Conceptual Changes In Fiction

In sf, and maybe in reality, time dilation can enable astronauts to return to Earth millennia after they left it. So far, this is like the equivalent of the Time Traveler's outward journey except that he remained on the Earth's surface and, of course, was able to return to the nineteenth century. Temporal stasis and suspended animation are another two sf one-way trips to the future. Poul Anderson covered time dilation, temporal stasis and time travel. Anderson's works have not yet been adapted into other media. When this happens, stories can be revised in interesting ways. Thus:

In Pierre Boulle's La Planete de Singes, space travel with time dilation got astronauts to an extra-solar "planet of the apes," then returned them to Earth which had meanwhile become another "planet of the apes";

in the first film, time dilation got the astronauts to what they thought was an extra-solar "planet of the apes" but turned out to be the future Earth;

since Earth was destroyed at the end of the second film, time travel got some apes to twentieth-century Earth in the third film;

the fourth and fifth films were about the transformation of Earth into the "planet of the apes";

the recent film trilogy dispenses with space travel, time dilation and time travel and proceeds directly to the theme of the fourth and fifth films above.

That is an interesting conceptual sequence and raises the question of what might happen to Poul Anderson's works if they were adapted in similar ways.