LOVE ORACLE
Solar Publishing
Memory: 48K
Price: £14.95

Does my partner love me? What can I do to put things right? Those are some of the questions answered in The Love Oracle and they do not refer to the relationship you have with your computer.

The package contains a book and a program. The book is based upon the Chinese oracle, the I Ching, devised by the ancient Chinese sages to answer questions on any conceivable subject. This new version devotes itself entirely to the love oracle of friendship, love and marriage.

While the book is packed with interesting and complex hexagrams, together with detailed instructions, the program contains only a limited version of what is in the book.

Having loaded the program you move straight on to throwing your coins, which the program is happy to do for you. There are no instructions to explain what is happening, making the book essential reading.

The program now tells you the title of the hexagram(s) you have drawn. For the first you read only the lines, for the second you consult any, or all, of the eight questions. By pressing whichever key you are instructed to for the lines, an answer will appear. With the hexogram Dynamism, the line drawn read 'Find help to change yourself'. The book goes into detail with an answer over six times as long.

All the questions and replies in the program are brief in comparison with the book. When you consider that the book alone is half the price of the program it does not seem to be very good value, but there again if you 'believe' then you will probably want to have it for your collection.

MAKER: Solar Publishing
FORMAT: cassette
PRICE: £14.95

What do I want from life? What indeed. 'Yuo want to give creative expression to your feelings'. (I do?) Thus spake The Love Oracle - a new electronic version of another old literary favourite, the I Ching. 'What is the most important attitude to adopt?' I asked humbly, 'Do not underestimate evil' came the stern reply. Ow.

The ancient Chinese I Ching is a tome composed of many different descriptive vignettes or 'hexagrams'. Inside its leaves float unseen spirits of sages. In order to consult these dead experts you throw a series of coins. It is the resulting pattern that gives you your personal hexagram.

All this makes the Ching a natural candidate for translation. A mammoth sorting job that computers excel at. And if the one-liners that purport to seal your fate on screen seem a little trite, you can always expand on them by looking them up in the hard copy that comes in the package.

But all does not bode well. The opening dedication to the book ranks as one of the most convoluted tautologies I've ever read. 'Affection as the essential principle of relatedness is of the greatest importance in all relationships...' No kidding?

So: a fairly smooth rendition but not a patch on the erudition of the original I Ching. Even if didn't 'believe' in the original, it was still a dashed good read. Could this error have been the same? I'm not sure.