Young, Jim
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US officer in the American diplomatic service, actor and author James Maxwell Young (1951-2012), whose first novel, The Face of the Deep (1979), is set in a medieval environment located – it soon becomes clear – on the planet Bok II, which is threatened by an exploding Sun, but the natives cannot grasp the Cosmology implications of this coming event. The style is gritty, the action compressed; and Young's apparent departure from active participation in the field – he had also been involved in the busy Minneapolis Fandom scene which eventually gave birth to the group of fantasy writers known as the Scribblies – was regrettable. But he did publish some work in magazines, most recently in 2011. Armed Memory (1995) vividly and complexly depicts the effects on a Near Future world of a superior version of Homo sapiens (see Superman) created through Genetic Engineering. After retiring from the US Foreign Service Young worked at his acting career: as James Young he played Adolf Hitler in the straight-to-video film Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012), directed by Joseph J Lawson. A third novel was completed but remains unpublished. [JC/DRL]
James Maxwell Young
born Minneapolis, Minnesota: 8 February 1951
died Fullerton, California: 12 June 2012
works
- The Face of the Deep (New York: Pocket Books, 1979) [pb/]
- Armed Memory (New York: Tor, 1995) [hb/Bruce Jensen]
links
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