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Planet of the Apes (novel)

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Planet of the apes
also Monkey Planet
File:PlanetApesBook.jpg
1970s film tie-in edition
AuthorPierre Boulle
Original titleLa planète des singes
TranslatorXan Fielding
LanguageFrench
GenreScience fiction novel
PublisherLivre De Poche
Publication date
1963
Publication place France
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)

Template:Two other uses

Planet of the Apes is a novel by Pierre Boulle, originally published in 1963 in French as La planète des singes. As singe means both "ape" and "monkey," Xan Fielding called his translation Monkey Planet. It is an example of social commentary through dystopia.

Plot summary

The main events of the book are placed in a frame story, in which Jinn and Phillys, a couple out on a pleasure cruise in a spaceship, find a message in a bottle floating in space. The message inside the bottle is the log of a man, Ulysse Mérou, who believes that he may be the last human left alive in all the universe, but has written down his story in hopes that someone else, somewhere, will find it.

Ulysse begins by explaining that he was friends with Professor Antelle, a genius scientist on Earth, who invented a sophisticated spaceship which could travel at nearly the speed of light. Ulysse, the professor, and a physician named Levain fly off in this ship to explore outer space. They travel to the nearest star system that the professor theorized might be capable of life, the red sun Betelgeuse, which would take them about 350 years to reach. Due to time dilation, however, the trip only seems two years long to the travelers.

They arrive at the distant solar system and find that it contains an Earth-like planet, which they christen Soror (Latin for sister), "because of its resemblance to our Earth." They land on the planet and discover that they can breathe the air, drink the water, and eat the local vegetation. They soon encounter other human beings on the planet, although these others act as primitive as chimpanzees and destroy the clothing of the three astronauts. They live with the primitive humans for a few days, hoping to civilize them and learn their language.

At the end of this time, they are startled to see a hunting party in the forest, consisting of gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees using guns and machines. The apes wear human clothing identical to that of 20th century Earth, with the exception that they wear gloves instead of shoes on their prehensile feet. The hunting party shoots several of the humans for sport, including Levain, and capture others, including Ulysse.

Ulysse is taken off to the apes' city, which looks exactly the same as a human city from 20th century Earth, with the exception that some smaller furniture exists for the use of the chimpanzees. While most of the humans captured by the hunting party are sold for manual labor, the protagonist winds up in a research facility which is doing experiments on human intelligence. The apes perform experiments on the humans similar to Pavlov's conditioning experiments on dogs, and Ulysse proves his intelligence by failing to be conditioned, speaking and drawing figures of geometry.

Ulysse is taken in by one of the researchers, Zira, a female chimpanzee, who begins to teach him the apes' language. He learns from her all about the ape planet. Eventually, he is freed from his cage, and meets Zira's fiancé, Cornélius, a respected young scientist. With Cornélius' help, he goes to make a speech in front of the ape President and several representatives, and is given specially tailored clothing. He tours the city and learns about the apes' civilization and history. The apes have a very ancient society, but their origins are lost in time. Their technology and culture have progressed slowly through the centuries because each generation, for the most part, imitates those of the past, considered to be a recognized ape-like characteristic. The society is divided up between the violent gorillas, pedantic and conservative orangutans, and intellectual chimpanzees.

Although Ulysse's chimpanzee patrons Zira and Cornelius are convinced of his sentience, the society's leading orangutan scientists believe that he is faking his understanding of language, because their philosophy will not allow for the possibility of sentient human beings.

Ulysse falls in love with a primitive human female, Nova, whom he had met in the forest at the beginning of his visit to the planet. He impregnates her and this proves that he is the same species as the primitive humans, which lowers his standing in the eyes of many of the apes. However, their derision turns to fear with a discovery in a distant archaealogical dig and analysis of memory in some human brains. Evidence is uncovered which fills in the missing history of the apes. In the distant past, the planet was ruled by human beings, who built a technological society, and enslaved apes to perform their manual labor. Over time the humans became more and more dependent upon the apes, until eventually they became so lazy and degenerate that they were overthrown by their ape servants and fell into the primitive state in which our protagonist found them.

While some of the apes reject this evidence, others take it as a sign that the humans are a threat and must be exterminated--in particular, an old orangutan scientist, Dr. Zaius. Ulysse gets wind of this, and escapes from the planet with his wife and newly-born son, returning to Earth in the professor's spaceship.

Again, the trip takes several centuries, but only a relative time of a few years to the protagonist. Ulysse lands on Earth, over 700 years after he had originally left it, and lands outside the city of Paris. However, once outside the ship, he discovers that Earth is now ruled by sentient apes just like the planet from which he has just fled (this is where his story on paper ends). He immediately blasts his ship off into space once more, writes his story, places it in a bottle, and launches it into space for someone to find.

The book concludes by returning to the couple who had found the bottle, who are revealed to be apes themselves. They scoff at the unlikelihood of humans having been advanced enough to build spaceships, and conclude that the story must be someone's idea of a joke.

Other media

This story of a dystopian ape society has been popular in other media as well. Boulle's idea has been made into movies, television series, additional novel adaptations, and a video game.

Films

Planet of the Apes (1968) was a groundbreaking science fiction film based on Boulle's novel, and was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starring Charlton Heston. It was the vision of producer Arthur P. Jacobs, who commissioned Rod Serling to write the script, but the final version would be written by Michael Wilson. Jacobs enlisted Heston (who enlisted Schaffner) well before any production deal was made, and Heston's star status was instrumental in gaining support for the film. They gained the support of Mort Abrahams after producing a short film demo which showed that the makeups (initially created by Ben Nye, Sr., not to be confused with the design perfected by John Chambers for the actual film) could be convincing enough to not appear funny, as most "monkey suits" up to that time had. In the English-language films, the apes are insulted when called "monkeys," but in the original book, no distinction is made because "singes" is the French word for both "apes" and "monkeys".

There were four sequels to Schaffner's film, creating a pentalogy, which substantially deviate from the story in Boulle's book:

The 1968 film was reimagined in 2001 - see Planet of the Apes (2001 film).

Television series

There were also two television series:

Comics

See Planet of the Apes (comic)

Novels

Original novel

Original film adaptations

Film adaptations and prequels to the 2001 version

Graphic novel

Television series adaptations

Video Game

  • A "Planet of the Apes" PC game was released by Ubi Soft in 2001, but did not gain much popularity due to poor graphics, repetitive and simple gameplay, and lack of promotion. The game revolves around the struggle of main character Ulysses to find a way to protect the fate of the remaining humans. In this game world, all humans speak and ape technology is much more advanced than that of the "Planet of the Apes" films (computers, laser guns, etc.)
  • In 2001, a "Planet of the Apes" video game developed by Torus Games and published by Ubi Soft for Game Boy Advance.
  • In 2001, a "Planet of the Apes" video game developed by Torus Games and published by Ubi Soft for Game Boy Color.
  • In 2002, a "Planet of the Apes" video game developed by Visiware and published by Ubi Soft for Sony Playstation.
  • A "Planet of the Apes" video game was canceled for Sega Dreamcast.
  • A "Planet of the Apes" game was planned and wrote for the Atari 2600 but was cancelled because of the 1983 game crash.

Other references

See also

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