Rating: 
Summary: So Go Find
Review: Before I started reading "Monkey Planet", I thought this book is cool. Cool in the same way that Martin Caidin's book "Cyborg" (on which the Lee Major's show "The Six Million Dollar Man" was based) is cool. Cool because - hey, here is this French guy who also wrote "The Bridge Over The River Kwai", writing a tiny sci-fi novel that becomes a Charlton Heston-shaped phenomena. Cool because, in the rush to elevate the likes of Mr Heston and Roddy McDowell and the rest of them, the novel has been all-but forgotten. (Which, having read the book, is a little like Mary Shelley's little gothic number being forgotten in the wake of that monstrousity by Kenneth Branagh.)A couple of space travellers chance across a message in a bottle. The story they find is the story you read. Basically, three astronauts travel three hundred light years (from Earth to Betelgeuse) and discover a planet similar to Earth, where the monkey reigns supreme. The narrator, Ulysse Merou, is separated from his fellow astronauts and imprisoned in a research laboratory with other humans. His attempts to communicate set him apart. He becomes something of a celebrity in the monkey world. But all is not well. Not all of the monkeys are keen on the idea of an intelligent human. Part "Brave New World" and part "The Time Machine", "Monkey Planet" is only sci-fi in the same way that "1984" or "Gulliver's Travels" is sci-fi. In point of fact, the resemblance between Pierre Merou and Lemuel Gulliver (particularly after Gulliver returns from the land of the Houyhnhnms) is startling. The book, first published in France as "La Planete des Singes" in 1963, has aged terrifically, avoiding most if not all of the potholes that sometimes beset semi-prophetic pseudo-sci-fi novels. Know this. "Monkey Planet" is a gem. Unfortunately, it's a gem that has been lost underground, buried beneath the film, the sequels and the ropey TV show. "Monkey Planet" is a lost classic, floating through space in a bottle waiting to be found. So go find.
Rating: 
Summary: Great parable for our information age.
Review: I read this a while back, and I told my dad, a professor, about how the ape scholars in the book just read the old books, rehashed it and published 'new' books, and told each other how smart they were. My dad said, "How's that different from today." How is what the ape scholors did any different than our emerging Internet culture, where cutting, pasting adding links seem the be the favorite activity on the 'net?
Rating:
Summary: great, but let's just forget the movie
Review: I can't tell you why without giving the end away, but anyone who thinks the movie a reasonable or faithful adaptation of this novel completely misses its point. I'm not talking about Charleton Heston's silly posturing and the film's various incongruities and unintentional anachronisms; I'm talking about the essence of the novel's plot and the idea behind that plot. This novel is very engrossing and replete with twists and turn within twists and turns and has a thoughtful and thought-provoking philosphical moral as well.
Rating:
Summary: Don't be lazy - think!
Review: I confess - I never saw the movie.I read this book in translation.It is an easy read;the real thinking and evaluating starts after.The last paragraph gives it a great twist.Let's get to the point - you don't have to believe such a thing could happen to get the message.The message being that if we are lazy and don't think into what we do,and plain don't do much creative (not habitual) action - we degenerate. I believe it is a book worth reading,for the message it contains(and hopefully it will wake us up).I think it would be a good book for a discussion,in schools and anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: thought provoking and it's great fun besides
Review: I can't imagine that there's anyone reading this who doesn't know the plot of Planet of the Apes. If you've never read the book, suffice it to say that the movie (Planet of the Apes--1968) was a relatively faithful adaptation of the text. Most of the changes that were made relate to the framing devices used to begin and end the respective stories and some understandable deFrenchifying of the astronauts. Here again, as in Bridge on the River Kwai (see Orrin's review), Boulle brilliantly succeeds in presenting an idea-rich novel in a minimum number of pages (I read an old movie tie-in copy that was just 128 pages long). This brevity does a few things: it provides the novel with a headlong narrative drive; it speeds the reader past the holes in the plot and premise; and it makes for a book whose full implications only really become apparent on further reflection. I think many of the ideas conveyed by the novel are false. There is no bigger lie in the history of symbols than the schoolroom wall charts of our youth showing the tree of life with man and apes dangling at the end of one branch or the march of species leading from australopithecus, or whoever, on up to homo sapiens, and the book relies heavily on this shaky premise that evolution is just that smooth and linear and that our interconnectedness with the lesser primates is exactly that close. This is all extraordinarily dubious; but it is assuredly thought provoking and it's great fun besides. GRADE: A FILM: A+
Rating:
Summary: NO: a classic of LITERATURE
Review: Well, I have mixed feelings about this new edition. On the one hand, I'm very glad to have it back in print. On the other hand, it is appalling for it to appear in a series called "Cinema Classics". The movie "Planet of the Apes" is one of the worst ever made, and the always inept Charleston Heston is dreadful in the featured role. Please, if you enjoyed the film version, don't even touch this. Go back to your own planet.
Rating:
Summary: Great Narrative...Better Than The Film
Review: When I finally got a chance to read this book I took my sweet time. Too many others knock the book because it's not the movie. This book is one of the greatest narratives I have ever read. It's very refreshing! Too much SF gets heavy-handed and pounds a message into you. Planet Of The Apes let's you decide as to what depth you wish to explore the story. Despite the fact that I really liked the film, I enjoyed the book even more. You can tell where a lot of the ideas for the follow-up films came from and that alone says how much story is really in this short piece. Which, by the way, has been seriously lacking in today's SF. Too many books are written with the intent of selling them as movies, long trivial side stories and multiple characters used just to fill in pages. And to all of those who miss the surprise ending (in the movie)...did you read the same book... Read It! (Slow). Nuff Said!! :)
Rating:
Summary: The Missing Link between Two Worlds?
Review: Fans of the APES movies and TV series should check out the source, the wonderful starter book by Boule; but don't be surprised that it was another Frenchman (following the literary tradition of prolific Jules Verne) who created this masterpiece of sci fi invention. Three Frenchmen land on a distant planet which proves remarkably earthlike--in fact, the hero names it Soror (meaning Sister). But there will be no return to Earth for the learned professor, his assistant and the narrator--a journalist with no ties. Ulysse Meroux is justifiably shocked to discover a paradox of terrestrial social evolution, after their launch is attacked and trashed by the natives--handsome humans with primitive mental and emotional functions. For on this planet mankind is speechless and helplessly subservient to a race of super apes. Men have been reduced to animal status, while a simian civilization (divided into gorillas, orangutans and chimpazees) are masters of the planet and technology. How could such a distortion of normal roles have occurred? How far must Ulysse debase himself to collaborate with his simian captors? For what prize will he sink to play laboratory creature in a Animal Behavior display? How can he convince the fair-minded chimpanzees, sweet Dr. Zira and her fiance, Cornelius, that here is the first sentient, intelligent man, obviously from another planet? Could apes possibly have evolved from an inferior human race centuries ago? Did God create Man or Ape in His own image? A fascinating hypothesis which torments scientists on both sides of the controversy. There are those who would suppress the truth if it involves heresy, but we wonder: can Mimicry be carried too far? I don't want to spoil the ending, which the movie version presents even more powerfully than the original. This is Sci Fi at its Simian best!
Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT!
Review: To be read and enjoyed more than once!
Rating:
Summary: Ape for this book
Review: The final few words of the whole book are a cool twist. The book lets your imagination run wild.
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