Norman Richard Spinrad (born September 15, 1940) is an American science fiction author, essayist, and critic.

He has also worked as a phone-in radio show host, a vocal artist, a literary agent, and President of World SF.

According to Spinrad: If there's one gaping void in the story of American literary history in the second half of the twentieth century as currently promulgated, it's the influence of grass and psychedelic drugs, not only on the lives of writers, but on the content of what's been written, and on the form and style too.

The Arts Council of Great Britain, which subsidized New Worlds, put public pressure on WHSmith and forced the company to distribute the issue.

The plot of the novel concerns a fleet commander named Palmer who makes contact with a race called the Solarians, who emerge from isolation to help humanity in its long war against the Duglaari.

[citation needed] A World Between (1979) tells of a mildly turbulent period on the planet of Pacifica, a utopic, democratic electronically mediated society, on which lands a ship from each of the two factions in the "Pink and Blue War": the patronizingly paternalistic Institute of Transcendental Science on the one side, and the rabidly man-hating lesbian Femocrats on the other.

Nobody suffers a worse fate than political embarrassment, and status quo is restored by the simple fact of Pacifican society being better than that of either of the off-world factions.

The Void Captain's Tale (1983) takes place three or four thousand years in the future in an era called the Second Starfaring Age, a setting Spinrad revisited in the 1985 novel Child of Fortune.

The Children of Fortune blend elements of gypsies, hippies of 1960s America, and other groups and legends, including Peter Pan.

Moussa becomes a "ruespieler" or storyteller, and takes the name "Wendy" in honor of Pater Pan, the man she meets, loves, and loses during her wanderjahr.

The wanderjahr bears a superficial resemblance to the Grand Tour which many upper-class young men undertook after finishing school, the difference being that Children of Fortune are expected to have explored themselves as well as the world during their travels, and to come home knowing who they are and what place they want for themselves.

[13] Spinrad wrote the script for an episode of the original Star Trek television series, titled "The Doomsday Machine" (1967).