Planet of the Apes (1963)
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.
(Reviewed:20-Feb-00)
Grade: (A)
