After winning the 2006 Locus Award for his novella Missile Gap, Charles Stross thanked him, writing that Nicoll "came up with the original insane setting[5]—then kindly gave me permission to take his idea and run with it.
We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.
[10] Amateur linguists Jeremy Smith,[11] Richard Lederer,[12] the Chinese newspaper Ming Pao[13] and Anu Garg[14] have also referenced Nicoll's quote.
[23] Inspired by Nicoll's collection of accidents, as well as his tendency to take in any stray cat that comes knocking, fantasy author Jo Walton wrote him a poem in 2002.
[38] E. E. Smith first used the general idea of concentrating the sun's energy in a weapon in the Lensman series when the Galactic Patrol developed the sunbeam (in Second Stage Lensmen); however, his concept did not extend to the details of the Nicoll-Dyson Laser.
The 2012 novel The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross uses the Nicoll-Dyson Laser concept by name as the means by which the Galactic Federation threatens to destroy the Earth.
[42] In 2021 and 2022, he was nominated for the Aurora Award for Best Fan Writing and Publication, for the series "Young People Read Old SFF" published on his review website.