Despite the rather strange title this is a good, interesting book on the subject of BBC and Electron graphics facilities. The 160 pages of main text split up into six main sections, each covering a major point of the machine's capabilities or of the mathematics involved in using the graphics to get the effect that you need.

The first section "High resolution graphics" explains how the various PLOT and DRAW options work and how data can be scaled, translated and rotated to change its effect on screen. This section involved some mathematics and despite my being decidedly rusty on these matters it soon started to make sense and fall into place.

The next section is about "Block graphics" which are usually referred to as character graphics in the case of the BBC and Electron. Once again there was a good introduction on the subject of character definition and movement around the screen. Each part of the discussion is punctuated with short procedures or program lines ready for you to try the effect and experiment as you go along.

Then comes the section on colour and animation which starts appropriately enough with an explanation on how colour screens work. There follows an explanation of the various colour options available and their effects on the screen, including the use of truth tables for logical operations. This chapter closes with a discussion of the various types of animation that can be achieved by colour manipulation, a common technique on the BBC machine.

The following sections deal with the uses of graphics in other programs such as graphs and charts and covers the various methods of circle drawing that you might like to try. The section on three dimensional graphics was rather too mathematical for my liking but there were plenty of examples to try and a number of well-defined formulae to use when writing your own programs.

The book closes with a chapter on the block graphics of Mode 7, therefore only of interest to BBC owners. This section was well-written and contained a great deal of interesting information well presented with little programs to try.

All told this book provides a good introduction to the mathematics and programming of graphics on these machines and whilst it isn't at a high enough level for those to whom the mathematics is relatively easy, I can see a number of young people and indeed their parents getting a good grounding in the subject from this text. Well worth the 6.95 for a good, steady easy-to-read book.