Robert F. Young

Robert Franklin Young (June 8, 1915 – June 22, 1986) was an American science fiction writer born in Silver Creek, New York. Except for the three and a half years he served in the Pacific Theatre 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 United States 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.

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 which led to his work being compared to Ray Bradbury and Theodore 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. In Italy most of his short stories were published at Urania.

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.

Works

Novels

Robert F. Young wrote only five novels, including 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 and written in French. The remaining four novels are:

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

Short stories