La Planète des singes, known in English as Monkey Planet or Planet of the Apes, is a French 1963 science fiction novel by Pierre Boulle. It was published in the UK as Monkey Planet, then re-issued as Planet of the Apes to tie it in to the film franchise it inspired. The novel tells the tale of three human explorers from Earth who visit a planet orbiting the star Betelgeuse, in which great apes are the dominant intelligent and civilized species, whereas humans are reduced to a savage animal-like state. The main events of the book are placed in a frame story, in which Jinn and Phyllis, a... couple out on a pleasure cruise in a spaceship, find a message in a bottle floating in space. The message inside the bottle is the testimony of a man, Ulysse Mérou. Ulysse explains that he was a friend of Professor Antelle, a genius scientist on Earth, who invented a spaceship that could travel at nearly the speed of light. In 2500, Ulysse, the professor, and a physicist named Arthur Levain flew off in this ship to explore outer space. They traveled to the nearest star system that the professor theorized might be capable of life, the red sun Betelgeuse, which would take them about 350 years to reach.
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| Author: | Pierre Boulle |
| Genre: | Dystopia, Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative fiction, Fantasy |
| Year published: | 1963 |
| Number of editions: | 19 |