Sinclair User | Code Like It's 198x

Sinclair User, usually shortened to SU, was a British monthly magazine for owners of Sinclair computers. Its first issue, dated April 1982, was written for the ZX81: a guide for anyone who had “just bought a ZX-81”, eight pages of programs, and a column, “Sinclairvoyance”, that promised to answer “the question every user asks”: “What will Clive Sinclair do next?” Its first guess was wrong. On “the vexed question of the ZX-82”, the columnist wrote, “My guess, for what it is worth, is that he will not, at least not in 1982”.

A month later the same column reported that “The ZX-82 is coming very soon!” Many people, it said, were put off the ZX81 because it lacked a full-size keyboard, colour graphics and sound: “The Spectrum, as the ZX-82 is likely to be called, will have all these features plus more.” The cover of that May issue read “We gaze upon the ZX Spectrum”.

SU ran for eleven years. It changed publisher in 1984, took over its rival CRASH in 1992, and closed with issue 134, dated April 1993, five months before Your Sinclair.

Fast facts

Publisher: ECC Publications, Islington Green, London, from issue 1; EMAP from September 1984.
First issue: April 1982. Last issue: April 1993 (numbered 134).
Cover price: 60p in May 1982.
Editors included: Nigel Clark from the second issue, Bill Scolding in 1984–86, David Kelly by 1987, Garth Sumpter until 1992, and Alan Dykes from 1992 to the end.
Audited circulation (ABC), as printed on the masthead: 96,271 in late 1984; 90,215 for July–December 1985; 84,699 for July–December 1986.
Top award: the Sinclair User Classic, from May 1985.

Independent, not official

The first cover called SU “The independent magazine for the independent user”, and the statement of publication said plainly that it was “not in any way connected with Sinclair Research Ltd”. The word “independent” stayed on the cover through 1984. Its first home was ECC Publications, whose Sinclair titles also included Sinclair Programs. In September 1984 the news pages carried the change under the headline “Same paper, new owners”: the group had been bought by East Midland Allied Press, “the publisher of Computer and Video Games”. SU stayed with EMAP for the rest of its life.

Helpline

From the first issue SU had a question-and-answer column called Helpline. The contents page introduced it: “Is this what you have been waiting for? Our expert, Andrew Hewson, aims to answer problems in his monthly column.” Andrew Hewson was already selling his own books of hints and tips for the ZX81 through his company, Hewson Consultants. Readers wrote to him at Blewbury in Oxfordshire, and many of their questions were about machine code. In November 1983 a reader asked where to find the addresses of the Spectrum ROM routines, and Hewson pointed him to Ian Logan’s Complete Spectrum ROM Disassembly. He was still writing for SU in January 1988.

Stars and Classics

SU’s reviews changed shape in May 1985. The magazine announced that “Henceforth software reviews will carry a star rating, the basis of which will be value for money”. Programming, graphics and the rest would be taken into account, “but the bottom line will be whether or not you should part with the folding stuff”. The scale ran from five stars, “24 carat. Buy it”, down through “Value for money”, “Nothing special” and “Over-priced” to one star, “A rip-off”. The same issue introduced the Sinclair User Classic, for “programs which, in our biased and eccentric opinion, set new standards in software”.

Other regular pages included Hit Squad, profiles of programmers (“Chris Bourne puts the heat on the Mugsy artist”, in October 1984), and an adventure column written in the character of Gordo Greatbelly, “Landlord of the Dancing Ogre”.

Megatapes

By spring 1988 SU was selling itself to advertisers on its cover tape. An advertisement in April 1988 announced a “FAB cover mounted MEGATAPE with a complete game, a playable demo and awesome Load and Go pokes”, and promised that “115,000 copies of Sinclair User will be hitting those streets every month”. That figure was a sales pitch, not an audit. The last issue still had a tape, the “Fun 4”, which held a complete game, Pizza Bar, the final part of an adventure series, a music demo and a tape-head analyser.

Taking in CRASH, and the end

In May 1992 SU announced “We’ve just incorporated Crash”, joining “the two oldest and best Spectrum mags” at the hip. Europress, which had taken over CRASH from Newsfield a few months earlier, had passed the title to EMAP at the beginning of March. The editor who wrote that announcement, Alan Dykes (“Big Al”), had just taken over from Garth Sumpter, who had worked his way up at SU from staff writer to deputy editor to editor.

Eleven months later Dykes wrote the farewell. The last issue, dated April 1993, explained why SU was closing: “thanks to market pressures, the software base has dwindled so much that the wisdom of keeping a magazine like SU operating had to be questioned.” He noted that the Spectrum’s death had been forecast every year for five years, and advised readers who wanted to keep using theirs to join user groups: “The Spectrum is now passing out of its commercial phase and into a special interest phase.” He signed off with a nod to the one rival still standing: “And now over to Linda B and her hateful publication (only joking)”. Linda Barker was then editing Your Sinclair.

Sources

Sinclair User issue 1, April 1982: cover (“The independent magazine for the independent user”), contents page (Sinclairvoyance, Starting From Scratch, eight pages of programs, Andrew Hewson’s Helpline), statement of publication by ECC Publications, and the Sinclairvoyance column on the “ZX-82”.
Sinclair User issue 2, May 1982: cover (“Only 60p”, “We gaze upon the ZX Spectrum”), masthead (Nigel Clark, editor) and the Sinclairvoyance column on the Spectrum.
Your Computer, August 1982: Hewson Consultants advertisement for Hints and Tips for the ZX81 by Andrew Hewson.
Sinclair User issue 20, November 1983: Helpline on the Spectrum ROM routines and Ian Logan’s disassembly, with the Blewbury address. Issue 70, January 1988: Andrew Hewson’s last regular appearance found.
Sinclair User issue 23, February 1984, and issue 46, January 1986: Bill Scolding as editor. Issue 60, March 1987: David Kelly as editor.
Sinclair User issue 29, August 1984: cover (“An independent magazine published by ECC Publications”). Issue 30, September 1984: news, “Same paper, new owners”, and the EMAP address. Issue 31, October 1984: cover (“published by EMAP Publications”) and Hit Squad.
Sinclair User issues 31, October 1984; 50, May 1986; and 68, November 1987: ABC circulation figures on the masthead.
Sinclair User issue 34, January 1985: Gordo Greatbelly, landlord of the Dancing Ogre.
Sinclair User issue 38, May 1985, Spectrum Software Scene: the star ratings and the Sinclair User Classic.
Sinclair User issue 73, April 1988: the Megatape advertisement.
Sinclair User issue 123, May 1992: the editorial on incorporating CRASH, and the news of Garth Sumpter’s departure.
Sinclair User issue 134, April 1993: contents page, masthead, the Fun 4 tape, and Alan Dykes’s farewell editorial.