HANDY THAT! You may remember a few issues back I mentioned a publication in the news pages called the ST HANDBOOK. Well I have been able to obtain all the issues to date and having sat down one rainy monday afternoon I read through them all... this is what I found.... ST HANDBOOK, Price œ2.00p Issue 1. I guess in this consumer based world of ours the first issue of something is always the one that makes the most impact. The ST Handbook team obviously planned for this and it has paid off well. The front cover is printed in a nice glossy card with good use of colour to enhance it. The cover is actually rather bland for issue one, however the contents are not. There is a very good feature on Page 6 Publishing covering the roots of the ST PD and Shareware scene and more. There is a brief and rather non-sensical 'interview' with Merlin PDL, a very good public domain and shareware review section, a top 10 PD and shareware list, a brilliant article on STOS and the Atari communities views on it (well done Keefy!), lots of nice little snippets and news releases and of course the adverts. The cover disk supplied was a rather strange affair and the programs were packed with an archiver that refused to run on the Falcon without the aid of Backward. The programs given away included World Fighting Championship, a nice little GFA written beat-em-up, the latest version of the excellent Revenge Doc Displayer, Fast Copy 3, Manual Maker (inc GDOS) and a little general purpose utility called James. You will be pleased to know that all the programs worked on the Falcon, either in one of the ST screen modes or under Backward. I doubt they planned for this but it certainly makes the whole disk seem much nicer! In my opinion there was a lot of space wasted in issue one that could have been put to better use, but the articles that were supplied were of top quality. Issue 2 was the April and May issue and things were certainly getting better. The front cover retained its colour and introduced some rather nice sci-fi graphics, the usual article to advert ration applies and the guy DTP'ing the fanzine with Calamus shows off yet more of his font tricks and nice shading. The contents include a superb article on David Hardy, a professional and rather famous science fiction artist (and also a Falcon owning FOG member!). An introduction to Clip Art (only for REAL beginners!), an overview of Wizard PD giving them a chance to express why they think they are the best ST PD library around, even though they say 'it (the Falcon) has been available for a while now and seems doomed to follow the TT and Mega ST into the niche market'. Oh dear Wizard, can I suggest looking into your crystal ball a little closer? That aside Andy Morgan gives a good talk on his view of ST Shareware programming. There are (as usual) a good selection of quality reviews of PD software including good screenshots. A feature on Fishing and your ST (!) and its better than it sounds, a brief letters page, a useless hints and cheats page, more top 10 disks, a fantastic article about Dunces Cap software, discussion of the Shareware concept, plenty of news and snippets and the second part of the cartoon strip - the ST Ranger. Wait a minute did I say cartoon? Well yes, the ST Handbook team seem to think you'd be interested in one and a half pages of amauterishly drawn semi sci-fi strips. I could be wrong, you _could_ be interested, but I feel that with a great little magazine like this the space is wasted. Issue 2's cover disk contains that age old shoot-em-up - Cybernetix - which I think just about every Atari owner has a copy of, second to Llamatron that is. There is also an STE CD Player, which is actually a module player with a cd like interface. A crossword generator with plenty of sample puzzles included, D-Term a decent comms package, Demolition Man a version of Minesweeper, some help files for Knife ST, a virus killer, some boot sector programs and screen savers. Well every program (except the boot sector ones) work fine on the Falcon, a no nasty depacking this time either. Things are picking up, issue 2 is a good improvement over the first issue, a more economical use of space is employed and it has an increasingly professional feel to it. Issue three did everything to confirm to me that the ST Handbook is a truly great publication. I mentioned it in passing a few issues ago but having explored this issue deeper I would just like to point out that you should get in on this as soon as possible. Order a copy from them, be surprised at the nice selection of software on the cover disk, read the articles and feel a whole lot closer to the Atari scene. There is virtually no Falcon information to be found, but I wouldn't call this a ST publication either as the feedback and articles seem to come more from the users of the machines, no matter which type, and have a very 'community' feel to them. If they would only drop the cartoon and cheats sections there could be another 2 pages of articles. I am constantly amazed at the strength of the Atari community, there is so much enthusiasm out there just waiting to be supported. Real dedicated Atarians giving up their time to make disk magazines and fanzines for their friends, ie other Atari owners. It's about damn time that we all started to contribute back and put something into the Atari world instead of complaining about its demise. Contact ST Handbook, send them articles, suggest your friends buy copies and feel proud of yourself. I for one will pat you on the back, move up from the realms of consumer into the wonderful world of contributer. Get your name in lights (or at least in print!) and relish your moment of glory. Contact the ST Handbook at :- ST Handbook, Dept FOG, 1 Fordhouse Lane, Stirchley, Birmingham, B30 2NH or phone them on (021) 459 4340. Cheques or postal orders made payable to 'Wright and Hayes Graphics'. Each issue costs œ2.50p including the disk and postage. Issue four is due out on August the 12th 1994.