Time Travel discussion
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Planet of the Apes
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Planet of the Apes: September 2016
I will be; it's being held for me at my library. ;)I just realized that the title isn't clickable anywhere here. So:
Planet of the Apes
Mod
Oh, you found it at the library? Nice! I didn't even bother looking in mine, but it seems they have a copy, too (already checked out of course).
I got mine at the library as well. I picked it up the other day. I haven't started yet. I will this weekend. I've been looking forward to reading this one as well!
Really excited about this group read. Bit of trivia: Same author also wrote the World War II novel The Bridge Over the River Kwai, later made into a movie with Alec Guinness. Weird combination of topics, eh?
I know! If my husband makes any kind of remark that I am reading Planet of the Apes I was already prepared to say "did you know......" LOLHe likes that movie The Bridge Over the River Kwai.
It does seem kinda weird. But, both are adventures about men in a small group with minimal resources against larger forces, at least sort of....
Michele, agreed, yes. I, too, was surprised Boulle was the author of BOtRK.
Mod
Samantha wrote: "I got mine from the library too. It has bigger font so it should be an easy read. I saw the movie a year or so ago so I am interested to see how they compare."The original movie with Charlton Heston? Or the more recent remake? I'm a purist, I love the original. Heston is just so over the top.
Michele wrote: "Samantha wrote: "I got mine from the library too. It has bigger font so it should be an easy read. I saw the movie a year or so ago so I am interested to see how they compare."The original movie ..."
Me too. I was going to ask the same question. I love the original.
Mod
I read it when I could not get through There Will Be Time. I was happy there were not too many similarities with the 1968 film. I can`t wait to ask a few questions when everyone gets through it.
As a science kid who is a fan of "hard science fiction", I'll comment on the hard-science parts of the opening chapters. I suppose some would regard this as a "spoiler" (I don't) - the usual warnings apply.
My first impression of an editorial oversight is the notion that a solar sail craft could cause vertigo or dizziness - even driven by three suns.
(not to mention that zero-grav on its own could cause vertigo)
Boulle deserves credit to address the 300LY trip to Betelgeuse as being negligibly different from a 6LY trip to (Proxima Centauri) so far as "local time" (on the space craft) is concerned. No FTL contrivances are necessary for this "short" trip. The curious may go here for a barely intelligible treatment of relativistic constant-acceleration space travel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_...
More intelligible is the animation titled:
Animation: roundtrip to a star 6.9 LY away
All that is required is a near-infinite source of energy, which is well within the usual hard-SF postulates.
Boulle does well to resist a tech-nerd description of the wondrous engine required to sustain a 1.5 gee trip for hundreds of non-local years - a matter/antimatter reactor would have the requisite "specific impulse". He does even better to point out that the outer-limit of the local acceleration is that required to avoid crushing the travelers.
It's beyond my pay grade to determine whether the red-giant's luminance is suitable at 30 AU to approximate earth conditions on the eponymous Planet. And a suitable suspension of disbelief is required to accept that a planet would have a earthian N2/O2 79%/19% composition and that humans are present on that far flung rock (without apparent variation).
It's been forty years since my first reading, so I don't recall whether Boulle explains this latter unlikelihood.
On to the next chapter!
Yes, 2/3 through, having a bit of trouble with some science and sociological issues, but it's still fun.Published in 1963. Does anyone know whether it was marketed as SF at first? It reads, to me, as more ambituous, as speculative Literature, more like, oh, Brave New World or Watership Down.
Also, it was originally French, I assume, and the translation jars a bit on occasion, imo. Eg, Zira learned French quickly, I read in English....
It was received at publication as a satire and I read it as I would Gulliver's Travels. I think there's a lot of his experience as a prisoner of war in Burma in the book. As a teenager the moment I read of their discovery of a note/novel in a bottle in the vast, vastness, of space any thoughts that this was a science fiction story ended. (I recently checked the French version on the Amazon French site sample which includes the prologue in the hope it might have been a translation problem but it clearly says "Bouteille". Also the translation seems to be a line for line almost mechanical adaptation, so I presume the odd past tense and present tense narration towards the end of the book is the authors. Of course La Planète des Singes could be translated as The Planet of the Mimics in its colloquial sense.)
I think Rod Serling (Twilight Zone) did an excellent adaption to the screen and this Heston film is what most people think of when the title is mentioned. Indeed, the French paper back on Amazon Fr even had the Statue of Liberty on the cover.
Thanks!I'm done now, and the ending does sort of help me cope with the issues of plausibility. The colloquial translation of the title that you mention, Ian, is almost a spoiler. I was so fixed on gorillas vs chimps vs orangs that I didn't think about 'apes.'
I'm still not sure I understand the very ending exactly, though.
(And I've not actually seen the movie and do not want to.)
Hadn't considered the title might be a spoiler. Maybe Boulle should have called it "Sur la planete des gros animaux poilus".My first translation of the book was called "Monkey Planet". The interesting thing about that is that 'monkey' is the same in both languages. 'Singes' can mean apes or mimics. Maybe Bouelle was doing a play on words.
I have the Aubible recording and it's next up for me. I hope to start it this weekend.
I have finished the book. It sure isn't anything like the movie but it still had surprise ending even though I figured it out at the very beginning. I was still hoping while reading that (view spoiler)
Yes, I know what you were hoping for, Nancy, and so was I. And I was hoping for the same in the Tim Burton version and was disappointed.
Mod
Sorry I didnt join in yet with this one, despite my being a fan of the whole POTA franchise (except for the awful Tim Burton version), including the TV series and the more recent Ceasar chronicles. Hope to read it at some point.
Ironically, categorising the original Heston movie as a time travel film is actually a spoiler. So I am wondering if the movie has influenced the categorisation of the book, if the book turns out to be quite different.
Well, that's the thing. What about that ending? Nancy has one interpretation behind a spoiler, but I'm not sure I agree with it. There is a specific mention of (view spoiler). But is it (view spoiler)
Well, maybe I'm the only one who wants to think (view spoiler).The foundations/ premises of the book just don't make sense.
It's an interesting name Boulle gives the planet in the early part of the story, "baptisent Soror, avec celle de la Terre"... Soror being Latin for 'sister'... Earths sister planet.
Cheryl wrote: "Well, that's the thing. What about that ending? Nancy has one interpretation behind a spoiler, but I'm not sure I agree with it. There is a specific mention of [spoilers removed]. But is it [spoile..."(view spoiler) That's what I was hoping happened but I don't think it did because of the ending.
I thought the apes known history on Soror only went back ten thousand years? It was mentions more than once but also in ch 28 when Cornelius went to excavate a site that was thought to be back farther then ten thousand years. But that is the history on Soror. When Ulysse (view spoiler)
It might not makes sense (view spoiler) But in his story they do. So suspending disbelief for a few minutes the ending is pretty good.
I actually can see why the movie ending was different from the book. If we could see (view spoiler) then there goes the surprise at the end.
I guess I just have too much trouble suspending that much disbelief. :sigh: I bet I'd like a novelization of the movie, or the concept given a whole new rewrite.Oh, and the Professor! I mean, really?
The screen script is here:http://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/p...
It's credited totally to Michael Wilson (blacklisted during the era of McCarthyism) but I know Rod Serling contributed a lot to the narrative.
It's the shooting script so there are little differences, like Taylor's final speech. (Probably adlibbed on site.)
An excellent example of screen adaptation. A stroke of genius twisting, or rather condensing, the entire background concept... Leading to one of the most unforgettable final images in cinema history.
I was written in 1963. Most older books seem to require much more suspensions of belief, I think, and the writing is a lot different then book written today. I just figured the professor went mad and if you go back (view spoiler)
This is why it is fiction or science fiction. Obviously this could never happen in real life. But it does make it a little bit scary the way it ended even though it could never happen.
I guess. Thank you both.Still, there was a lot of *excellent* science fiction that *did* make sense that was written before this. I, personally, am not satisfied.
The references to Gulliver's Travels, and to being a pow in Burma, help me the most to appreciate it somewhat.
To be honest I may be biased against Pierre Boulle. I remember as a boy how his Le Pont de la Rivière Kwa, filmed my Lean as The Bridge over the River Kwai, had upset my Uncle Fred and many of his comrades who had been captured in Singapore and worked on the Burma railroad. The depiction of the fictional British officer, played by Guinness, had no foundation in fact. No British officer ever collaborated.I think therefore when I first read Monkey Planet I was in a mindset to disparage it and overlooked the satire.
However, it's difficult to change first impressions and for me the script and movie will always be a more satisfying and feasible narrative.
I think if you have seen the original movie with Heston first, then it is more difficult to like the book since the ending are so different. I am a fan of the original movie and it is not easy to not make comparisons. Just like when reading a book and going to the movie and noticing things left out or changed or additions.
Ian wrote: "To be honest I may be biased against Pierre Boulle. I remember as a boy how his Le Pont de la Rivière Kwa, filmed my Lean as The Bridge over the River Kwai, had upset my Uncle Fred and many of his ..."As far the The Bridge Over The River Kwai, he wasn't writing a documentary he just got the idea from his experiences. Maybe he thought the His version of this British officer would be more interesting. Who knows. Was he ever interviewed about these two books? It would be interested to see what his thoughts were when writing The Planet of the Apes.
I did look for an interview but he seems to have been quite a recluse. However, for those interested in the adaption to screen I did find this. Warning, it's full of spoilers...http://www.rodserling.com/pota.htm
Rod Serlings version would have been, like the book, set in a modern city and not the zoo-like primitive city they built for the film.
Post script to that...Seems Rod Serling may have already conceived the basic movie twist. Here's an extract from the above article:
"Serling's authorship of the film's ending is further strengthened by a Twilight Zone script he wrote in 1959, four years before Boulle's novel was published. I Shot An Arrow Into the Air"
That episode is very interesting in light of the screen adaption.
Ian wrote: "That episode is very interesting in light of the screen adaption. "Indeed it is -- thanks!
I just finished the book today and I have not seen any film adaptation. However, I am aware of the Heston film's ending. So I approached the story with that spoiler in mind. I didn't think anything different once I finished the book. Did I totally miss the fact that (view spoiler)
Does anybody other than me have a problem with the constant use of the word monkey to describe apes? If you want to talk about problems with hard science, using the name of one species when talking about another is really sloppy. I guess it is possible that it is a translation error but I doubt it.
I would, but I didn't see it. Glancing through my copy, I see the words apes, humans, men, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. Sometimes she-ape and woman. The only monkey was the 'pet' the astronauts brought with them.The translator for my 1963 hardcover is Xan Fielding.
Where exactly, for example, do you see the problem? I'm curious to compare my copy with yours....
Cheryl wrote: "I would, but I didn't see it. Glancing through my copy, I see the words apes, humans, men, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. Sometimes she-ape and woman. The only monkey was the 'pet' the astr..."The Kindle version I have is a Xan Fielding translation and the word monkey appears 18 times but I'm also listening to the Greg Wise recording made in 2012 and it seems like I've heard the word a lot more times than that and almost always in reference to apes. I'm going to pay more attention and see if I can find specific examples and see if they are also in the print version.
One example is on page 95 when describing the gorillas that were doing Pavlovian testing. One sentence says "For several days, perhaps, the monkeys would operate in this manner: blasts on a whistle, then the offer of a favorite food, the latter causing the subject’s mouth to water."
Later (p. 102), the text reads "The monkeys were flabbergasted. They no longer wanted to laugh, least of all Zira, who seemed extremely perturbed,"
Doesn't 'monkey' refer to all species, while 'ape' only refers to none tail species?I guess we are already 'The Planet of the Apes'; that is, the naked ape.
Interestingly in the script I mentioned above Taylor (Ulysses) while musing in the space ship before planet fall says a line I'm sure wasn't in the film:
"Modern man is the missing link between ape and human."
I thought that was rather good and very Rod Serling.
Mod
Tom wrote: "Does anybody other than me have a problem with the constant use of the word monkey to describe apes? If you want to talk about problems with hard science, using the name of one species when talking..."I have the same translation as Cheryl and ape is used when describing the apes on planet Soror. In the places I see monkey used Ulysse is describing experiments done on earth on monkeys. for example the experiment performed by Kinnaman on Earth whereby monkeys had to open a complicated box and Ulysse was tasked with a similar box.
Another instance of using monkeys is when he describes the behavior of the human children in their cages.
Skimming through the book I only see the use of ape, she-ape, gorilla and chimpanzee.
I have a hardcover copy and I cannot find the passages that Tom referenced. Can you give the chapters?
Amy wrote: "I found it quite interesting that, in ape society, the congressmen are all scientists. Can you imagine how different our society would be if our scientists were our political leaders? I would hope ..."That is interesting observation.
Cheryl wrote: "Where exactly, for example, do you see the problem? I'm curious to compare my copy with yours.... .."The difference apparently lies in the print (& digital) versions and AudioGo recording by Greg Wise. In Section II, chapters 6 & 7 of the audio version I heard
"I had admired some reproductions of classical paintings, portraits of celebrated monkeys, country scenes with lascivious she-monkeys around whom fluttered a little winged monkey representing Cupid,"and
"I was in a gigantic amphitheater …of which every row of seats both around and above me was swarming with monkeys. There were several thousands of them. Never before had I seen so many monkeys gathered together."
But when I looked up the same passages in Kindle I find
"I had admired some reproductions of classical paintings, portraits of celebrated apes, country scenes with lascivious she-apes around whom fluttered a little winged monkey representing Cupid,"and
I was in a gigantic amphitheater …of which every row of seats both around and above me was swarming with apes. There were several thousands of them. Never before had I seen so many apes gathered together."
Ian wrote: "Doesn't 'monkey' refer to all species, while 'ape' only refers to none tail species?I guess we are already 'The Planet of the Apes'; that is, the naked ape."
In scientific terms, no. While apes and monkeys are all primates, monkeys are assigned to the families Callitrichidae or Cebidae, which include hundreds of species. All apes fall into the families Hylobatidae (or lesser apes) or Hominidae (great apes). The latter includes homans.
Apparently the original title is La Planète des singes and the French word singes> can be applied either to apes or monkeys. This may explain why the original English title in the U.K. was Mpnkey Planet.
So it really is a language/translation issue and who did the translations etc etc etcAnother group read We and there are a lot of different translations and we had a similar discussion.
I did find the passages that Tom mentioned (earlier in the book) and they are word-for-word what he quoted. Still, it is a relatively rare instance of the use of the word 'monkey' vs 'ape' etc. Maybe, Tom, it's (in part an issue of it being) more jarring heard instead of read, as you suggest. (But why in heck Wise would change the words sometimes I do not know.)I wonder, if at that early point in the print book, Fielding didn't use the word 'monkey' intentionally... because when (real, outside of the novel) humans have experimented in the lab, we have tended to do research on Rhesus and Macaque Monkeys. And, even when we use apes, it seems that we, members of the public that allow government funding, try to assuage our consciences by lumping them all together as monkeys. So, iow, Fielding may have been trying to reinforce Boulle's main theme.
Time Travel
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