General Interest

Style: Towards Clarity and Grace Author: J.M.Williams Date: 1990 Publisher: The university of Chicago Press ISBN: 0-6-89915-2 This book is a superb style manual. Unlike other manuals of its kind, it does not repeat the nonsense you may have been taught at school, about not splitting infinitives, and not using prepositions at the end of sentences. Instead, it gives intelligent, useful advice for anyone who wants to write text for other humans to read. It explains how to construct sentences and paragraphs so that new information is found where the reader expects it, how to detect poor style and fix it. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Fiction

The Diamond Age Author: Neal Stephenson Date: 1996 Publisher: Bantam Spectra ISBN: 0553573314 I read 'Snow Crash' by the same author, after I saw it recommended in Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book. I absolutely loved it, and my parents got bored of me telling them. So I looked for another book of his, and found 'The Diamond Age'. I actually thought it was an earlier book, and I didn't expected it to be terribly good. However, this book was about 5 times better than the first. It was amazing. You know that amazing feeling, at the end of a good film, when the baddies get their arse kicked by the heroes? Well it was like that all the way through. I was tingling and sweating, and laughing and crying, and people were looking at me. The story unfolds in the most unexpected directions, and is always exciting. The language he uses is poetry that flows effortlessly into your brains and there it arranges your neurons just as if you were there. Whatever you may think about Science Fiction, the chances are you will like this book. It covers topics ranging from the usual predictions about future technology, going into gorgeous detail about nano-technology, explaining the enormous impact this might have on our society. The book covers child education, and the learning process of a little girl. If you're still reading Tekwars, burn them and see the light. Read this.

	Graphics Programming
	Graphics Programming Black Book Author: Michael Abrash Date: 1997 Publisher: The Coriolis Group ISBN: 1576101746 Michael Abrash is a hero. He was even one of the team developing Quake. He's also one of the few computer Scientists who can actually write well, and explain his subject so that other people can understand. His main field is realtime computer graphics, and this book is stuffed with it. Abrash has written a few books in his time, and this is mainly a compilation of those, plus some extra material. Contained within are his previous books: The Zen Of Assembly Language, the Zen Of Optimisation and The Zen Of Computer Graphics. The new material is mainly about his exeriences developing Quake. He's a PC guy, so expect a lot of PC specific stuff. Although much of it is easily transferable to other platforms. He takes you from optimisations of C, through to deep optimisation of assembly language, counting cycles in inner-loops. So this book is mainly for people who want to learn to write fast realtime graphics code. Don't expect to become an expert overnight, but this book will put you well on the right track.
	Computer Graphics Principles and Practice Authors: Foley, van Dam, Feiner, Hughes, Phillips Date: 1990 Publisher: Addison Wesley ISBN: 0201848406 This book is often quoted as being 'The Book' if you want to get into the field of computer graphics. Not so. This book tries to cover almost the entire field of computer graphics. And in doing so, it touches on each topic, going into a small amount of detail. Enough perhaps to whet your appetite, but barely enough if you seriously need information on that topic. The writing style is tight, and it can be very difficult to locate a specific piece of information. It is especially unhelpful for those people new to the area who are trying to find their way. The book contains some 'pseudo code' to illustrate the topics. But is bears a stronger resemblence to C than English, and I found it extremely difficult to understand until I had learned C. Don't buy this book if you are a graphics newbie, it will put you off graphics for life. Don't buy this book if you actually need detailed information on a specific topic, it will not be enough. Do buy this book if you are going to take an exam on the subject. Do buy this book if you are having Computer Graphics friends round for drinks and you want to look cool. Or to save money, you could just photocopy the cover, and stick it on that copy of War and Peace you always meant to read.
	Real-Time Rendering Authors: Tomas Möller, Eric Haines Date: 1999 Publisher: A K Peters, Ltd. ISBN: 1-56881-101-2 I have not actually read this book, but people who have inform me that it is very good. Rather than covering a specific API, such as DirectX, the authors cover the topics useful to the realtime graphics programmer in some depth. In this way it is unlike Foley which tries to cover everything, and ends up being quite shallow. The books explains the workings of many real time algorithms; 3D, polygons, optimisation, collision detection and special effects. An integral part of the book is it's web site, and you can probably learn a lot about the book there: http://www.realtimerendering.com.

	Other
	The Fuzzy Systems Handbook Author: Earl Cox Date: 1999 Publisher: Academic Press ISBN: 0-12-194456-5 If you're thinking of exploring Fuzzy Logic, you could do a lot worse than starting here. This book provides practical information for those wishing to build their own fuzzy systems or write their own fuzzy programs. The author explains to us what fuzzy logic is and is not; you may have heared many ill-informed misconceptions, and these are dispelled in the first couple of chapters. He then goes on to explain how fuzzy logic applies to thinking, business, research application, and control systems. Lots of real world examples are given, and a fuzzy logic C library is developed throughout the book, and is also included on a CD-ROM. However, you may find that it concentrates too much on fuzzy business models, and not enough on fuzzy control systems.
	The Nature Of Light And Colour In The Open Air Author: M. Minnaert Date: 1954 Publisher: Dover Publications, Inc. SBN: 486-20196-1 My friend Matt is sometimes asked the question: "How did you make Terragen so realistic?" You should probably realise there is no simple answer, and even if there was, he sure isn't going to go telling people left right and centre. Should you want to try and write your own Terragen (though obviously with a different name) then it will help to get out of your house once in a while and observe what the world you live in actually looks like, rather than relying on the bog standard algorithms that generate what people laughingly refer to as "photorealistic" images. However, if you live in the dark, or don't have access to the sky (?!), then this book will be of great use. It describes and explains a great many phenomena you might see out doors: Rainbows, mirrages, eclipses, atmospheric effects in the sky and clouds, interesting shadows, halos around the moon, the nature of colour and brightness, and the eye. It's an old book, and may be hard to find. I tracked it down eventually in the Meterology section of a large bookshop in London, specialising in hard to find scientific books. Good luck.