Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.Pierre Boulle (20 February 1912 – 30 January 1994) was a French novelist best known for two works, The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963) that were both made into award-winning films.Boulle was an engineer serving as a secret agent with the Free French in Singapore, when he was captured and subjected to two years' forced labour. He used these experiences in The Bridge over the River Kwai, about the notorious Death Railway, which became an international bestseller. The film by David Lean won many Oscars, and Boulle was credited with writing the screenplay, because its two genuine authors had been blacklisted.His science-fiction novel Planet of the Apes, where intelligent apes gain mastery over humans, was adapted into a series of five award-winning films that spawned magazine versions and popular themed toys.
Was credited with the screenplay for The Bridge on the River Kwai , even though it was actually written by the blacklisted duo of Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson (credit was changed posthumously in the 1980s). He was not present at the awards ceremony. Kim Novak accepted the award on his behalf.
In the mid-1930s he was a rubber planter for a British company in Malaya. During WWII he was an undercover agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in southeast Asia.
[describing his training for the British SOE in WWII] Serious gentlemen,taught us the art of blowing up a bridge, attaching explosives to the,side of a ship, derailing a train, as well as that of dispatching to,the next world--as silently as possible--a night-time guard.
But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language. .
