S P A C E L I G H T
INDEX
Name: BOULLE, Pierre Francois Marie-Louis
Aged: 81
Born: February 20, 1912
Where: Avignon, FRANCE
Died: January 30, 1994
Where: Paris, FRANCE
Interred: Picpus Cemetery, Paris, FRANCE
Married: _ _ _
When: _ _ _
Honored: Boulle lived in Autry, France, from 1965 to 1982. The public library there took the name "Pierre Boulle" on March 5, 1994, during the inauguration of its new buildings.
Pierre Boulle
"Beware the beast man . . . he kills for sport or lust or greed . . . let
him not breed in great numbers . . . for he is the harbinger of death."
Pierre was with the French army in Indochina in 1939 and the French Resistance in Malaysia before he was captured by the Japanese. As a prisoner of war, Boulle experienced forced labor until his escape in 1944. Pierre Boulle was awarded chevalier of the Legion of Honor, received a War Cross, and a Medal of the Resistance.
A complete mainstream writer, Boulle turned his 6 years in southeast Asia in WW II into a major work, The Bridge Over the River Kwai; which became an Academy Award winning film (screenplay by Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson). Pierre then wrote the satirical Planet of the Apes in 1963, which was made into another successful movie in 1968 (screenplay by Rod Serling & Michael Wilson). Four more Planet-of-the-Apes movies followed, none of which involved Boulle. The apeworld that he had created assured Pierre Boulle of a science fiction immortality...but ignored the political criticism he had intended.
OBITUARY: Sacramento Bee and The London Daily Telegraph here.
