 My work here on YouTube is supported by viewers. Please take a look at the link in the description below and visit my page at 50th Street where you can become a sponsor. I'd announced recently that I was going to stop doing these individual book review videos, but in my last live stream I forgot to talk about Planet of the Apes. I listened to the audiobook on a long driving trip last month and it deserves its own review. So here it is. Being a child of the 1960s and 70s when I hear the title Planet of the Apes, of course the first thing I think of is the 1968 Charlton Heston movie, which is a tremendous film and you should see it if you have not. The script by Rod Serling does a brilliant job of simplifying and modernizing the story while preserving the socio-political commentary and the surprises. While at the same time making the whole story arc make more sense in a more modern science fiction setting and I say modernize even though the original novel was published by Pierre Boulet in 1963 only five years before the film because, and here's the thing about the book, it's written in a 19th century travelogue journal style like you would expect from Jules Verne or H.G. Wells and it's done deliberately. The book starts in the distant future thousands of years in the future when a married couple are traveling interstellar space with their solar sailing ship. Like a wealthy couple today might travel the world in their private yacht. They come across a literal message in a bottle. It's a rolled up paper manuscript in a bottle floating in deep space. They open it and they begin to read a handwritten account by a journalist who had been invited by an eccentric scientist to accompany him and his young assistant on the first trip to another star in this little ship with a star drive that he had designed and built himself. See it's a 19th century travelogue journal. It's exactly that and the story plays out more like Gulliver's Travels. It is socio-political commentary and it's a great book. I had read it maybe 20 years ago. It had been a long time I needed to reread it and I so I listened to the audiobook. I had forgotten a lot of details. It was better than I remembered and I remembered it being very good. So this is a modern classic that is excellent and if you're only familiar with the movies you're missing a lot so you should read it. Thank you for watching. Please subscribe to my channel here on YouTube and please be sure to press that thumbs up button. That's how videos get recommended and seen and please take a look at the link in the description below and go to my 50th street page where you can become a sponsor.