Death of the Planet of the Apes by Andrew E.C. Gaska

Several years ago, I read Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, the first-ever original novel set in the continuity of the original Planet of the Apes films. I felt like it functioned as a novelization of the original film, the only one not to ever receive one.

Death of the Planet of the Apes by Andrew E.C. Gaska

Published: 2018
Read: April 2026

Seven years after Conspiracy, author Andrew Gaska wrote a sequel, Death of the Planet of the Apes. Even though the second POTA film, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, did receive a novelization, Death reads like a novelization of it much as Conspiracy did of the first film. And just like Conspiracy folded in details from the later films and explained continuity discrepancies between them, so too does Death bring in a lot of details from the later films and explain discrepancies between them. Specifically, we learn how Milo was able to rebuild the Liberty 1 ship from the first movie (as we found out in the third movie), and why he and Cornelius and Zira were aboard it in spacesuits (the third movie implies they were trying to get away from the destruction of Earth, but there was no reason they would know about this). It explains what happened to Cornelius and Zira's nephew, who was in the first movie but not the second, it explains when they got married, it explains why Doctor Zaius was more sympathetic in the second movie than the first, it explains how Cornelius didn't know how humanity used to be capable of speech in the first movie but by the third knows the true history of the apes. And there's still more things it explains that I noticed, and I'm sure even more beyond those that I didn't!

Beyond that... what's it about? is it any good? 

One of the weird things about the second movie is that it opens by showing you what Charlton Heston's Taylor is up to, and then he buggers off only to reappear at the climax of the movie—because Heston was not really that interested in doing the movie. The lead character for most of the second movie is the Temu Charlton Heston, Brent. Gaska very much cuts down Brent's scenes, but provides lots of Taylor—both what he is doing during the events of the movie, and giving us copious amount of backstory, from Taylor's days as a World War II fighter pilot up up through becoming an ANSA astronaut and his selection for the crew of Liberty 1. There was probably a bit too much of all of this, to be honest; I don't know that any Planet of the Apes novel really needs to be over 400 pages long! I think something tighter could have better highlighted the thread of Taylor's developing nihilism, which is intended to lead up to the decision he makes at the end of the film. It might also have made more clear the parallels between the societies of twentieth-century Earth and ape civilization: I think Gaska was going for commentary on the dangers of nationalism (the new ruler of Ape City proposes building an expensive border wall), but I also felt the thread wasn't as clear as it might be.

Overall, other than getting kind of bored at the length, I enjoyed it. It's not high art but it scratches the itch I want from a POTA tie-in. I found some interviews from Gaska where he talks about Conspiracy and Death as the first two books of a planned six-book sequence... but we're now at eight years since Death with no sign of book three, so I suppose that will never eventuate. I'm guessing each book would have been a side story to a film, so the next book would have retold the events of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, presumably folding in the stuff about ANSA and Earth history revealed in this volume and Conspiracy. Would the sixth have thus taken events beyond Conquest, completing the time loop leading into the original film? I guess we will never know.