[8] It is regarded as classic science fiction by The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography in its entry on Hubbard,[3] as well as by writer James Gunn,[9] and publications including the Daily News of Los Angeles,[10] and Chicago Sun-Times.

[17][18] Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas wrote in a 1951 review that the story was amusing though it could have used copy editing,[19] and Groff Conklin described its concept as silly.

[32] Hackett attempts to persuade his book publisher that he has almost finished writing his latest novel, while in actuality he has already depleted his advance payment prior to coming up with an idea for a story.

[44] Widder said in addition to Typewriter in the Sky, Hubbard's successful 1940 fiction stories published in Unknown included Fear, Final Blackout, and Death's Deputy.

[52] L. Ron Hubbard's literary agency Author Services Inc. announced that Typewriter in the Sky would be included in "a 12-volume series of 23 classic science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories" published by Easton Press of Norwalk, Connecticut in September 1995.

[54] Daniel Cohen wrote in Masters of the Occult (1971) that works including Typewriter in the Sky, Fear, and Slaves of Sleep "moved Hubbard into the front rank of science fiction writers of the late 1940s.

[55] The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (2000) described Typewriter in the Sky and Fear as Hubbard's "most famous stories" in the genre of science fiction.

[5] Umberto Rossi wrote in The Twisted Worlds of Philip K. Dick (2011) that Typewriter in the Sky included a game in the form of metafiction within its plot development.

[58] Marco Frenschkowski wrote in a 1999 article for the Marburg Journal of Religion in a bibliography of L. Ron Hubbard, and called Typewriter in the Sky: " Classic fantasy tale about a man who discovers he is part of someone else's imagination.

[62] Authors Lionel Fanthorpe and Patricia Fanthorpe wrote in The World's Most Mysterious People (1998) that Hubbard accomplished a difficult task of writing about two different worlds at the same time, "even through the medium of fiction Hubbard succeeds in posing deep metaphysical questions about the mind's interpretation of experiential data, and its response to the questions about the nature of being.

[63] In his 2011 book The Twisted Worlds of Philip K. Dick, author Umberto Rossi analyzed Hubbard's story and called it a parody intended to spoof the experiences of hack writers.

[28] In her 1987 monograph work on Scientology Renunciation and Reformulation: a Study of Conversion in an American Sect, Harriet Whitehead wrote that the book helped Hubbard build on experience writing about a theme of "a hidden reality subjacent to the apparent one".

[65] In their work Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs (1996), authors John Ankerberg and John Weldon observed, "compare Scientology theory with L. Ron Hubbard's science-fiction works, e.g., Ole Doc Methusala, Slaves of Sleep, Death's Deputy, The Final Blackout, The Dangerous Dimension, The Tramp, Fear, King Slayer, and Typewriter in the Sky.

Urban compared Typewriter in the Sky character Horace Hackett's omnipotent abilities to Hubbard's subsequent ideas developed in the powerful spirit in Scientology doctrine, the Operating Thetan.

[67] Urban wrote: "perhaps the most striking element in Hubbard's early fiction that reappears in his later Scientology writings is his emphasis on the unlimited, even godlike power of the writer himself.

[68] Writing in the October 1951 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas wrote favorably of Typewriter in the Sky, and characterized it as "an entertaining adventure-farce badly in need of editing".

"[21] Damon Knight gave the book a mixed review, commenting, "The problem [of how de Wolf can 'change the story and avert his doom'] is a tough one, and Hubbard does not so much solve it as slide around it....

[17] Michael Ashley wrote in Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction (1978), "Typewriter in the Sky (1940) is a rollicking farce of a man written into another's story".

[39] Janrae Frank of The Washington Post commented, "Much of his best work of the '40s and '50s, Fear, Slaves of Sleep, Typewriter in the Sky, is written in exactly the same style and won reader polls at the time.

"[18] In his biography of the author, Bare-Faced Messiah (1987), Russell Miller characterized Typewriter in the Sky as one of Hubbard's works which "would come to be regarded as classics", along with Fear and Final Blackout.

[71] In a biography of Hubbard written by Kent State University professor Donald M. Hassler in The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1988), he noted, "Typewriter in the Sky (1940/1951), which anticipates plot gimmicks now popular among experimental metafictionists, ought to be taken seriously by the critics who will evaluate his strange genius".

[72] In a review upon the 1995 re-release of the book, Ann Patterson-Rabon of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal concluded: "A short novel, 'Typewriter' is a perfect afternoon read: quick, fun and only as deep as you care to go.

[33][52] Peter Haining wrote in The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines, "Typewriter in the Sky, which first appeared in Unknown in 1940, is widely considered to be one of his best works.

"[23] Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines by Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson, listed Typewriter in the Sky among Hubbard's "best work".

[73] British writer Adam Roberts wrote of the book in his biography of Hubbard for the edited work Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, calling it a "neatly self-reflexive" story.

[28] Rossi noted Typewriter in the Sky came out in a paperback format in 1951, and a year later Dick succeeded in getting his first short story, the tale "Beyond Lies the Wub" published.

A lawsuit alleging that screenwriter Zach Helm improperly stole his story from Hubbard could accurately state that both works have the same basic plot.