William Thomas Quick was the author of twenty-eight novels, including the seminal cyberpunk cult hit Dreams of Flesh and Sand and the best-selling prehistoric thriller The Last Mammoth, when he was asked to write a series of books related to the 2001 version of Planet of the Apes. He began with a novelisation of that movie, followed by two novels - Planet of the Apes: The Fall and Planet of the Apes: Colony - which chronicled the foundation of the ape planet.