Kirk Allen

In 2011, Stan Lee created the comic book series Starborn, based on Allen's story. Carl Sagan wrote about this case in Chapter 10 of his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Ballantine Books, March 1996. Jacques Vallee wrote about the case in his book Revelations: Alien Contact and Human Deception, comparing it to the Ummo phenomenon. Thierry Smolderen & Alexandre Clérisse's graphic novel Atomic Empire depicts Allen's story, identifying Allen with Cordwainer Smith.

Paul Linebarger (better known by his nom de plume, Cordwainer Smith) was long rumored to have been the original "Kirk Allen". According to Cordwainer Smith scholar Alan C. Elms, this speculation first reached print in Brian Aldiss's 1973 history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree; Aldiss, in turn, claimed to have received the information from Leon Stover. More recently, both Elms and librarian Lee Weinstein have gathered circumstantial evidence to support the case for Linebarger's being "Allen", but both concede there is no direct proof that Linebarger was ever a patient of Lindner's or that he suffered from a disorder similar to that of "Allen". Although no direct link between Linebarger and Lindner has been proven, personalities in the science fiction world whom Lindner is known to have been personally acquainted with include Theodore Sturgeon, who was in psychoanalysis with an analyst recommended to him by Lindner, and Philip Wylie, the author of When Worlds Collide and Gladiator, whom Lindner psychoanalyzed in 1952.

Kirk Allen (born 1918) was the pseudonym given to a patient of Robert M. Lindner's, in his book The Fifty-Minute Hour. Born in Hawaii, "Allen" soon became obsessed with a series of novels, the protagonist of which shared his name. Due to "Allen"'s anonymity, it is unclear what the series was, apart from the fact that it was science fiction. Some have theorized that the series was the Barsoom books, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, featuring the main character John Carter.