design of an ultra-fast m o v e generator that produces all p s e u d o - l e g a l m o v e s for a given position in one clock cycle (250 nanoseconds). He f u r t h e r m o r e shows results of the B* t r e e - s e a r c h algorithm, and describes another one of his programs: Patsoc. A new trend in c o m p u t e r chess cognition seems to be the notion of 'chunks' : Groups of pieces that can be identified as one entity. Berliner describes this for pawns in the endgame, and Bratko et al. d e v o t e their entire paper to this subject. Chunking is t h o u g h t to be important, because humans identify them as such which enables strong players to correctly reproduce a given position after only a short m o m e n t of examination. A strongly represented subject is the generation and induction of patterns and plans. Michie presents his 'Michie Road' in which rules are to be generated from examples provided by an expert. In some cases ( special endgames) this expert can be a computer. Reidel's contribution describes the deduction of patterns in the King+Rook v e r sus King endgame. Owsnicki and yon Luck, both with a thesis on c o m p u t e r chess, discuss a m e t h o d of plan c o n struction with results from its application in a program called N.N. They illustrate three catagories of possible errors, each with its o w n cause and each with a different level of solvability. Shapiro and Michie describe a selfc o m m e n t i n g facility w h e r e b y expert supplied text f r a g ments attached to individual attributes are recognised to form r u n - t i m e explanations of decisions made by rules previously induced. A theoretical paper is given by Schrueter. He analyses the apparent paradox that e x perience shows that a deeper t r e e - s e a r c h yields better play, whereas mathematical investigation of the p r o b l e m predicts less reliable results for deeper searches. The m a j o r i t y of the articles is v e r y original, and of high quality. The a m o u n t of background k n o w l e d g e needed to c o m p r e h e n d the papers ranges from n o n - e x p e r t level (Levy, Kopec, Hartson, and Lindner) to expert level (Schrueter). It is a superb b o o k for its contents as well as for its outline. Like the four predecessors, it is a v e r y good profile of the state of the art in Computer Chess research. The conclusion can o n l y be that Advances in Computer Chess 4 is a real must for anyone with interest in c o m puter chess. In April 1987 the fifth conference in this series will be held in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. It is hoped that this will result in a n o t h e r splendid book. w h o already knows Lisp fairly well. Lisp Lore ... has chapters on: * Getting started - - The first chapter provides an int r o d u c t i o n to the basic o p e r a t i o n of the Lisp Machine, h o w to log in and run programs. * Flavors - - This chapter describes the basic usage, and standard methods for c o m b i n i n g them. Since flavors are used t h r o u g h o u t the system and in the exapmles in the book, t h e y are introduced early in the book. * Flow of control - - This introduces some of the less c o m m o n control structures of Lisp. * Streams and Files - - This chapter provides a basic introduction to some features of the file system. * Resources and Systems - - These t w o features are needed to build large systems efficiently. * Error conditions - - This chapter describes handling error conditions. * Advanced use of the Editor - - Keyboard macros and writing new commands are presented. * The Network - - This gives an o v e r v i e w of the operation of the various n e t w o r k programs. There are additional chapters with p r o g r a m m i n g e x amples for graphs, trees, and m o v i n g icons. A form in the book can be used for ordering a tape that includes the program examples given in the book. This saves the effort of typing all the functions and checking that t h e y are typed correctly. Ten of the t w e l v e chapters include problem sets with solutions (some solutions are only partial, since the problems are open ended). Many of the problems include a set of hints for people w h o need s o m e pointers to start the solutions, but also w a n t to w o r k on the problems. These problems take the reader/student m o r e deeply into the topics introduced in the text. As with all c o m p u t e r systems, there is no substitute for practice. The book is well written (with s o m e f o r m a t t i n g problems - - Kluwer uses camera ready copy supplied by the authors for their books, and s o m e of the standards usually f o l l o w e d by publishers are not followed, such as one line of text on the last page of the chapter) and provides a much better introduction to the use of the Lisp machine than the standard d o c u m e n t a t i o n . Since I have had the book, it has been b o r r o w e d by students in our research group to aid them in p r o g r a m m i n g , and it seems to help them w h e n exploring techniques our o t h e r s t u dents have not yet tried. Over the years, local groups of c o m p u t e r users have built up k n o w l e d g e about t h e best use of their system and usually o n l y shared this i n f o r mation with others in the local group (learning h o w to use a system has always been easier w h e n a k n o w l e d g e a b l e user is around). This book represents this local k n o w l e d g e about effective use of the Lisp machine. I do not n e c e s sarily agree with all the choices of w h a t is i m p o r t a n t to cover, but then I do not expect e v e r y o n e to have the save opinion of w h a t is important. This b o o k provides a g o o d coverage of the basics that n e w users require and s o m e pointers into the use of some advanced techniques so that it fills a useful role in helping teach h o w to effectively use the often mysterious Lisp machine. Lisp Lore: A Guide to Programming the Lisp Machine by: Hank Bromley Kluwer Academic Publishers Reviewed by: Keith Price Having recently (over the past t w o years) b e c o m e a user of a Lisp machine I had faced the task of becoming proficient on the machine w i t h o u t much outside help. The massive set of hard c o p y d o c u m e n t a t i o n has most of the answers, s o m e w h e r e , but finding t h e m w i t h o u t k n o w i n g the a n s w e r can be difficult. Worse, not k n o w i n g that easy methods exist for m a n y operations, you never even look for them. The i n t r o d u c t o r y material gets you started, byt the advanced techniques remain hidden in the manuals. This b o o k started as a set of notes for an informal course given by the author at AT&T Bell Labs and g r e w into an interesting introduction to the Lisp Machine for s o m e o n e SIGART Newsletter, April 1987, Number 100 Page 18

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