A roaring work of 60s sci-fi
Soror is Latin for "sister." But will everything on this sister planet be as we are "civilised"? The expedition of the Earthlings to an inhabited orbit in the constellation Orion, as described in the notes of French journalist Ulyx Méroux placed in a bottle floating in space, at first seems like a rest in paradise. But in the jungles of the planet Soror, the idyll turns into a massacre when the expedition and its mute, human-like savages are ambushed by troops of apes. The narrator is amazed to find that these primates have built an advanced civilization on Soror, whereas the humanoids have stagnated at the level of animals. But by then he himself has become the object of laboratory interest for the monkey researchers... His odyssey, in which the romance of travelogues collides with satirical anti-utopia and harsh attacks on science that abuses living "material" for experiments, leads to a denouement that will make even hardened fans of fantasy shudder. The stirring work of 1960s SF became the basis for several film versions of the story, which, however, adapted its realities in different ways. In 1968, Franklin J. Schaffner starring Charlton Heston. Mark Wahlberg played the hero in Tim Burton's adaptation (2001). A looser reboot of Birth of the Planet of the Apes (2011) was contributed by director Rupert Wyatt.
"Rivers of irony from Swift's Gulliver and streams of compassion from Voltaire's Candide flow through it. And most importantly, on Soror, we will discover how easily we can become, despite all the technology, the beasts in the cage of a space zoo." - Le Canard enchaîné