SPECTRUM RULES THE WAVES

Every publisher in the UK seems to have discovered the Spectrum, so there is sure to be a bumper crop of reading matter for Spectrum owners in the coming months.

Our review panel have been looking at a selection of the Spectrum books and finds that the standard is uniformly high (both in terms of content and presentation), with each book representing value for money in its own way.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

Three titles seem to be aimed at common ground; the first-time user, who knows little (if any BASIC) and certainly knows little about the Spectrum. These are 'Easy Programming for the ZX Spectrum' (Shiva - Ian Stewart and Robin Jones); 'The ZX Spectrum and how to get the most out of it' (Granada - Ian Sinclair); and 'Programming Your ZX Spectrum' (Interface - Tim Hartnell and Dilwyn Jones). Of course, they all tread similar ground, but attack the problem in quite different ways. We feel that many inexperienced users will benefit from buying two (or even all three) of the books, as what is unclear in one can be illuminated by the second or third. The funniest of the three is certainly Jones and Stewarts' 'Easy Programming...' which follows on the style of the highly successful 'PEEK, POKE, BYTE and RAM' title for the ZX81, and is enlivened by a batch of weedy cartoons.

There is no doubt, if you want your learning leavened with humour, that this is the title to start with.

The book goes through all the aspects of the Spectrum you're likely to need in the first few months, generally explaining them well and clearly. The demonstration programs include some remarkable demonstration graphics, ones which are ideal for impressing your family and friends. Our only reservations about the book, and these reservations should not distract you from what is generally a very fine product, are the first two chapters.

BEWILDERING

A somewhat obscure program is 'explained' in the first chapter, in a way which - unless you're a very careful or patient reader - may leave you more bewildered than in the light.

We have noticed that authors from academic backgrounds (like the man who wrote the manual for the Dragon 32) always believe that manipulating arithmetic on the computer is the very first thing you need to master. Most of us start by playing games. The exponention function we can live without for a while. Despite this, Stewart and Jones plunge into algebra, and the hierarchy of operations on pages eight and nine, when we imagine many readers really want to zap a few aliens.

Fortunately, things improve from this point, and chapter three's tour of the keyboard is the clearest of the three books we're considering.

READABLE

The book continues to improve, in readability and interest as it continues, almost as though the authors were learning about the machine as they wrote the book, and by about page 30 were really starting to enjoy it.

When you're next in a bookstore, turn to page 117, where a blurred screen photo fails to do justice to a particularly fine graphics demonstration program, described as 'another offering of winsome beauty'. Clive Sinclair should buy the rights to this program, so he can run it every time a critic mouths 'But it's not true high resolution'.

The book includes 26 complete programs (described as 'prepackaged'), each of which will amply repay the time taken to enter them. In conclusion, 'Easy Programming..." is a book which will take you a long way into the mysteries of the Spectrum; is written with a consistent, and humourous hand; and shares the affection the authors feel for the computer.

FOR THE SPECTRUM

Ian Sinclair's (no relation) book, 'The ZX Spectrum and how to get the most from it' is, in some ways a lighter book.

To fill a third of a page with a diagram of how to wire up a three-pin plug hardly suggests that the book is going to contain much meat, but after this rather odd beginning, Mr Sinclair gets into his stride. Unlike the Shiva book, which for some reason plumped to reset all programs, Mr Sinclair uses them direct from the ZX printer.

The first 18 pages are used up telling you how to connect up a television, and get a clear picture. Necessary information perhaps, but surely not worth that much of the book.

Like the Shiva authors, Mr Sinclair leaps straight into arithmetic, but drops this after a page or so and starts his first real section, on using TAB and PRINT AT.

There are only seven programs in this book which are more than a few lines long, and only one of them (ANIMALS) are you likely to run more than a few times.

GIVING IDEAS

Against this is the fact that many of the sections in the book give a tremendous source of ideas for producing your own programs, and the chapter 'Roll Your Own', which explains how the idea of a program can be refined and built up, and then turned into a computer program, is worth the cost of the book alone.

We were, however, a little disconcerted to read in the introduction Mr Sinclair thanking Clive's PR people for 'the loan of a Spectrum' which suggests that the author had little time to build up real expertise on the machine before writing the book.

Have a look at the 'Roll Your Own' chapter (from page 69). 'Graphics' (page 81) and 'Sound Sense' (page 105) to see how well, and clearly, the author covers his material.

Tim Hartnell, the editor of this magazine, has been very industrious, and produced two books for the Spectrum already.

Although he is editor, he told us when presenting the books for review, 'be rude if you have to'.

And we've tried very hard to be!

The two books are 'Programming Your ZX Spectrum"; published by Interface, and 'The ZX Spectrum Explored', published by a company which Uncle C part owns, Sinclair-Browne. Clive has written the introduction to 'Explored'.

'Programming Your ZX Spectrum' is the thickest of the four books reviewed in this section, and also the most expensive. As a comparison, the Shiva book has 140 pages, Ian Sinclair's has 130, 'The ZX Spectrum Explored' has 218 and 'Programming Your ZX Spectrum', 230. The books each cost £5.95, except for 'Programming Your...' which is £6.95.

Now for the rude bit.

Tim, and his co-author Dilwyn Jones include many, many programs (over 100 programs and routines' the publicity material says), but we felt many of them were introduced a little too early in the text, without adequate explanation. At the end, the techniques will be completely clear, but some readers will have to exercise patience and enter the programs on trust, knowing that the reasons for all the lines will become clear eventually.

Despite this, the book unfolds in a fairly logical way, and contains an easy-to-follow course on BASIC, and on programming, as well as on 'making the most of your Spectrum'. The program examples are, on the whole, good, with several 'major' programs including Reversi (Othello), Final Circuit and Life (with, for some reason, two completely different versions). A slight bug we found in Reversi has, we are assured, now been corrected in a reprint. The graphics chapter is clear, and although some of the demonstrations are not as 'winsome' as those in the Shiva book, they still provide fodder for impressing the neighbours.

GRAPHICS

The chapter on user-defined graphics is particularly clear, perhaps the clearest of all the books reviewed, and leads into a long, long 'Pacman-like' (very vaguely Pacman-like} game called Dotman.

This book, despite its headlong rush at the beginning, is certain to act as a resource which you'll take a long time to use up. At least one of the other books seems more likely to be 'exhausted' after the first two weeks of use.

Tim's other book, 'The ZX Spectrum Explored' is really a drawing together of the expertise of a number of people, including Jeremy Ruston, James Walsh and Tim Rogers.

It is not designed for the first time user, although a longish chapter at the beginning ('Programming in BASIC') has been included so you can make sense of the computer without any other of the guides.

Not all sections of this book are likely to appeal equally to all users, but no matter why you bought your Spectrum, you're probably going to be able to find material of real interest.

EXPERTISE

When writing each section, Tim drew on the experience of an 'expert' in the field, so each section reflects a knowledge of that particular area which is likely to be more concentrated and detailed than Tim could possibly have written on his own. The section headings will show the kind of material covered: Programming in BASIC; Exploring the Spectrum's Colour; Exploring the Spectrum's Sound; Using the Spectrum in Business; Using the Spectrum in Education; Playing Games with your Spectrum; Three-dimensional graphics; Introduction to Machine Code; and A Guide to Better Programming. The appendix includes a potted 'history of the computer' which moves very rapidly from Charles Babbage to some guy called Clive Sinclair. 'The race to produce ever-smaller, ever-more powerful computers was underway. Clive Sinclair entered that race in the late seventies'. One suspects that the Sinclair PR machine helped write the 'history'.

There are many, many programs (the business section even includes a very junior 'Visicalc'), with the best programs in the games section.

PAPERDATA

It's easy to feel that the glut of computing books forgo the rudiments of the craft and settle for lots of games for the frogger freak. But, asks Alan Jowett, could it be that the authors of these texts ignore a rather vital question. What is a book?

Anthony Burgess, the Clockwork Orange man, described books in a recent colour supp ad as "boxes of organised knowledge". But too many of the micro volumes sitting in the racks round at the dealers are really collections of old magazine programs, writ large and often writ fast. No worse for being collected, but no better either.

"The first rush of books on the Sinclair machines has been, to put it kindly, disappointing. Certainly none can be considered a serious text on Sinclair Basic. We felt that a book was needed which gave the first time user a worthwhile home tutor on computing," so say the authors of Century's new Computer Programming Course. Perhaps they're right.

Have you or your kids been up at night furrowing over fuzzy repros from a defunct ZX printer... are you wasting your time on books that aren't worth the paper they are printed on? And it's sobering to consider just how many Sinclairs are listed in the 'Swaps and For Sale Cheap' columns because the owners have got fed up with the turgid prose of their books. The majority of the tightly crammed pages are in their way as unreadable as the 60's underground magazines that used to print green ink on purple pages. Indeed, one unmentionable guide went for four pages before introducing a new paragraph! The impression is that many are written by scientists or science teachers 'on the make'.

True fans of everything that Clive Sinclair originally begat will want to invest the full £9.95 on the aforementioned Century Programming Course, a massive 525 pager that takes you right through every nook and cranny of the ZX81 and Spectrum. If you believe that your interest in Sinclair Basic is going to persist for the next few months, let alone years, then probably this is the one. It might have been more logical, however, to have brought in the Spectrum system and keyboard at an earlier stage than page 439 in section W, as if assuming that everybody is progressing from a ZX81 first.

A BETTER MANUAL

There's far less about programming in Ian Sinclair's The ZX Spectrum and how to get the most from it (Granada, £5.95). It's probably the best of the general guides and it seems to aim towards being more readable than the manual that accompanies the machine itself. This Sinclair must have made a mint from those who assume that he has kinship with our great Mensa sage, but I wouldn't begrudge a penny of it. Sinclair Minor actually tries to make a few jokes - nothing actually very funny, but enough to make things more readable and any attempts at whimsy are worthwhile.

Sinclair doesn't make the pedagogic mistake of thinking that lack of knowledge equals lack of intelligence. But he does provide welcome diagrams for newcomers to the art, and a breakdown checklist. Advanced readers of this column may quietly sigh, but they were once beginners, and not that long ago either. The computer clubs are full of people wondering why their Spectrums won't work, and most of the answers will be found here.

Actually, for those truly at the starting gate, for my money the best book to buy is First Steps with your Spectrum - my fave rave for any Sinclair computing course. Authoress Carolyn Hughes ran computer courses at her sons' school. She has provided a manual that sensible dealers could pop in with the Spectrum as a goodwill gesture (it only costs £1.25 from Armada) and one that should have any reader from eight to eighty programming in half an hour.

Tim Hartnell, who has not been slow off the mark in dashing off a few million words of his own, adds in a foreword "There are lots of books written about the Spectrum. They were not written with you in mind."

The point is, were they written with anyone in mind? Apart from the bank manager that is.

Is it beyond the wit of publishers to attract a real writer to investigate the world of programming - and compose a book that is enjoyable to read, to handle and to program from? If you think that Fleet Street journalists spend all their time making up stories and muck-raking, cast an eye at The Sunday Times book on Skiing, mostly written by Harold Evans. Technical material is superbly illustrated and magnificently described and it has the reader almost leaping on the next plane in a mad urge to be out there on the slopes. Hands up all those who've ever had a thrill like that from reading a programming book.