Wow, time has not been kind to this novel. Space travelers find a message in a bottle and read it. It describes a small group of humans who travel from Earth to Betelgeuse and land on a planet that they name Soror. Their first encounter with other beings is with a beautiful woman who runs around naked, can't speak, and doesn't act very human despite her appearance. The three men eventually find themselves pursued and captured by gorillas in clothing and carrying guns. Ulysse, the narrator, finds himself confined in a laboratory, where he attempts to display his intellect and his distinction from the Sororan version of human.
Ulysse is an educated white man who suddenly finds himself treated like an animal, a nonentity, and it enrages him. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to occur to him that he may have treated others that way back on Earth (i.e. women and POC). I doubt that the author had animal rights in his mind as he wrote this novel, but I'd like to think he was commenting on class structure and possibly colonialism. The gorillas in particular reminded me of the British in Africa or India.
There were several zoological details that bothered me. The first was Ulysse referring to his captors as monkeys. I spent some time teaching natural history and helping people sort out the differences between monkeys and apes. This really rubbed me the wrong way. Secondly, the chimpanzee Zira, who believes Ulysse, states that gorillas eat meat and love hunting. In our world, gorillas are gentle vegetarians. It's chimpanzees who hunt monkeys avidly and relish eating meat. I've had to remind myself repeatedly that Boulle wrote this before the ground-breaking research by Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey.
The revelation at the end elevates the novel from 2 to 3 stars. Anyone who has seen the original 1968 movie will have a pretty good idea of what happened, although the movie makers gave it their own twist. This may be one of the rare movies that is better than the source material.
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