They kept progressing onward and upward, while the human race went into decline. The ironic flip-side of Boullés vision is that these animals, already relatively intelligent, learned the first rudiments of language and technology from human beings. There they find a world where human beings have become less than naked savages: mere animals, dumb brutes incapable of conscious thought or speech…where civilization belongs to the apes: chimpanzees, organgutans, baboons, and especially gorillas. Taking this idea together with the theory of evolution, the ages-long rise and fall of one dominant species after another, Boullé conceived this creepy, shocking morality tale in which a Professor and his two assistants travel in an experimental rocket-ship to a far-distant planet. He envisioned people falling into such a state of blowzy complacency that they ceased to be “persons” at all. Ironically, perhaps, Boullé envisioned a point in the human races development when the quest for knowledge, labor-saving technology, and world peace–having been the driving force behind so many great advances in our history–might turn against us. It raises the question of whether too much civilization may make things too easy for mankind, taking away our motivation to grow and think and learn, and finally taking away our ability to do the things that make us human. I think he was writing more of a social-criticism parable, lampooning the foibles of the human race. I don’t think Boullé thought he was writing a science fiction book. Boullés novel is still in print, and I think it will be regarded as a sci-fi/fantasy classic long after the film-novelization is sunk in obscurity.

It just goes to show how one idea leads to another, again and again, until the original idea is practically forgotten. I can’t help finding this unbearably ironic, because the whole franchise started with this original novel by Pierre Boullé (translated from French by Xan Fielding). Predictably, there was even a novel version of Planet of the Apes, adapted from the Tim Burton screenplay. In and amongst those movies were two or three TV series spinoffs. Only a couple of years ago, Tim Burton resurrected and refurbished the concept in a big-budget picture starring Mark Wahlberg. Our older readers, and some younger ones who stay up past their bedtime watching cable TV, may remember a long series of movies from the 1960s or so, beginning with Planet of the Apes starring Roddy McDowell and Charlton Heston.

Planet of the apes by pierre boulle