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Worlds Without End Blog

Reading the Pulps: Robert F. Young Posted at 11:37 AM by James Wallace Harris

jwharris28

I can’t remember ever seeing a book by Robert F. Young at a bookstore, new or used. My library has nothing by him. Young published over a 150 SF/F short stories from 1953-1987, and just five novels few fans have ever heard about. If you search for “Robert F. Young” at ABEBooks.com most of the returns are used magazines. Worlds Without End lists three collections and three novels, just about all of Young’s published work — not much to show for a lifetime of writing. Amazon offers just three short story collections still in print, and one of them is a 55 cent ebook of out-of-copyright stories.

In other words, Robert F. Young is a forgotten writer. He was never famous, but I was always delighted to buy an SF mag with one of his stories. I remembered his name. He seldom got the cover story, but I’d say he often got his name on the cover. Young’s stories were easy to read, gentle, sentimental, romantic, and usually involved fun science fictional ideas. His tales were never great, but always entertaining. He appeared in a huge variety of magazines, including Playboy, Saturday Evening Post, but mostly in science fiction digests. Towards the end of his life, his literary home seemed to be The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

The cliché for writers is their work will make them immortal. That’s not true, of course. Sure, a handful of writers have written things we’ve remembered for hundreds of years or even thousands, but nothing lasts forever. I wish Robert F. Young’s stories would last a little while longer. I hope reading this makes you give him a chance.

I wish I knew more about Young. He was born in 1915 and died in 1986. He served in the Pacific during WWII. The most fascinating thing Wikipedia says about him is “Only near the end of his life did the science fiction community learn he had been a janitor in the Buffalo public school system.” That intrigued me. Was his whole writing career done while working as a school janitor? Did the kids know their janitor wrote science fiction? The Science Fiction Encyclopedia doesn’t offer much more about his personal life. Was he married? Did he have kids? Was he an active fan that attended conventions? Did he contribute to fanzines? I can only find one grainy photo of him. If you know more, post a comment below.

The interesting thing about Young is how readers remember him. Every now and then I’ll meet readers who loved the science fiction digests growing up like I did, and sometimes the Robert F. Young name comes up. Always fondly. I doubt Robert F. Young was anybody’s favorite writer, but quite often I’ve talked to people who said they always read his stories when one appeared in the table of contents.

I envy Young. I always wanted to be a science fiction writer. Of course, I always fantasized about writing famous novels, but now, I just wish I had some short stories published. At least one story that was as good as RFY’s best. I think it’s kind of special that his stories linger on and wished before I die I could hide away a story in a magazine too. We don’t know much about Robert F. Young, but his stories leave a mysterious marker that he was once here.

The pulp and digest magazines published thousands of writers that never achieved book fame. They live on in the hearts of fans, who are mostly old now. I belong to a number of groups that remember the pulps, and I’m always surprised by how different fans fondly remember authors I can’t recall ever hearing about before.

I wonder how many Baby Boomer SF fans remember Robert F. Young? If you do, post a comment. If you’re interested in giving Young a try, his first collection from 1965, The Worlds of Robert F. Young was reprinted in 2017. I bought this recently, hoping the Avram Davidson introduction would have provided more biographical information – it didn’t.

 

2 Comments

Guy   |   05 Oct 2018 @ 14:50

Hi

I entered SF through library books and second hand novels. Now, in my 60’s I am just beginning to learn more about the SF digest magazines and the authors and illustrators who appeared there but never really made the jump leading to wider recognition in the field . Last week I learned about Mel Hunter’s The Lonely Robots covers for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, this week it is Robert F. Young, I will be scanning some of my anthologies for stories by him.

Thanks for this.
Guy

Sciencefictioners from 50's   |   27 Apr 2019 @ 08:11

I think that Frank .M Robinson is also forgotten.

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