"I am confiding this manuscript to space, not with the intention of saving myself, but to help, perhaps to avert the appalling scourge that is menacing the human race. Lord have pity on us "
So begins the extraordinary science fiction classic, a tale so full of imagination, originality, chilling credibility.
With these words, Pierre Boulle hurtles the reader onto the Planet of the Apes. In this simian world, civilization is turned upside down: apes are men and men are apes: apes rule and men run wild: apes think, speak, produce, wear clothes and men are speechless, naked, exhibited at fairs, used for biological research. On the planet of the apes, men, having reached the apotheosis of his genius, has become inert.
To this planet come a journalist and a scientist. The scientist is put in a zoo, the journalist into a laboratory. Only the journalist retains the spiritual strength and creative intelligence to try to save himself, to fight the appalling scourge, to remain a man.
Out of this situation, Pierre Boulle has woven a tale as harrowing, bizarre, and meaningful as any in the brilliant roster of this master story teller. With his customary wit, irony and disciplined intellect and style, the author of the Bridge Over the River Kwai tells a swiftly moving story dealing with man's conflicts, and takes the reader into a suspenseful and strangely fascinating orbit.
Pierre Boulle is no stranger to the desperate games in both the scientific and political worlds. Born in Avignon in 1912, he was trained as an engineer, went to Malaya in 1936 as a rubber planter and joined the Free French in Indo-China at the outbreak of World War II. Captured and imprisoned for two years, he escaped in 1944 and was picked up by a British plane, spending the rest of the war with Special Force, Calcutta.