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Comment by Magic Marmalade:
Read this in a day!
Seen most, if not all the movies, so was pleased to find this in the charity shop, so I could go straight to the source at last.
It doesn't really start out that promising to be honest, as it reads in the early stages like it's going to be one of those aloof, colonial attitude pieces from the previous century or two, where the attitude of the author, expressed through his narrator might not have dated that well - more than a whiff of a kind of Shatnerian Kirk-ery:
"Captain's log... stardate _+_+_, Weeeeee've....GOT. To.... GEt, backtotheship!"
But as you read, you realise this is on purpose, as this, almost ultimate work of absolute deadpan satire, focused on just these attitudes, morals and values as expressed in those earlier kind of works are completely undermined...but again,
absolutely deadpan.
...It...
Apes, them :)
Some rather impressive expressions of then, recently discovered physics (albeit, the years after have rendered most. factually inaccurate).
But during the course of it's couple hundred pages of short punchy, and concise chapters, it lays out a plethora of fertile material for consideration and interpretation, so that you can see why movie makers keep going back to it...
(Remarkable, how much, although reconfigured for more modern purposes, from this original is revived even for the most recent movies - themes, names poits made etc.)
...Animal rights, psychology, sociology, social commentary, satire, allegory, metaphor, power structures, science (scientific attitudes), morality... it's all here, to be interpreted any way you like!
You could really read this a hundred times and always get something new to think about from it.
And very much like
I Am Legend...
nice final line! :)