pleasant surprise for me in that I was expecting one similar to the movie. I think the imagination of both Boulle and Wilson and Serling (screenplay writers) are exceptionally displayed in the two endings. All in all, a very enjoyable book. A very relaxing and easy read.

Rating:
Summary: Apes is a fast, fun read with probing social questions
Review: Some readers may have a bias about this novel because they have already seen the movie. However, no bias can cast doubt on the true greatness of this novel. Although this book has none of the "action sequences" from the movie, Boulle's work is probably more engaging. Boulle recongizes when details need to be given and when it is an appropriate time to move forward.

There are a few aspects of the book which may seem absurd. Readers may sit back and say, "That could never happen!" However, the thoughts then sink in and we realize that Boulle's commentary is possibly more prophetic now than ever.

If you're fan of the movie, you owe it to yourself to read this book. It reads incredibly fast and is difficult to put down(I polished it off in one day). Also, fans of Orwell and/or Vonnegut should love this tale.

Rating:
Summary: Monkeying around with the future!
Review: I agree with the other reviewer that this would be a great book to use in school. It is a clever little parable about dogmatism, anthropocentrism, racism and classism, the nature of "humanity," and the difference between stagnation and creativity. The book is also different enough from the movies that reading it will come as a fresh and surprising journey to an unknown land. The twists and double twists and the many ironies in the book also make it an enjoyable read. For those who have seen the movies, they might find it intriguing to see how three of the five movies had their basis in this small book - namely Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

Rating:
Summary: READ THE BOOK TOO
Review: Given the impending release of the movie "THE PLANET OF THE APES" I rented the original movie, which I thought was great. But I just had to read the original book too. (I'm a reader, what can I say?)

I was greatly and pleasantly surprised, quite honestly, about the quality of the book. It was originally written in French trnaslated by Xan Fielding. The prose read extremely well for a translation and the acerbic wit, humor and biting satire comes through loud and clear in the book.

The novel is absolutely wonderful satire. Especially poignant were the scenes where the intelligent human has to witness his fellow human beings subjected to sometimes deadly but always degrading biological and mental experiments. Here, MAN is the object of big game hunts where apes go out and shoot down their human prey for sport. The novel also takes shots at academia and the scientific "establishment", the stock market, and most clearly of all "species-centrism" (or ethnocentrism if you will).

There are a few differences between the book and the original movie. Here, the "Planet of the Apes" is on the other side of the galaxy and is reached through intergalactic flight. Apes are much more technologically advanced than they are in the movie and even have space flight (even if it is described in a somewhat cheesy manner). The apes take over more through the technologcial (and read between the lines, moral) stagnation of mankind than a nuclear holocaust (as in the movie). But for the most part, the movie did an excellent job of telling a similar, yet different story, using the book as it's basis.

In short, I highly recommend the book and the /original/ movie if you haven't seen it. The novel is rewarding in its own right. Hopefully the new movie will be too.

Rating:
Summary: Like the movie
Review: but a bit different. I do not make it a habit of reading books after seeing the movie, but I made an exception in this case. I enjoyed the movie and I would recommend the book. While it is short, it is perfect for a summer read at the beach. The story is very similar to the movie so you may ask why read it? Two reasons, the beginning and the end. These are both vastly different from the movie and will definitely leave an impression on the reader. The narrative really makes one question all the experimenting on animals we do, and I, too, was made to feel the same discomfort that the narrator feels at various sightings on the Ape planet.

Rating:
Summary: spectacular
Review: A brilliant and trenchant satire on the fallibiity of mankind. It is easy to see how powerful a statement the novel made when first published and how it was timely material for the first film version but the subsequent celluloid siblings. It is also more potent for us now in our computer age than when Boulle first wrote it. The danger is not so much nuclear weapons as the surrendering and softening into stagnation by our over-reliance on technology, and lack of striving for authenticity in art. There are also fascinating philosophical undertones that merit comparisons to the subtexts of "2001: A Space Odyssey". Boulle's novel should be made a text for first year English classes.

Rating:
Summary: Getting back to the original.
Review: To be completely honest, I didn't even know there was an original PLANET OF THE APES book until I bought this book. Everyone knows about the famous movie with Charlton Heston and there is a lot of buzz surrounding the upcoming film by Tim Burton. It was this latest film that caused me to discover the book; I've heard the new movie is supposed to be closer to the book than the original film. When I first heard that I thought to myself, "There's a book? How come I've never heard about a book before?" I still don't know the answer to that question.

Anyway, the novel PLANET OF THE APES (or in some translations MONKEY PLANET) is a gem that's a joy to have discovered. An interesting tale of science fiction about a group of three space travelers who fly three hundred light years across the universe to a planet that they find to be similar to Earth. The major difference being that apes control the planet and humans are wild animal savages. One of the travelers, Ulysse Merou (look a classical allusion), is captured by the apes and placed within a research laboratory. There his attempts at communication distinguish him from the other men. He becomes a celebrity and life looks good. But things aren't always as they seem on the Planet of the Apes.

Though the story contains some sci-fi elements, the book is actually a social fable. As I was reading, I couldn't help but think of Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS and how similar the two pieces of literature are. In fact, the best way to describe PLANET OF THE APES is that it is an updated version of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS with a twist ending (Gulliver's journey didn't end so bleakly). Want a banana?