QL Magazines

Probably the first magazine was QL User, published by EMAP Business and Computer Publications Ltd in London, and edited by Paul Coster BSc. The first copy I have is dated March 1984. In fact, at first there were 2 titles of that name, the other published by Sportscene Specialist Press Ltd., which appeared initially as a supplement in Your Spectrum magazine.

QL World was originally published as an independent magazine, edited by Geoff Wheelwright. QL User was eventually incorporated with the original Sinclair QL World by publisher Focus Investments Ltd (later Focus Magazines Ltd) - the first merged issue bore the cover date March 1986, and like QL User, had 64 pages, nearly twice as many as QL World. The 'QL User' name disappeared from the cover with the February 1987 issue. The December 1987 issue was the first to be edited by Helen Armstrong, who was to remain as editor through changes of ownership until QL World's eventual demise many years later. The May 1990 issue was the first under the new ownership of one of publisher Robert Maxwell's companies, MCM Ltd, after Focus Magazines went into administrative receivership. A brief period with Headway, Home and Law Publishing Ltd in mid 1992 lead to ownership of QL World by Arcwind Ltd - the May/June 1992 issue was the first under Publisher Mark Kasprowicz , still edited by Helen Armstrong. Then finally, just after Christmas 1993 it was announced in Volume 3 Issue 5 by Arcwind that this would be the last issue of Sinclair QL World.

Sinclair had launched their QLUB (QL Users Bureau) newsletter, claiming in the very first issue that 65% of QL users had joined QLUB - in fact those who took the trouble to fill out their registration cards found that from about March 1985 to February 1986 they got a year's free membership of QLUB, discounts on products sold through QLUB, and Psion software support. 9 issues (that I am aware of) were released in all.QLUB Newsletter was a black and white effort, well produced, full of information about product releases, software fixes, features on important people in the QL scene (such as David Karlin, Sinclair's QL hardware designer who we never hear about these days) and so on.

Over in America, publisher Bod Dyl sr. at Seacoast Services had launched the International QL Report in 1991, which started off as a slim newsletter-style publication, mainly read by American QL users, but which quickly grew into a QL magazine in its own right. With the eventual demise of Sinclair QL World, the International QL Report (IQLR) quickly became the main international QL magazine as its subscription base grew. Eventually, ill health forced Bob Dyl to give up the magazine in 1994/95.

At this point, Jochen Merz in Germany decided that in order for the QL scene to remain viable, a new subscription based QL magazine would have to be produced. That magazine was called QL Today, and I was nominated as editor on an unpaid part time basis. The magazine was to be published bi-monthly, and Jochen decided that issue 1 would need to be launched quickly, so my main contribution to that issue was a number of articles to get it off the ground, rather than editing the magazine as such. After nearly a decade at the helm, I handed over the reigns to Geoff Wicks as editor, until the magazine came to an end after 17 volumes in 2013.

CGH Services, a QL software company owned by Richard Alexander, had been publishing two magazines called QL Technical Review and QL Adventurer's Forum (later called QL Leisure Review). These were fairly simple photocopied affairs, but full of interesting articles. When CGH Services closed, Bruce Nicholls (current owner of the QL Users Email Mailing List) started a magazine called Q-Review, published by his Quo Vadis Design company. Q-Review was eventually incorporated into IQLR and Bruce concentrated on QL software.

A number of 'national' and 'local' QL user groups had sprung up throughout Europe, north America and Australia over the years. Many of these organisations had their own national magazine - QLCF in France had QL-Contact-France magazine, the Italian QL users group had Mondo-QL, Dutch and German groups had their own newsletters, some USA and Canadian groups had their own newsletters such as Sinc-Link in Toronto, Canada and Update magazine, for example.

Here are some links to the Spanish journals QLave, CUQ and QLiper:
http://sinclairql.es/qlave.htm
http://sinclairql.es/cuq.htm
http://sinclairql.es/qliper.htm
and the 20 aniversary QL spanish magazine:
http://www.badared.com/badaman/QL/revista20/

During this time, Club QL International had a free membership disk-based newsletter which consisted mainly of letters written by the members, formed as a self-help group. Sadly, Club QL seems to have recently ceased to appear, probably because of the growth of electronic communications such as the QL Users Email Mailing List causing the membership of smaller self-help groups to dwindle. Why wait for a reply in a monthly magazine when you can get quick help via email I suppose.

Throughout the years of the QL - through the eighties and nineties and now into the 'naughties' (is that what we call the decade from year 2000?) - Quanta newsletter has been the one solid ongoing magazine QL users could turn to. Originally under the editorship of Leon Heller, now several editors later, Quanta newsletter now faces the next century under a proposal that it no longer be exclusively QL based. I for one hope that our one truly international QL user group and monthly newsletter carries on serving the QL user as it always has done, but who knows what the next century holds as electronic communication takes over all our lives.

The QL Hacker's Journal is a free publication aimed at QL programmers, edited by Timothy Swenson. It started in January 1991 originally with a quarterly publishing schedule. The QL Hacker's Journal is mainly aimed at programmers, and contains a variety of interesting and often little covered subjects, ranging from SuperBASIC to C - a diverse collection of articles in each issue.

Copies of the QL Hacker's Journal can be downloaded from Tim Swenson's Web site - follow the link from my QL Web Pages page to get to Tim's Web site.