Wilson made his first sales in 1970 to Analog while still in medical school (graduating in 1973), and continued to write science fiction throughout the seventies.

Among Wilson's best-known characters is the anti-hero Repairman Jack, an urban mercenary introduced in the 1984 New York Times bestseller The Tomb.

Unwilling to start a series character at the time, Wilson refused to write a second Repairman Jack novel until Legacies in 1998.

[2][3] Throughout his writing – especially in his earlier science fiction works (most notably An Enemy of the State) – Wilson has included explicitly libertarian political philosophy which extends to his "Repairman Jack" series.

In 2015 he received the third special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement; the previous two recipients were Poul Anderson and Vernor Vinge.

I was a good kid up till then, reading Ace Doubles and clean, wholesome science fiction stories by the likes of Heinlein, E. E. Smith, Poul Anderson, Fred Pohl, and the rest.

The beginning of my end.In answer to a claim that Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was an influence on The Keep, Wilson responded: First off, I'm not a fan of LOtR – I struggled through it once as a teen (skimming a lot) and never looked back.

[5]Like other American science fiction writers directly or indirectly influenced by Campbell's view of the genre as a literature of ideas,[6] Wilson makes use of his work to explore trends and technologies speculatively as they manifest.

Throughout the book, Wilson runs chapter headings quoting from economic works such as Fiat Money Inflation in France and KYFHO, a kind of anarchic philosophy that he invented as model for a perfect society.

Last October, after seven years of development, numerous options, five screenwriters, and eight scripts, Beacon Films (Air Force One, Thirteen Days, Spy Game, etc.)