Vulcan's Hammer

Not to be confused with the PKD book Vulcan's Hammer, 'Richard-Bessiere' is a pseudonym used by two Fleuve Noir editors; François Richard and Henri Bessièr. No one can agree, 50 years later, who wrote what, but it wasn't Philip Dick.

At the start of the book our narrator is in possession of a map to a planet which contains a fabulous treasure trove of jewels. He's about to gather together a crew to go look for it when Redbeard, a killer space pirate from his past ("the most feared and wanted man in the galaxy") turns up having found our narrator's watch next to the body of the last known possessor of the map. At blaster point our hero pulls out an ace card and tells the pirate that he's destroyed the map... but memorised it. You need show more me alive! Redbeard, I'm useless to you dead!
So off they go. Stopping only to blow up a galactic patrol ship that gets in their way, they navigate the secret hyperspacial path to the hidden planet, Fortuna. The crew are a repulsive, venal lot, a drunken doctor, a hermaphrodite from Saturn (who keeps the narrator awake at night by having noisy sex with itself), a Venusian who has to eat every 20 minutes and so on.

When they get there they find the planet Fortuna is surrounded by unusually high concentrations of "living proteins" which the author/s claim in footnote is a real thing, citing the, then recent, discovery of ammonia and formaldehyde in space https://www.nature.com/articles/222009a0.pdf - neither of which are proteins - anyway....

And after finding they can't eat the local fauna - the one animal they do try to eat has some kind of chlorophyll for blood, they set off in the direction of 'thataway' because, though the narrator has a map to how to get to the planet, he has no idea where on the planet the treasure is. Luckily the Venusian crew member has the uncanny ability to just point in the direction that any nearby pile of expensive rocks happens to be. So off they go following his sixth sense.

And the book gets very boring and repetitive for a long time. "We were attacked by some giant horrible worms that tried to eat us, so we ran into a cave where some horrible giant insects tried to eat us, so we ran out of the cave again and the worms had gone away but the rocks were suddenly explosive! and then a tree tried to eat us but we ran away and...." for chapter after chapter. During the course of their running away they are constantly beset by creatures with bizarre life cycles. Trees that bear animals as fruit, rocks which hatch out into insects. Caves where time suddenly runs at a different rate - they spend two hours inside while twenty days pass outside. Giant human arms grow out of the ground and try to flatten them with their fists - and get one of the crew. Splat! The whole ecosystem of the planet is one weird hyper-mishmash of mineral, animal and plant. The Venusian dies when something he ate turns him into a tree but luckily he drew a map. Why he drew a map is not explained but the book would have just stopped if he hadn't. More of them die. A fire breathing dragon sets fire to a desert as they are trying to cross a river. Our hero and Laura, the only woman in the crew and Redbeard's girlfriend, get separated from the others. As you would expect - they fall in love.

Eventually they meet up with the remaining members of the crew. Along the way they pass strange columns of light surrounded by circling flying fish. Creatures run into the light and die and dissolve and become proteins which fountain into the air and spread out over the planet starting the life cycle all over again. Some of the molecules achieve escape velocity and get into space to form the panspermial clouds they'd observed around the planet on their approach. (Wait! is 'panspermial' a real word? hang on... Googly... Googly... it is! Cool!) Anyway after observing this weird wonder they find the treasure. Huge piles of jewels just lying about in a valley. A strangely silent valley. The slightest noise makes violent echoes which threaten to bring down the surrounding cliffs and bury the treasure forever. Redbeard steps on a lose rock and makes a sound so loud that the echoes amplify so much they become so loud they become solid (sic)... and bring down the surrounding cliffs... and bury the treasure forever....

The last four characters get back to the ship - "Aha!" cries Redbeard, "I have the jewels! I no long need you, narrator person!" and pulls the trigger on his blaster. But nothing happens! How can this be? (Spoiler: Laura has taken the batteries out.) Our hero fires his weapon and blasts the villain - and the treasure - to atoms.

The doctor fries himself to death trying to repair the ship and the narrator and Laura start to feel feel heavy.

So they sit down and turn into rocks.

FIN

Seriously awful. I suspect fashionable, 1968 type, recreational pharmaceuticals were involved. show less

Paranoia, machines, science fiction, and action. The novel is stacked with all of these. While this is not Dick at his finest, he still manages to weave a cloak of himself around the novel and permeate into the reader's consciousness. This is well worth the read.

Objective, unbiased and hyperrational, the Vulcan 3 should have been the perfect ruler. The omnipotent computer dictates policy that is in the best interests of all citizens—or at least, that is the idea. But when the machine, whose rule evolved out of chaos and war, begins to lose control of the "Healer" movement of religious fanatics and the mysterious force behing their rebellion, all Hell breaks loose.
Written in 1960, Philip K. Dick's paranoid novel imagines a totalitarian state in which hammer-headed robots terrorize citizens and freedom is an absurd joke. William Barrios, the morally conflicted hero, may be the only person who can prevent the battle for control from destroying the world—if, that is, he can decide which side show more he's on. show less

Great story about the challenges that may come about from working with artificial intelligence in government.

A cyber thriller long before anybody realized there would be such a thing. It's a basic computer-takes-over-the-world scenario, but things get a bit complicated for all of the players.

Paranoid as ever, but felt a bit thin.

For hardcore PKD fans only and even then you really have to squint to make it seem like passable read.