Death of the Planet of the Apes

by Andrew E.C. Gaska

New adventures revealing secrets stemming from Beneath the Planet of the Apes

In Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Col. George Taylor (played by Charlton Heston) disappears into the Forbidden Zone, only to return in the film's climactic scene. For forty-eight years, the question has remained--what happened to Taylor?

Finally the truth is revealed. Beneath the irradiated wasteland, the astronaut faces the deadly wonders of a gleaming city and its inhuman citizenry. On the surface the gorillas--led by General Ursus--launch an all-out assault to exterminate the savage animals known as humans.

And out in the desert, the chimpanzee scientist Milo strives to reconstruct the spacecraft that brought the humans from the past. Events spiral at a breakneck pace, with the fate of a world at stake.

Genres: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Fiction

464 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2018

About the author

With two decades of experience in the comics and video game industries, author Andrew E.C. Gaska is the Senior Development Editor at Lion Forge LLC. Having previously freelanced for Lion Forge’s Labs division as a script, pitch, and proposal writer, he now generates original IP for the brand, developing both comics and animation projects while working closely with creative teams to guide their vision to fruition.

He is founder/creative director of the guerrilla integrated-media studio BLAM! Ventures, and for the past three years has worked as a freelance franchise consultant to 20TH CENTURY FOX, writing series reference bibles, maintaining continuity, streamlining in-universe canon, and creating detailed timelines for the legacy franchises of ALIEN®, Predator®, and Planet of the Apes®. He was also a sequential storytelling instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York and for seventeen years served as a visual consultant to Rockstar Games on the Grand Theft Auto series, Red Dead Revolver, and all other releases.

Known as ‘Drew’ to his friends, his online sci-fi and sociopolitical essays on social media and at rogue-reviewer.com draw controversial debate and discussion from all sides. His graphic novels and prose works include Critical Millennium™, Space:1999™, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century®: The Draconian Fire Saga, Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes®, Tales from the Forbidden Zone: The Unknown Ape™, and the upcoming novel, Death of the Planet of the Apes®.

Drew resides in Gulf Breeze, Florida with his affectionately glutinous feline, Adrien. Find out more about his upcoming projects at www.blamventures.com

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the 1970s publishers often issued tie in books to cash in on the success of the Planet of the Apes films & TV series. Most were just extended versions of the filmed stories, but I've always preferred original novels based on the characters.
Here we have a novel bridging the gap between the disappearance of Taylor (Charlton Heston) at the beginning of Beneath the Planet of the Apes & his reappearance at the end. Author Andrew Gaska is certainly a fan of the franchise & treats us to a wealth of characters we know well. There are multiple plots, including detailed flashbacks to Taylor's early life. The author even tries (sometimes successfully) to explain away plot holes in some of the movies, which is a nice touch.
Unfortunately, for me, it was all a bit too much. Gaska constantly flits between numerous plot threads, which I found detrimental to the flow of the narration. I would have liked a couple of shorter novels, each focusing on different stories, rather than this long one.
It's a valiant effort, but (even as big a fan of this franchise) he doesn't pull it off for me.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a year or so ago I read the rather fun Terra Primate RPG, which is to apes as All Flesh Must Be Eaten is to zombies. I realized I didn’t actually know anything about the source material it was (unauthorizedly) drawing from, so i sat down and watched Planet of the Apes. And then I watched the rest of the original series. And the crappy remake. And the reboot trilogy. And I loved them. Other than the remake. So when I spotted this in a bookstore I knew I had to read it. After all, there are some big inconsistencies between Beneath and Escape, and I had hopes this would fix them. Which it does. And it tells what Taylor was up to during the second film. And it gives his backstory.

But most of all it creates a thriving ape society that makes me wish this book could somehow avoid Beneath’s kill them all ending. There’s an ape pope! The rise of ape fascism! Ape political intrigue! And as with the original films the apes basically feel like people with silly costumes on, but that’s not a bad thing. The whole point is to explore human culture by holding a furry mirror to it. The ape Einstein Dr. Milo gets expanded upon a fair bit, gaining a whole supporting cast of characters. There’s a chimpanzee revolutionary movement that feels like something right out of the movies. Gaska even manages to make me feel sympathetic for Doctor Zaius of all people, showing how he’s in a hard position. He wants ape society to advance without falling into the same mistakes that humans made.

And boy has humanity made some awful mistakes. Gaska spends a fair bit of the novel elaborating on George Taylor’s backstory, showing how he became such a misanthropic bastard that he jumps at the chance to leave Earth behind forever. It turns out that Taylor was a prisoner of the Japanese in the Second World War and also fought in Korea. Plus Gaska engages in the same act of turning what once was future history into an alternate history that made his Space 1999 comic interesting. In Taylor’s world, there’s a militaristic version of NASA alongside the civilian agency and Texas secedes from the Union in the 60s. The chapters about ANSA were interesting, setting up a whole alternate space race based on reverse engineered technology from a crashed ship that may be alien or (I like to think) is a time displaced piece of Earth tech. Probably the best part of it is it helps to build up the horror of the Alpha Omega bomb - by the novel’s end, when that bomb appears on stage so to speak, I was as horrified by its existence as Taylor is.

If there’s one major weakness of this novel, it’s the one I’ve alluded to earlier - setting up so many interesting plots and characters feels like a little bit of a waste when so many of them can never be seen again. I’m willing to bet that the author has more ideas for novels to fill in some of the gaps of the Apes canon, but the weird time-loopy nature of the whole thing means most of the cool characters introduced or elaborated on here probably won’t reappear given the novel hews to Beneath canon, ending with a nuclear explosion that seems to not just sterilize Earth but possibly utterly annihilate the planet of apes and men. I guess in essence what I’d really love is for Gaska to get to write material set before the original movies so he can build up a cool ape society without having to knock it down. I know he’s done a previous novel that fills some holes in the original film, which I plan to read soon now that I’ve tracked it down through the library. But really what this book does is leaving me wanting more of ape society, politics, and religion. And more of Mungwortt, the rather dimwitted ape sidekick Taylor inadvertently picks up. He pretty much steals the show whenever he’s around.

Now, am I going to take the events of this novel as gospel truth when I next watch the films? I don’t know. There were parts that felt like they didn’t totally gel with how I think of things, and probably some of that was just references to other expanded universe stuff I haven’t read. But even if this doesn’t fill in the cracks in the series as perfectly as I could like, it’s still a good read, not just as a Planet of the Apes novel but as a piece of science fiction and adventure story. I may still not care too much for the mutants, but even they get some interesting expansions here, and overall I think this is well worth reading for fans of the original film series. I look forward to seeing what other new stories Titan Books releases, and I’m even kinda curious to check out their reprints of the film novelizations in hopes that there might be some fun new tidbits, things like this novel writ small.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Death of the Planet of the Apes is a sequel to Gaska's previous POTA novel Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, which came out in 2011. As the sequels to that book were stalled over the years, there was a switch from Archaia to Titan, which meant that this book would not have glorious illustrations like the first one had. Instead, it has a generic cover, a trait that sometimes plagues movie tie-in novels.

But what about the story itself? As I've said before, Gaska is very knowledgeable about POTA media. He includes references to the TV shows and some comics, and even resolves issues such as the chronometer timestamps and Lucius' fate (the execution of which I have mixed feelings about). This book bridges some gaps regarding Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which I think is the worst film in the classic POTA series. So to me it felt like a chore re-reading scenes that were in the film. There is new material, though the quality varies. (It appears that we might have our first F-bomb in POTA media, which comes up during a sequence regarding the Alpha-Omega bomb. So the placement of it is amusing.) I feel that there are too many threads, which I suppose are meant to give this novel the feel of a sweeping epic. And at various points, the story is too reliant on flashbacks that could have been trimmed down.

There might be light spoilers ahead, but if you've seen Beneath then you're fine. One particular thread that was opened but not really touched upon again until the end was the revelation that Nova is pregnant with Taylor's child. In-universe, this feels like it comes from nowhere since it's not mentioned in the films. Out of universe, it has its basis in a line that was cut from the original film, similar to how the ape hybrid thread was cut from Beneath and included here. But having Nova be pregnant doesn't really do much more than make it a bit more depressing when Nova meets her fate. When I watch Beneath, it's hard for me to really see Nova as being pregnant, because it doesn't really come up within the film. And on a related note, I felt really uncomfortable reading a moment when Zira considers preventing her child from being born. And apparently this has been practiced by other apes in secret. I understand that Zira is a prisoner when considering this, but I would rather have had this omitted from the story.

So Death of the Planet of the Apes wasn't as enjoyable as I had hoped. But it at least progresses Gaska's series of novels. If there are more sequels, I might enjoy them more than this one. I certainly want a bridging of the gap between this and his short story "The Unknown Ape," which is included in Tales from the Forbidden Zone.

[B.A.G. Studios · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well… I’ve finally finished this. Took long enough.
This is a weird piece.
On one hand, it’s a sequel to this author’s last book, which I gave a 3/5 wishing that the story was a little stronger and that the prose was a lot stronger. But it had decent art and a good handle on the characters. I’m giving this one an equivalent score of 3/5*, as it lost the cool art and the story was honestly a little worse, but the characters are just as steady and the prose is significantly better. Both books together, still a huge mixed bag.
It’s also weird because of its relationship to its predecessor. This is a sequel to that book. But it is not in the same continuity as that book. This book is clearly an alternate Issue #12 to Cataclysm, having whole characters lifted from the comics run and referencing several events. This depicts the events very differently than #12, but otherwise, it fits in that world. I actually like it better than that issue as a conclusion. The problem is, this is also building too greatly off of the previous novel. And that novel was decidedly not part of any other continuity. It had its own ideas of when the moon fell, Zaius and Marcus have a very different relationship, etc. But how am I supposed to rectify them together? And don’t misconstrue this as the ramblings of a nerd wanting things to line up; I was fine with these novels just giving a new continuity. But this one is so obviously not in the same world as the book to which it acts as a sequel.
It’s also weird because it spends SO much time telling about George Taylor’s experiences before Project Liberty. And I really hope you wanted every single detail of that, because you’re gonna get all of it and more. It feels like it’s doing that only because the previous book did it with Landon, and to pad the book out. There aren’t actually enough scenes to give George Taylor for the entire duration of Beneath so they had to fill in the gaps with flashbacks. I could see a way one could’ve given George and Mungewortt a B plot, tie George into the whole business with the brain monsters, but they didn’t do that. It’s hinted at for a second and then pulled out from under us.
Oh yeah, did I mention brain monsters?
This is a weird piece.
Mungwortt, of the previous novel, is a consistently fun character to read. And I like his interactions with the fictional Zao he hears in his head. But here’s my problem. Zao is dead. I thought it was the mutants sending him signals, which he mistook as Zao’s voice. No. No, he’s just lost his sanity. He’s crazy now. I don’t know why, but he just has a schizophrenic Zao voice. I guess. The whole book I thought we were leading up to anything remotely interesting about any of that, and no, it ends with Mungwortt having never really interacted with the plot of the book, the brain monsters never become important, the White Ones are never utilized much, you could strip out everything with Mungwortt and nothing would change about this story. He’s just here so that it’s a sequel to the last book. In fact I wish he wasn’t here FOR that reason, so that this would be far less beholden to the previous book. You kinda need the first one to understand what this character even is, let alone care about him.
I also don’t know why the mutants had to go all William Stryker and make a telepathic child to try to coerce the protagonist. For a long time. With no real conclusion.
That’s the thing, stuff just kinda happens for a while because other things are happening on-screen and we’re waiting for that to be done with. Especially now that I know the end of the book is just the end of the second movie, why not just adapt that movie?? Just adapt it with the premise that you want to tell the other side of the story along with it. Ditch Mungwortt and show what’s going on with Brent and maybe the movie holds up a little better. But as-is, almost everything that gets brought up in this book leads to nowhere. In my review of Conspiracy, I said, “I kept finding myself at least once a chapter with my mind wandering off thinking… ‘If this book interjected the Taylor events every now and then, even if it were in a clipped fashion, this would be better paced and more entertaining, and wouldn’t have the need for so much filler with these pointless flashbacks.’” I said then I’d be able to better judge the story once I saw where it was going; well it went nowhere.
I understand that the point is, when the world ends, it doesn’t matter how important your own plot is to you, it’ll end unresolved. Keeping the world together should be our number one mandate as a species, not the in-fighting and the clambering for territory and wealth. I get it. But at the end of the day, I’m reading a book, can it have a satisfying conclusion please?
I gotta admit, this is such a massive slog to get through, the conclusion is wholly underwhelming, and the exercise seems pointless. This is just an unnecessary prolonging of a second draft that doesn’t exist of a previous book in a different continuity. What it gets right are the mood, atmosphere, and the underlying themes. It does fully understand the franchise it’s in. So as a fan, it’s intriguing. But by the time I’m reading the Afterwords, I’m scratching my head in disappointment.

*If I’m being honest, 3/5 seems a little high to me, but I can’t say it’s worse than the last one just based on sheer writing quality alone. I think I gave the previous installment too many pity points and had too much hope it would improve with the sequel acting as a stronger conclusion. These should probably both be downgraded to two’s, and so be it.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the longer version of Taylor, Cornelius and Zira’s stories. The expounding of the life and times of the underground mutants I could have done without. It added that extra length to an already hefty novel. The flashbacks to Taylor’s time on Earth could have been halved without losing any story quality too. This is a good book for POTA fans, but a tad too long for this one.

[Buddy Scalera · Rating 3 out of 5]

TLDNF. I really wanted this one to be good The premise is terrific with some well executed moments. Unfortunately, the book iteself was too long and featured too many characters. It seems like it would be rewarding to superfans of PotA.

[C.J. Bunce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published online at BORG.com.

The writer behind the graphic novel Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes has returned with a new novel of connecting stories, sporting another great Planet of the Apes title, Death of the Planet of the Apes (believe it or not, this title had not yet been used in the franchise). Andrew E. C. “Drew” Gaska dug into the original movie series and provides all the connective material that fans of the film series didn’t see on the big screen. What happened to Charlton Heston’s astronaut George Taylor when he left for the Forbidden Zone in Beneath the Planet of the Apes? What is his backstory before he lands with his crew and first confronts a strange, simian-ruled planet? But Death of the Planet of the Apes does more than follow Taylor around.

The best new features in the POTA-verse include Gaska showing us how our favorite chimps Zira, Cornelius, and Dr. Milo make the ANSA spacecraft work again, connecting the dots between their run-in with astronaut Brent in Beneath of the Planet of the Apes and their arrival at Earth of the past at the beginning of the most fun film of the series, Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Gaska provides some great prequel material, intertwining the ANSA space agency with the real-world NASA (something he began in his Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes). Taylor becomes a Chuck Yeager-esque flight pioneer in one of the subplots, a man with determination, insight, and the stoic outlook of a Scott Kelly. We follow more of Ursus, Zaius, and Nova, and meet a new gorilla and a new part human/part ape hybrid living far beyond the realm of the apes that appeared on film (a callback to an unused production concept from the films of the 1970s).

With so many stories focused on Cornelius and Zira’s son Caesar, in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, and the latest reboot trilogy of films, it’s refreshing that Death of the Planet of the Apes returns to these core characters. Gaska moves back and forth in time in his storytelling, weaving all the segments from the different eras into a grand-scale adventure. More so than the original, readers will revisit concepts of science fiction’s past: the Philip K. Dick-inspired telekinesis concept from Beneath the Planet of the Apes is fleshed out, the Forbidden Zone travels and robots conjure images of Logan’s Run, and Planet of the Apes as a retelling of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine becomes even more clear.

So many tie-in stories to major franchises read like fan fiction, but not so with this comprehensive volume. The classic adaptations were sci-fi favorite reads, and Gaska shows his love for all the source material, getting into the heads of every human, chimp, orangutan, and gorilla. His characters’ dialogue is believable and will instantly evoke the actors who originally portrayed them. This entire 464-page book could easily be considered canon Planet of the Apes material. It’s so exhaustive it could have been divided into two novels.

Gaska is also not afraid to restate scenes from the movies to get readers up to speed–a plus that helps readers keep up with the changing eras of the narrative.

A must-read for fans of Planet of the Apes, a great sci-fi read, and one of the best movie tie-in novels you’ll read this year, Death of the Planet of the Apes is available from Titan Books.

[Daniel R. Chisholm Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely Superbly Written, Gripping

As a very young child I had seen "Beneath The Planet Of The Apes" in the theater, thus was without seeing the original POA, I was fascinated by the movie. Even at such a young age, I thought there could more to the movie. A few years later, WABC had "Ape Week" as the afternoon movie, I was hooked, then came the TV series, the cartoon, and I still hadn't had enough, I've read multiple novels, and still left hungry.
This book was an absolute pleasure to read, I don't want to give anything away, Ill leave it at this, for anyone who is a POA fan, everything that was left untold in "Beneath the POA" is here, the story is fantastic, exquisitely written, a novel that you won't want to put down. Be prepared to have so many questions and lose ends answered.

[Mhorg · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could have been great

I've been a planet of the apes fan since 1968. The first film was brilliant and the following sequels enjoyable. However, since then, there's been things like this. That the author knows his apes is undeniable. But there's also a case of too much. Trying to add in stuff from marvel comics "Terror on the planet of the apes" and the terrible cartoon - that detracted from what could have been a great story. There was a lot of unnecessary story in here - and that hid the good parts. My final comment is why drag in the lane idea that Taylor left a wife and child behind? Watch the first movie, does anything Taylor say make one think he'd ever be married? No.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really did not know what shelf to land this one on. Well anyhow folks, I have left the planet. Pass me a cold one. Ever since I was a child when I saw a "Planet" movie I was so fascinated. This book really got this 58 year old mans attention when I saw it on the library shelf. I am really glad I picked it up and gave it an opportunity. This is kind of a Beneath The Planet story. This was one of the least accepted films as I understand. However a lot of backbuilding on the main players really makes this fun. Along with some , well just new items. I felt like I was watching a similar, yet different movie, in my head as I read the book. For film fans I would say a must read. Fun stuff for sure. Done monkeying around. Sorry couldn't help my simian self. Off to the next one. Stay safe all.

[Mike Glaser · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love the Planet of the Apes, you will like this book. If you loved the original series of books, then you will love this book. An imaginative and entertaining filling in of the holes in the first two movies and the opening of the third with a great number of aha! moments. Not perfect as so many people have no idea how the military works anymore and therefore can not describe it without showing their ignorance. The same could be said about higher levels of technology as well but here some of the simplification had to do with making the plot work. A very fun read for fans, others may be wildly confused.

[Joel Carrillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very endearing if not utterly bizarre and feverishly mad take of The Planet of The Apes lore. Gaska digs deep into the treasure trove of Ape mythology, from the movies, to the animated show to the 1970’s Marvel Comics, to produce a hodgepodge of ideas. Although “Death” is not without flaws such as containing several parts I found to be unnecessary to the overall narrative and flow of the story. There is also a constant shifting between character threads and timelines that may jar the reader. Nonetheless as an Apes fan, I greatly appreciated the author’s obvious passion and impressive knowledge of the lore and found it a very quick read given its length.

[Daniel Pitterman · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I saw this in the bookstore, I was very excited. I loved the Planet of the Apes movies and shows since I was a kid. I had really high hopes for this novel. It was a big disappointment. I liked a few things, like the attempts to reconcile the time / date problem with the movies. I also enjoyed some of the back story to the space program. Over though it is just not that interesting. It’s repetitive. Too episodic. Too
Much going on. A lot of superfluous material. Finally, Taylor is just way too bitter and one dimensional to sustain a novel.

[Jeff Freitag · Rating 3 out of 5]

For die-hard Planet of the Apes fans only. Roughly half the book is a recreation of scenes from the movies (albeit from new POVs and allowing readers inside the characters’ thoughts), while the main purpose of the book seems to be “filling in” the gaps between each of the movies and rectifying various plot holes. It’s entertaining if you’re a hardcore fan, but not a particularly engaging read, filled with a ton of new characters, most of whom fail to register.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A big, sprawling epic that attempts to fill in the gaps and attempts to fix the Ape movies wonky continuity.
Lots of good stuff, as Gaska takes all these pieces and works to make them all fit.

It's a lot to deal with and the unrelenting grim tone makes it a tough read.
Especially, if you know how all this ends.

Could have done with less flashbacks to Taylor's life back on Earth.

A pretty solid addition to Ape lore.

[Cottonball · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was mostly enjoyable, and it was fun to learn more about some of the events glossed over in the Beneath the Planet of the Apes movie. I did find some of the side characters and stories a bit silly and unnecessary though (it's hard to go into details without spoilers). I think this would have been a much better book had it been shorter and tighter.

[Dirk Wickenden · Rating 1 out of 5]

A laborious slog, so much padding that eventually gets to where we know things are heading, to tie it into Beneath and Escape films. So many extraneous characters, unecessary tangents. It was like reading an extended piece of poorly written fan fiction. I could have done a far better job.

[Aimee Peeling · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good, but I was hoping for more story. The book filled in some blanks but it really just followed the story that I knew through the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes. I did appreciate the added detail.

[David Cavaco · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a novel! Superb novel going back to the original movie and filling in the missing plot holes. The Planet of the Apes mythology remains one of the greatest pop culture collection. Looking forward to more ape books!

[Greg Trosclair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exscellent book that fills in many wholes from the many Planet of the Apes stories tieing together all the various areas from the first five movies to the tv show to the Cartoon as well as the comic series. It was excellent great job from Andrew Gaska.

[Edward Alvarado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beneath - the directors cut

A great “interquel” that fills in the blanks of the story - would love to see a novel that fills in the story between “escape” and “conquest” and maybe one set after “battle” where the future has been changed

[Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing and well-written, but probably only of interest to hardcore fans of the original Apes movies.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good job filling in holes and conflicts from the films. Great read for any Apes fan.

[Robert Bottos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book gets off to a good start, but felt rushed in the end. Some of the plotlines felt like filler and others that were interesting felt like they were left hanging.

[David Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading for fans of the original movies, this novel bridges the gaps between the first and second installments along with adding a bit of backstory for the third one.

[Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love love loved! Tells all the events we don’t see on screen for the first two movies. So much goodness I want a movie of this.

[Kaven Chang · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good tie-in for the origin movies saga. It is more elaborating and detailed compare to Conspiracy of Planet of the Apes.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice expansion of Beneath the POTA. Not as good as Conspiracy, but still a solid read. I need more please. Escape anyone? Perhaps a what if the planet didn't get destroyed scenario?

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good story telling

An excellent fill in the blanks between the first 2 films. The author has a firm grasp on the characters and Canon of the original story arcs.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of ideas in this book, a little too crowded for my taste but overall enjoyable.