Young, Liam
Entry updated 29 May 2026. Tagged: Author, Editor, Film.
(1947- ) Australian filmmaker, designer, architect and Future Studies thinker, widely published and exhibited for his imaginings on the evolution of Cities in a world of drastic Climate Change and technological change. Among his short films are several sf works which make innovative use of new technology. Where the City Can't See (2016), set in a Near-Future Detroit in which a group of young people work on digital camouflage tech, was shot entirely using laser scanning technology. In the Robot Skies (2017), written by Tim Maughan, is also set in the near future, in a London housing estate, was filmed using only preprogrammed drones; the films' protagonists hack drones to send love letters to each other. Planet City: A City for 10 Billion People (2021) develops the ideas of biologist E O Wilson, who in Half-Earth (2016) argues for half the planet to be freed of humans so nature can reclaim it. In Planet City (2020), Young envisions the entirety of Earth's population by 2030 living in one City, and the rest of the world rewilded. Young has expanded on this idea in Virtual Reality simulations, TED talks, and an anthology: Planet City (anth 2021).
His multimedia exhibition In Other Worlds (2026) combines installations and film, both documentary and fiction, to further envision various futures for humanity. Among the participants are several sf writers, including Claire G Coleman, Kim Stanley Robinson and Chen Quifan, as well as prominent scientists. [CWa]
Liam Young
born Australia: 1947
works as editor (selected)
- Planet City (Collingwood, Victoria: Uro Publications; 2021) [nonfiction: anth: pb/]
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