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Planet of the Apes Movies #2
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
The time indicator raced back through the years--from 3955 to 1973. The spacecraft held the Earth's future inhabitants--three survivors of a devastating cataclysm.
The capsule's occupants included Cornelius, his mate Zira, and Dr. Milo--three Apes, the thinking, speaking descendants of the species that had dominated Man and the Earth for centuries.
The world of 1973 welcomed them at first, pampered them when it realized their unusual qualities, threatened them later when it was learned that Zira carried the seed of the future ascendance of Ape over Man.
They had to be killed! But first ...
The capsule's occupants included Cornelius, his mate Zira, and Dr. Milo--three Apes, the thinking, speaking descendants of the species that had dominated Man and the Earth for centuries.
The world of 1973 welcomed them at first, pampered them when it realized their unusual qualities, threatened them later when it was learned that Zira carried the seed of the future ascendance of Ape over Man.
They had to be killed! But first ...
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
2 people are currently reading
298 people want to read
About the author
Jerry Pournelle
265 books550 followersDr Jerry Eugene Pournelle was an American science fiction writer, engineer, essayist, and journalist, who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte, and from 1998 until his death maintained his own website and blog.
From the beginning, Pournelle's work centered around strong military themes. Several books describe the fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.
Pournelle spent years working in the aerospace industry, including at Boeing, on projects including studying heat tolerance for astronauts and their spacesuits. This side of his career also found him working on projections related to military tactics and probabilities. One report in which he had a hand became a basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense system proposed by President Ronald Reagan. A study he edited in 1964 involved projecting Air Force missile technology needs for 1975.
Dr. Pournelle would always tell would-be writers seeking advice that the key to becoming an author was to write — a lot.
“And finish what you write,” he added in a 2003 interview. “Don’t join a writers’ club and sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it.”
Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.
From the beginning, Pournelle's work centered around strong military themes. Several books describe the fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.
Pournelle spent years working in the aerospace industry, including at Boeing, on projects including studying heat tolerance for astronauts and their spacesuits. This side of his career also found him working on projections related to military tactics and probabilities. One report in which he had a hand became a basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense system proposed by President Ronald Reagan. A study he edited in 1964 involved projecting Air Force missile technology needs for 1975.
Dr. Pournelle would always tell would-be writers seeking advice that the key to becoming an author was to write — a lot.
“And finish what you write,” he added in a 2003 interview. “Don’t join a writers’ club and sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it.”
Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
July 6, 2025
This i think was my favorite book in the series as it showed the beginning of the Ape/Human world. Recommended
July 23, 2017
20th Century-Fox’s sci-fi adventure Escape from the Planet of the Apes is adapted into a novel by award winning author Jerry Pournelle. The story follows intelligent chimpanzees Cornelius and Zira who are thrown back in time in Tyler’s spaceship to 1973 where they must adapt to a world ruled by humans, and begin to fear for their lives if the humans learn that they’re from Earth’s future and that apes have gained dominion over man. Though based on the film’s screenplay, there are a number of differences; including expanded questioning by the Presidential Commission and more focus on Dr. Victor (instead of Otto) Hasslein plotting against the apes. Pournelle’s writing style is especially good, with a smooth narrative flow and compelling characters. An especially well-crafted novelization, Escape from the Planet of the Apes delivers all of the thrills and intense drama of the film.
March 26, 2020
Much better than the previous entry. Good pulp fiction. Pournelle at least has the good sense to have his characters have an inner life. Nothing too deep mind you but at least they ponder their actions and those of others as regular people do in real life. Like I said this ain't a classic of literature or even sci-fi but it's a fairly decent representation of the movie which kinda is (a classic of sci-fi movies at least). One finds themselves pulling for the chimps, Cornelius & Zira in their plight to stay alive in a world dominated by humans (the complete opposite of the original movie). At the same time of course one also realizes along w/Hasslein the scientist bent on their destruction, that they pose an enormous existential threat to the human race. As a kid, watching the movie, I completely supported the apes and their liberal human helpers, as an adult I'm definitely on Hasslein's side. Unfortunately I know it's the human/Hasslein side that ends up the loser in this epic struggle.
September 16, 2020
You can't go wrong when you have a great author adapting a great script. This has long been my favorite of the movies and Pournelle got their characterizations just right. I could actually hear Rody McDowall, Kim Hunter, and all the other actors speaking the lines as I read even though I have not seem the movie in years. I realize how hard it is to adapt movies into novel form. Make it exactly like the movie you run the risk of writing a flat and boring book, add too much of your own, you can turn off fans of the movie. Pournelle went for the former and delivered a solidly told and exciting novelization that reminded me of all the pulpy novels of my childhood. I love books like that. I haven't read all the novels at the time of writing this review but this is the best. Once I read the last couple I could change my mind but this is miles ahead of the ones I have read, especially Beneath. Although a piece of me wishes Pournelle had not stuck so ardently to the movie and had made it his own and wrote a happy ending for all involved.
January 28, 2018
a good adaptation of the movie by one of modern scifis best authors. a few differences, likely from the movie screenplay changing, but a fun read.
December 28, 2024
An intelligent novelization of the middle child of the POTA movies. The Earth of 2000 years in the future was destroyed at the end of the previous film. Three chimpanzees, including Zira and Cornelius, have salvaged Taylor's space ship and left Earth just before it blew, with the explosi0n throwing them back in time.
The movie is enjoyable, carried by a script with some reasonably clever ideas and strong acting by those in the lead roles, managing to step beyond its silly opening premise. (How did the apes--members of a technologically primitive civilization--manage to repair and pilot a space ship? Heck, how did they find Taylor's ship sunken in a large lake in the Forbidden Zone?)
Jerry Pournelle, a skilled and experienced SF writer, makes the silly parts seem reasonable and does an excellent job of presenting the moral dilemmas built into the story. Zira and Cornelius are innocent of any crimes--well, except Zira DID experiment upon and dissect dissect human beings in her own time. Now that they are part of a human civilization, Zira particularly feels some guilt for this.
On the human side, Dr. Hasslein is worried about intelligent apes eventually overthrowing humanity. He realizes that apes could not possible evolve into intelligent beings in just 2000 years UNLESS they get a jump-start by interbreeding with the time travelers. He favors a drastic solution, but (in the book) he does struggle with the morality of having the apes killed or sterilized. The movie, I think, presents Hasslein as very single-minded. The book manages to make him more three-dimensional. Dialogue between various characters is effectively used to highlight the moral murkiness of the situation.
Fun Fact #1: In the movie, Hasslein is played by Eric Braeden, who is great in the part. Pournelle includes a paragraph in which Hasslein ponders the possibility of an intelligent computer conquering humanity, which is a fun shout-out to Braeden's starring role in the 1970 film "Colossus: The Forbin Project."
Fun fact #2: In recent years, several Expanded Universe works of fiction have come up with explanations for how the apes were able to repair/fly Taylor's ship. One novel has Professor Milo (the third time-traveling ape) interacting and learning from Landon before Landon is lobotomized by Zaius. A short story has Milo arrive from another continent as a member of a more highly advanced ape civilization. In Pournelle's novelization of "Escape," Milo's extraordinary genius is mentioned several times by Zira and Cornelius after Milo's death--he is basically the Da Vinci/Einstein of ape civilization. In any case, the time travel plot twist was pretty much the only way of keeping the movie series afloat after the previous movie literally killed off the entire world.
The movie is enjoyable, carried by a script with some reasonably clever ideas and strong acting by those in the lead roles, managing to step beyond its silly opening premise. (How did the apes--members of a technologically primitive civilization--manage to repair and pilot a space ship? Heck, how did they find Taylor's ship sunken in a large lake in the Forbidden Zone?)
Jerry Pournelle, a skilled and experienced SF writer, makes the silly parts seem reasonable and does an excellent job of presenting the moral dilemmas built into the story. Zira and Cornelius are innocent of any crimes--well, except Zira DID experiment upon and dissect dissect human beings in her own time. Now that they are part of a human civilization, Zira particularly feels some guilt for this.
On the human side, Dr. Hasslein is worried about intelligent apes eventually overthrowing humanity. He realizes that apes could not possible evolve into intelligent beings in just 2000 years UNLESS they get a jump-start by interbreeding with the time travelers. He favors a drastic solution, but (in the book) he does struggle with the morality of having the apes killed or sterilized. The movie, I think, presents Hasslein as very single-minded. The book manages to make him more three-dimensional. Dialogue between various characters is effectively used to highlight the moral murkiness of the situation.
Fun Fact #1: In the movie, Hasslein is played by Eric Braeden, who is great in the part. Pournelle includes a paragraph in which Hasslein ponders the possibility of an intelligent computer conquering humanity, which is a fun shout-out to Braeden's starring role in the 1970 film "Colossus: The Forbin Project."
Fun fact #2: In recent years, several Expanded Universe works of fiction have come up with explanations for how the apes were able to repair/fly Taylor's ship. One novel has Professor Milo (the third time-traveling ape) interacting and learning from Landon before Landon is lobotomized by Zaius. A short story has Milo arrive from another continent as a member of a more highly advanced ape civilization. In Pournelle's novelization of "Escape," Milo's extraordinary genius is mentioned several times by Zira and Cornelius after Milo's death--he is basically the Da Vinci/Einstein of ape civilization. In any case, the time travel plot twist was pretty much the only way of keeping the movie series afloat after the previous movie literally killed off the entire world.
February 19, 2020
I read this not because I'm a fan of the "Planet of the Apes" series, but because I'm a fan of Jerry Pournelle's writing. So take my commentary with a grain of salt.
The bulk of the science fiction films which date from the period of the original "Planet of the Apes" franchise (the late 1960s through the late 1970s) have aged poorly, to put it mildly. "2001" excepted, pre-"Star Wars" sci-fi films generally suffer from the technical limitations of their era. In the case of the "Apes" series, the premise itself leaves something to be desired, and it is easy to poke holes in its conception and execution. This is reflected in the fact that even the early 2000s reboot of the franchise struggled to suspend the disbelief of its audience.
All of that having been said, what we have here is a novelization of a second-rate, low-budget, early 1970s science fiction film. Pournelle does his best to flesh out the storyline of the film, but sticks very close to its original plot. He writes in such a cinematic style, in fact, that this novel almost feels like a simple transcription of the film, although Pournelle does add a certain amount of detail which might have been tedious on screen. Novelizations rarely work well as literature, but the best examples typically diverge substantively from their original sources. Had Pournelle chosen such a tack, he may have fared better. As it stands, there is little of the author's original style present in this piece work: it could have been written by anyone.
Of course, as a simple piece of escapist fluff, "Escape" works well enough, and this was reflected in the success which its companion film enjoyed at the box office and with the critics of the day. It is a story very much steeped in its time, touching on race relations, the conflict in Vietnam, and the slow rise of governmental authoritarianism. But none of that prevents this second-rate work from coming off as hopelessly dated, and more than just a little contrived.
The bulk of the science fiction films which date from the period of the original "Planet of the Apes" franchise (the late 1960s through the late 1970s) have aged poorly, to put it mildly. "2001" excepted, pre-"Star Wars" sci-fi films generally suffer from the technical limitations of their era. In the case of the "Apes" series, the premise itself leaves something to be desired, and it is easy to poke holes in its conception and execution. This is reflected in the fact that even the early 2000s reboot of the franchise struggled to suspend the disbelief of its audience.
All of that having been said, what we have here is a novelization of a second-rate, low-budget, early 1970s science fiction film. Pournelle does his best to flesh out the storyline of the film, but sticks very close to its original plot. He writes in such a cinematic style, in fact, that this novel almost feels like a simple transcription of the film, although Pournelle does add a certain amount of detail which might have been tedious on screen. Novelizations rarely work well as literature, but the best examples typically diverge substantively from their original sources. Had Pournelle chosen such a tack, he may have fared better. As it stands, there is little of the author's original style present in this piece work: it could have been written by anyone.
Of course, as a simple piece of escapist fluff, "Escape" works well enough, and this was reflected in the success which its companion film enjoyed at the box office and with the critics of the day. It is a story very much steeped in its time, touching on race relations, the conflict in Vietnam, and the slow rise of governmental authoritarianism. But none of that prevents this second-rate work from coming off as hopelessly dated, and more than just a little contrived.
May 5, 2022
An object detected plummeting into earths atmosphere, panic sets in as defence tracks and tries to determine what it is. On inspection naval rescue find a NASA spacecraft and results in three chimpanzees in spacesuits emerging, mouths drop, minds blown. The chimpanzees sent back from the future. The world will be left gobsmacked as the apes are highly intelligent, witty and an instant hit. A scientist will push that as long as these apes are alive, they are a danger to mankind, their genes could breed throughout the species causing catastrophic consequences. Could just one of these survivors start a war of who is more superior/dominant?
January 19, 2026
It has been decades since I read a novelization of a screenplay. I picked out this because Jerry Pournelle was the author. At the time of publication it was early in his career as a published author, but he was president of the SFWA.
The novelization carries enough detail that it expands on the film. The start of the novel provides expanded detail regarding the arrival of the spacecraft. Motivations are expanded. It filled an afternoon.
The novelization carries enough detail that it expands on the film. The start of the novel provides expanded detail regarding the arrival of the spacecraft. Motivations are expanded. It filled an afternoon.
June 12, 2018
7 out of 10
June 2, 2020
The novelization of my least favorite of the Apes movies. Pournelle made an effort to add some nuance to the story, but there's only so much he could do.
May 15, 2024
We all the the story. brilliant. the writing a little bit basic.
July 22, 2024
The main characters from the first book, go back in time and meet humans. not so great.
July 19, 2025
Good book. Almost exactly like the 1971 film.
A bit more depth in the characters, Hasslein is not evil, simply driven to save the human race.
A bit more depth in the characters, Hasslein is not evil, simply driven to save the human race.
September 10, 2025
Good novelization of a good film.
January 13, 2026
A very good read and a much better book than the movie it is based upon.
March 21, 2024
This is how I found out apes find the term “monkey” offensive. Who knew?
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August 15, 2013Third in Series.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews