Robert F. Young

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Robert Franklin Young, who published under the name Robert F. Young, was an American science fiction writer, who was born in 1915 and died in 1986. Except for the three and a half years he served in the Pacific during World War II, he spent most of his life in New York State. He owned a property on Lake Erie.

He remained little known by the public, in the USA as well as abroad. His career spanned more than thirty years, and he wrote fiction until he died. Only near the end of his life did the science fiction community learn he had been a janitor in the Buffalo public school system. Barry N. Malzberg noted: if he was a writer working as a janitor, he likely lived a frustrating life, but if he was a janitor who happened to write, he lived a surprising and triumphant one.

His production started in 1953 in Startling Stories, then Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. It mainly consisted of a long list of short stories with a poetic and romantic style that made him compared to Bradbury and Sturgeon. A good deal of these stories have been published in France by Galaxie, Fiction and the science fiction anthologies in the 'Livre de Poche'.

His most famous short stories are perhaps "The Dandelion Girl", which influenced the director of the anime series RahXephon, and "Little Dog Gone", which was nominated in 1965 for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

[edit] Novels

Robert F. Young wrote only five novels - four if you discount La Quete de la Sainte Grille (1975), an expansion of his short story "The Quest of the Holy Grille" which was released only in France (in French). They are:

• Starfinder (1980).
• The Last Yggdrasill (1982).
• Eridahn (1983).
• The Vizier's Second Daughter (1985).

[edit] Short stories

A Glass of Mars A Knyght Ther Was A Pattern For Penelope Above This Race of Men Abyss of Tartarus Added Inducement Adventures of the Last Earthman in His Search for Love Alec's Anabasis Arena of Decisions As A Man Has A Whale A Love Story Boarding Party Boy Meets Dyevitza Chrome Pastures City of Beasts Clay Suburb Cousins Crutch Darkspace Dialogue in a Twenty-First Century Dining Room Divine Wind Doll-Friend Down the Ladder Emily and the Bards Sublime Findokin's Way Fleuve Red Flying Pan Genesis 500 Ghosts Ghur R'Hut Urr Girl Saturday Glass Houses Glimpses Goddess in Granite Hex Factor

Hologirl Hopsoil I Bring Fresh Flowers In Saturn's Rings In what Cavern of the Deep Invitation to the Waltz Jonathon and the Space Whale Jungle Doctor Jupiter Found Kingdom Come, Inc. L'Arc De Jeanne Let There Be Night Little Dog Gone Little Red Schoolhouse Lord of Rays Mars Child Milton Inglorious Minutes of A Meeting At The Mitre More Stately Mansions Neither Stairs Nor Door New Route to the Indies Nikita Eisenhower Jones No Deposit, No Refill O Little Town of Bethlehem II One Love Have I Origin of Species P R N D L L Passage to Gomorrah Peeping Tommy Perchance to Dream Plane Jane Production Problem Project Hi-Rise Redemption Reflections Remnants of Things Past

Report on the Sexual Behavior on Arcturus X Revolution 20 Romance in a Twenty-First Century Used-Car Lot Romance In An Eleventh-Century Recharging Station Rumpelstiltskinski Santa Clause Shakespeare of the Apes Spacetrack St. George and the Dragonmotive Star Mother Starscape with Frieze of Dreams Stop-Over Storm Over Sodom Sweet Tooth Techmech The Black Deep Thou Wingest The Blonde From Barsoom The Curious Case of Henry Dickens The Dandelion Girl The Day the Limited Was Late The Decayed Leg Bone The Deep Space Scrolls The Earth Books The Eternal Lovers The First Mars Mission The Forest of Unreason The Garden in the Forest The Giant, the Colleen, and the Twenty-One Cows The Giantess The Girl in his Mind The Girl Who Made Time Stop The Hand

The Haute Bourgeoisie The Honeyearthers The House That Time Forgot The Journal of Nathaniel Worth The Lost Earthman The Mindanao Deep The Moon of Advanced Learning The Princess of Akkir The Quest of the Holy Grille The Second Philadelphia Experiment The Servant Problem The Space Roc The Sphinx The Star Eel The Star Fisherman The Star of Stars The Stars Are Calling, Mr. Keats The Summer of the Fallen Star The Tents of Kedar The Thousand Injuries of Mr. Courtney The Winning of Gloria Grandonwheels The Years There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe Thirty Days Had September Three-Mile Syndrome Tinkerboy To Fell a Tree To Touch a Star Universes Victim of the Year Visionary Shapes What Bleak Land When Time Was New Whom the Gods Love Your Ghost Will Walk