DIED. PIERRE BOULLE, 81, French novelist; in Paris. An engineer who went to work on a rubber plantation in Malaya during the late 1930s, Boulle plumbed his World War II experiences in Indochina as a resistance fighter and prisoner of war to fill many of his moral-philosophical adventure tales with precise, vivid, details. The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952), chronicling the plight of British pows building a bridge for the Japanese, was perhaps the most famous of his 30 or so books; the 1957 film adaptation, which Boulle wrote, garnered several Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The film adaptation of Planet of the Apes, Boulle's 1963 science-fiction novel, spawned sequels and a TV series as well as the sight of Charlton Heston in a loincloth.