Books written by academics usually have the advantage of being accurate, detailed and precise; they can also be dry, boring and pedantic. This one, fortunately, has all the advantages and suffers from none of the disadvantages of an educated authorship.

And for once the publisher's blurb gets it right: the claim that 'The language, graphics, sound and other features of the Electron are highlighted and covered in a clear, concise manner' turns out to be true. The readership is broadly defined as 'All teachers and pupils of computing in schools, and all those who have access to an Electron microcomputer'. That's pretty comprehensive but, once more, it would seem to be no more than the truth.

The book begins with an anecdote to illustrate the point that proper instruction and tutoring are essential for mastering programming techniques. The emphasis from there on is not simply to teach but to master programming, through speed, efficiency, comprehensibility, adaptability, and the knowledge of how to get the best results out of the computer.

Once they get going, the authors move rapidly; topics covered include binary numbers, integers and real numbers, strings, Boolean values, passing information to and from programs, some of the special features of BBC Basic, the VDU and *FX commands, the programmable keys... and that's just in Chapter 1!

Chapter 2 moves into graphics programming methods, and includes a longish (2810-line) character design utility. Chapter 3 is concerned with the use of procedures and functions, illustrated by a 2380-line version of Yahtzee - followed, appropriately, by a section on debugging!

Sound is the subject of Chapter 3, and it's nice to see a clear admission here that the Electron's sound facilities aren't all that good.

The next chapter deals with efficicency, starting with methods for compressing programs (at the expenses of readability, and the possible introduction of errors), moving on to go-faster techniques. Chapter 6 covers cassette storage and file handling.

Chapter 7 and 8 are on machine code, assembly language programming and 'hooks' into the Operating System. One of my New Year resolutions is to read more thoroughly the sections on structured m/c programming!

Chapter 9, on hardware and interfacing, contains enough information to get a reader started tinkering with simple add-on circuits. Useful constructions (full layouts are given) include a very simple switched joystick made from everyday materials, an input/output port, a Centronics printer interface and a proportional joystick controller; operating software is listed for all projects.

Lastly, one of the appendices gives a listing for a 6502 disassembler, but best of all there is a truly comprehensive index - probably the best I've seen in a book of this style. With an index as good as this, it's dead easy to refresh the parts you've forgotten - the parts other books can't reach!

This quick summary gives only a hint of the full content of Mastering The Electron. The explanations are generally clear but, inevitably, some topics are less well covered than others and some points fall between the cracks, due to the tremendous scope and pace of the book.

The authors' knowledge and experise is obvious in every line, but they don't rub the reader's nose in it. Their advice and methods should be recommended reading for any student of the art; and anyone who works carefully through this book will be a master not just of the Electron, but of programming generally.