This has got to be the weirdest book I have ever read. Some members of my book club found it interesting and thought provoking.... I found it stupid!
Dissatisfied with the way in which his world has turned out, God has allowed humans to destroy everything by a nuclear holocaust. Anything that survived the blasts gets its desserts in the tidal wave that ensues. (He)(She)(It) thinks! To Gods dismay Calvin Cohn, having been in a one-man submarine at the time, has survived. He makes it to the research vessel, finds a talking chimpanzee, and lands on an island à la Robinson Crusoe. It seems to be somewhat east of the Ulduvai Gorge. They get radiation sickness yet survive although every living thing was to have perished. So it would seem. You will be as amazed as Crusoe at what Cohn salvages from the vessel. Cohn is as resourceful as the Swiss Family Robinson. Not quite Mary Shellys The Last Man, Dr. Doolittle that he is, he finds a gorilla that he somewhat tames, a group of chimpanzees that he teaches to talk, and later a group of baboons that he sort of domesticates. At least Crusoe found other humans. In a Darwinian test, Cohn copulates with a sultry ape named Mary Madelyn, who bears his offspring. Time out! Is he monkeying with evolution? (No pun intended.) It appears as if this will turn out to be Planet of the Apes. As allegory builds upon metaphor, this piece of rot was acclaimed by all of the pseudo-intellectual authorities, but who am I to judge.
