Robert F. Young began publishing short stories in
1953 and was quite prolific at that length until
his death, at which point nearly 200 had been
published. Of these, only a relative handful have
been collected, in two volumes—The Worlds of
Robert F. Young (1965) and A Glass of Stars
(1968)—that came comparatively early in his career. Although many of Young’s stories are slight,
there is a substantial amount of excellent work,
and his continued neglect by American publishers
is surprising.
Most of his short stories were adventures,
often set in outer space, but he also wrote a handful of effective satires, including “Romance in a
Twenty-First Century Used Car Lot” (1960) and “A
Report on Sexual Behavior on Arcturus” (1957).
He often managed to incorporate almost poetic
imagery into his stories, as in “Emily and the Bard
Sublime” (1956), “Jonathan and the Space Whale”
(1962), and “The Stars Are Calling, Mr. Keats”
(1959). Other outstanding stories include “The
Girl Who Made Time Stop” (1961), “L’Arc de
Jeanne” (1966), “Starscape with Frieze of Dreams”
(1970), and “Invitation to the Waltz” (1982). Romantic love is a frequent component of his stories,
which sometimes become overly sentimental.
Young turned to novels late in his career; most
of these were based on earlier short stories.
Starfinder (1980) is the best of the four, all of which
appeared within a very brief timeframe. Travel to
the stars is accomplished by means of the dead bodies of space whales, creatures who live in space
rather than on planets. The Last Yggsdrasil (1982) is
an expanded version of “To Fell a Tree” (1959),
probably his best short story. The protagonist is
hired to cut down the last giant tree on a colony
world, but is distracted by the presence of an indigenous life-form. Eridahn (1983) is based on a series of stories Young wrote about time travelers
visiting the prehistoric past, specifically in this case
“When Time Was New” (1983). Young’s last novel,
The Vizier’s Second Daughter (1985), is a fantasy.