New SF author Karl Gallagher dropped me a note last week that offered me copies of his first work, a novel sequence: Torchship, Torchship Pilot, and Torchship Captain. He explained that the ideas I expressed in The Deep Norms of SF helped form his ideas about writing.
Since that is part of the effect I was hoping for when I wrote the essay, I told him so and remarked on my first reaction when I stumbled over these books while browsing Amazon. My thought was “Hmmm…looks like someone tried to write a high-quality Heinlein pastiche. And maybe succeeded…”
Karl replied “I certainly aimed at a ‘Heinlein tribute.’ Whether it’s ‘high quality’ I’ll leave to others.” The following review is a considerably expanded version of my reply to him.