Was Hannah Smith real?

[Rorthron]

Well, was she?

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1042

[AndyC]

Hmm, she was probably real, but the ONE TRUE girlie tipster was undoubtedly the very real Linda B. I have no idea how to vote.

[5MinuteRetro]

Well I think we know who the 25% is currently!

[Juan F. Ramirez]

I'm missing a 'who?' option in the poll...

[Ralf]

I'm missing a 'who?' option in the poll...

Me too

But I can confirm that some "girls" in Speccy industry were not real. Check for example "Sonja Knight"
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... l_id=13575

And yes, it also happened and still happens quite often in magazines that some authors don't exist, their texts are written by someone else
or even a group of people.

[Wall_Axe]

yu could get an AI program to compare her writing to that of the other employees and see if there is a match in writing style

[Morkin]

I'm going for figment. Maybe a pen name, or whatever it's called.

[PeteProdge]

I'm missing a 'who?' option in the poll...

Me too

But I can confirm that some "girls" in Speccy industry were not real. Check for example "Sonja Knight"
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... l_id=13575

And yes, it also happened and still happens quite often in magazines that some authors don't exist, their texts are written by someone else
or even a group of people.

Oh yes, YS reviewer Rachel Smith was actually Jon Minson.

[KonigTiger]

Weird one regarding the legitimacy of Hannah Smith. On balance of things she almost certainly was a real person but until she herself reveals and shares her story there remains genuine mystery around her. I once asked the late Roger Keane about what she went on to do but he said he’d no idea because he was elsewhere and the person above her at Crash Towers at that time was Graeme Kidd who had died a few years previous. All Keane really added is that Hannah was likely just one of “the staffers” there and went during a time of shakeup. Oli Frey may have been a person to ask but I never bothered at that chance to ask whilst he was alive. In the grander scheme of her time at Crash she was only there a short time, something like a year.

Where things get weird is that the b/w images of her with the Crash team don’t really look consistent with the colour images of her when she resurfaced with SU a few years later. She appears to look younger and claims the SU image on the bonnet of a Ford is from a recent time.

Will the real Hannah Smith please stand up!

[8BitAG]

The black and white photos would seem to match issue 31's cover.


The real person in the photograph would seem to have been the basis of that cover whether she was, or was not, a contributor or even called Hannah Smith.

[MarkRJones1970]

Roger Kean and Oliver Frey told me she was real and that they didn't really get on with her.

[Lee Bee]

I can confirm that some "girls" in Speccy industry were not real.

A wise man named Morpheus once said: "What If I told you everything you knew was a lie?" Though it turns out Morpheus never actually said this line, so everything you thought you knew was a lie. Plus Morpheus never existed as he was a fictional character written by two men. Plus those men don't exist as they're now women. So "what is real"? Hannah could be Lloyd. Morpheus could be Lana. Lana could be Larry. Kim could be Barry. And everyone here could be AI… including you!

[Wall_Axe]

When I was reading those magazines I only cared about the writing being entertaining or informative...and screenshots. All that girlie tipster stuff was pointless and probably didn't sell them even one more copy

[PeteProdge]

Is this really still going? She is real.

Crash's Nick Roberts was a guest on Maximum Power Up's podcast in 2019, when they had their Top 10 Games Magazines episode (actually spanned across two episodes) and talked of his time taking over from her tips section and making it his own.

https://maximumpowerup.com/episode-85-t ... es-part-1/
https://maximumpowerup.com/episode-86-t ... es-part-2/

Also, check out my research on the Speccy mags taking a pop at each other thread.

[5MinuteRetro]

Is this really still going? She is real.

That’s just what a conspirator would say!

(But joking aside, I’m a rational person. I don’t actually care much if at all about whether or not Hannah Smith was real. The weight of evidence sure points to the likelihood that she was real. But I don’t think any/all of it constitutes conclusive proof.)

[equinox]

I don't have any evidence but personally would assume a real staffer who was just assigned tips as her remit.

There were plenty of women working on magazines, but but women with any interest in home computing prior to the WWW — particularly technical interest — seem to have been extremely rare.

[PeteProdge]

I don't have any evidence but personally would assume a real staffer who was just assigned tips as her remit.

There were plenty of women working on magazines, but but women with any interest in home computing prior to the WWW — particularly technical interest — seem to have been extremely rare.

Kati Hamza, Linda Barker and Jackie Ryan have entered the chat.

[equinox]

Kati Hamza, Linda Barker and Jackie Ryan have entered the chat.

Yes? "Extremely rare" doesn't mean zero.

[8BitAG]

Not "extremely rare". Less common, yes, but plenty around. It's just they haven't left the same "footprint" as their male counterparts. And they also seem less likely to be still be blathering on about things 30+ years later, unlike the blokes.

[TMD2003]

Kati Hamza, Linda Barker and Jackie Ryan have entered the chat.

Linda Barker, as some of you will be aware, went on to edit Total! (the independent Nintendo magazine that wasn't bought-and-paid-for like NMS) in its later days and brought back the cartoony style of the original issues with Steve Jarratt and Andy Dyer (who apparently used a team of freelancers to write reviews for them, if one of those freelancers is to be believed).

But the one female member of the Total! staff I'm more likely to remember was Dane McLellan. Apparently she had a massive black coffee addiction and favoured "violent beat'em-ups with lots of gore". I assume she's Scottish, and probably a Weegie. Wouldn't surprise me if she imagined herself on a night out on the lash having to defend herself from danger with a broken Buckie bottle.

Anyway.... the Spectrum. Where were we before I got sidetracked?

[DouglasReynholm]

Yes? "Extremely rare" doesn't mean zero.

Let's not forget Toni Baker as well.

[equinox]

But the one female member of the Total! staff I'm more likely to remember was Dane McLellan. Apparently she had a massive black coffee addiction and favoured "violent beat'em-ups with lots of gore". I assume she's Scottish, and probably a Weegie. Wouldn't surprise me if she imagined herself on a night out on the lash having to defend herself from danger with a broken Buckie bottle.

So she masculinized herself in order to be accepted. Progress?

[PeteProdge]

So she masculinized herself in order to be accepted. Progress?

I've not heard of Dane McLellan and can't find anything on Google about that name and a connection to any gaming magazine, but I'm reminded of the irony (well, alright, hypocrisy) surrounding the writer 'Robert Galbraith'.

[Journeyman]

Let's not forget Toni Baker as well.

Wasn't Toni Baker extremely private, and that was a pseudonym? Am I also right in thinking she died a while ago?

[WhatHoSnorkers]

I met a guy at the 40th Spectrum Birthday who met Toni Baker IRL back in the 80s. She wore a duffel coat I think he said.

Someone else on here said that she was a very private person. Great code though.