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| Hardcover, 269 pages Published 2011 Borrowed from the library Read April 2019 |
story by Andrew E.C. Gaska, Rich Handley, Christian Berntsen, and Erik Matthews
Periodically I read a Planet of the Apes book because, hey, why not? The original films have a kitschy charm and nihilistic streak that makes them endure. My most recent perambulations bring me to Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, the first original novel set during the continuity of the 1968-73 films. The book is kind of a novelization of the first film, the only one of the five to never be novelized (publishers just reissued Pierre Boulle's original novel with a film tie-in cover instead), and kind of a sidequel to it, as it mostly focuses on minor characters from the first film, and characters who were introduced in later ones.
The main human character is Landon, one of the not-Charlton Heston astronauts from the original film; Conspiracy reveals that he had a much more involved adventure on the planet of the apes than one might have guessed based on the film. It's kind of neat to see the early scenes of the original retold from his viewpoint. Taylor is kind of an asshole when he's not the protagonist. There are also lots of flashbacks that fill in Landon's pre-Liberty 1 life, especially a space mission he undertook a few years earlier along with Maryann Stewart, the female astronaut who dies in suspended animation in the film's opening. To be honest, I struggled to care about him at times; the present-day stuff was interesting, but the flashbacks ultimately came off as pretty pointless.
The main ape characters are Galen, a veterinarian who briefly appeared in the original film, and Milo, a scientist who was introduced in the third film as a close friend of Cornelius and Zira who'd we never heard of before. Galen experiments on Landon, while Milo uses information from Landon to recover the Liberty 1 from beneath the water, setting up and explaining one of the particularly contrived aspects of the third film. To be honest, this is one of those tie-ins where it feels like its whole purpose is not telling a story, but sewing up holes. It does a good job of sewing up holes (I liked the explanation for why the Liberty 1 crashed to begin with, or why someone would even send a rescue mission after a ship that seemingly couldn't return), but Gaska's own story isn't always particularly compelling.
The book is graphic novel-sized (I think it was published by a comic book publisher) and profusely illustrated by some greats of the sf/comics world like Andrew Probert, Dave Dorman, and Thomas Scioli, which was really neat. Worth reading if you've thought a lot about inconsistencies in the Planet of the Apes films (which I have), but maybe not if you just want to read a great story.
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