The Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes (1963) is the first English language edition of Pierre Boulle's celebrated satirical novel, translated by Xan Fielding and published by Vanguard Press the same year as the French original. A French journalist named Ulysse Mérou travels to a distant planet orbiting Betelgeuse and finds a civilization in which apes are the dominant intelligent species and humans have devolved into mute, primitive animals, hunted, caged, and used as laboratory subjects. The ape society is rigidly hierarchical: gorillas serve as soldiers and enforcers, orangutans as conservative academics and bureaucrats, and chimpanzees as scientists and progressive thinkers. The novel operates as Voltairean satire, using the inverted world of Soror to hold a mirror up to humanity's own tendencies for cruelty toward whatever it deems lesser. It was the basis for the landmark 1968 film starring Charlton Heston, which added the post-nuclear twist absent from Boulle's original.

First English language edition, published by Vanguard Press, translated by Xan Fielding.

Hardcover. First American Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. New York: Vanguard Press, 1963. #11450.
Fine in near fine dust jacket with just a touch of fading.