Excuse me if I'm telling people things they already know, but it's a quote of a short article which is also available in books. Poul Anderson was one of the major golden age sf writers (both fantasy and science fiction), and quite possibly worth looking up-- a lot of his work has been reprinted by NESFA and Baen.

I'm not sure what the best Anderson for rationalists would be, maybe "The Three-Cornered Wheel". I'm very fond of his A Midsummer Tempest-- alternate history set in a universe where everything Shakespeare wrote was literally true. Check out Three Hearts and Three Lions if you want to see what golden age pacing looks like-- it's a short novel, a lot happens in it, and I think a contemporary writer would have puffed it up into six long novels.

Vernor Vinge and GRR Martin's writing remind me of Anderson-- there's something about the style of description and the way heroism is constructed.