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Your Sinclair

Your Sinclair, originally Your Spectrum or YS, is a discontinued British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum. It was commercially published between 1984 and 1993.

The magazine was launched in January 1984 as Your Spectrum by Sportscene Specialist Press. (Sportscene would later be renamed to Dennis Publishing in April 1987.)

Initially, it was published bimonthly, changing to monthly in June 1984. With the January 1986 issue, the title was relaunched as Your Sinclair, with the intention of expanding coverage of the QL into the main magazine (previously, QL User had been a pull-out section within the magazine), and any future computers produced by Sinclair. However, the magazine remained focused almost entirely on the ZX Spectrum games scene.

In 1990, the magazine was sold to Bath-based Future plc, and the April 1990 issue was the first to be published by the new company. That issue's news section contained a feature on the change in publishers, which jokingly suggested that Future had intended to buy a Sinclair C5 and had ended up buying the magazine by mistake.

Publishing of the magazine ended in September 1993, after the commercial life of the Spectrum ended and the magazine had shrunk to fewer than forty pages per issue. A 94th issue, a retrospective on the magazine, was published in 2004 and given away free with Retro Gamer magazine. It featured interviews with some of the writers and reviewers from across the magazine's history, a four-page memoir written by former staff writer Phil South, and several new reviews and tips, keeping the style of the original magazine throughout.

The magazine introduced a unique writing style, inspired by launch editor Roger Munford and expanded upon by subsequent editors and writers. Influences can be found in titles ranging from Private Eye to Viz. Towards the end of the magazine's life, and particularly under the editorship of Jonathan Nash, the style was further influenced by magazines YS had itself inspired, in particular Amiga Power and fanzine The Thing Monthly.

The original 1986 Your Sinclair team included Kevin Cox (editor), Teresa "T'zer" Maughan (deputy editor), Sara Biggs (production editor), Pete Shaw (editorial assistant), and Phil "Snouty" South (writer). Marcus Berkmann joined as staff writer in early 1987 when Maughan took over as editor. Freelance writers of the time included John Minson (writing under various pseudonyms, including Sue Denham, Gwyn Hughes and Rachael Smith), Mike Gerrard, Max Phillips, Tony Worrall and David McCandless. The final 1993 team consisted of just two permanent staff members: Jonathan Nash (editor) and Andy Ounsted (art editor). Steve Anderson, Rich Pelley, Tim Kemp, Simon Cooke, Dave Golder and Simon Forrester were among those working on a freelance basis.

YS's content varied widely, occasionally ignoring the subject of computers entirely. As the Spectrum scene diminished and there was less software to review, this happened more frequently. The tone of the magazine was inspired by teenage magazines such as Smash Hits and Just Seventeen. In 1992, under the editorship of Andy Hutchinson, several 'lifestyle' type sections were introduced. These included Haylp!, an agony aunt column, and The World (later retitled Flip!), which contained reviews of films and books. This section included The Killer Kolumn From Outer Space, dedicated to science fiction news, rumours and reviews. It was written by Dave Golder, who went on to be the second editor of the successful SFX. Writing in the 100th issue of that publication, Golder cited his earlier work on YS and described SFX as "like hundreds of Killer Kolumns stapled together". Flip! was discontinued, but the Killer Kolumn was kept on until the penultimate issue in 1993. A similar page to Flip!/The World had existed in 1987–88 called Street Life, but this had also contained Spectrum game charts.

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