Although I didn't exactly love the book, I could easily see how it fit into the science fiction zeitgeist of the time; it had elements that reminded me somewhat of Dune, with its Imperial capes and nobles vibe, as well as with odd esoteric religious orders and something that wasn't all that different from a mentat, honestly. It had backwater planets that weren't all glittering, shiny, chrome-plated futuristic as the people in the 60s imagined it. All in all, I can see how this kind of stuff was very directly inspirational (independently) to both George Lucas as he was developing Star Wars as well as Marc Miller as he was developing Traveller.
In fact, I find the Traveller setting quite interesting for a number of reasons, largely because it was developed too early to have been influenced by the massive media sensation what was Star Wars, and can be seen as someone else's interpretation and synthesis of the exact same body of science fiction (space opera, really, for the most part) literature into something that resembles Star Wars, but only because they are cousins, not because they are themselves tied by one influencing the other. This can be seen as a good example of what specifically influenced Traveller:
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/More_Reading
Notably missing, compared to Star Wars, is some of the older pulp tradition. It makes a nod to Edgar Rice Burroughs, but it's hard to see how he's directly influential on Traveller like he was on Star Wars. No mention of Edmond Hamilton or E. E. "Doc" Smith or Alex Raymond for Traveller, whereas they are more directly and in fact incredibly substantially influential on Star Wars.
But still; the idea that both of them bloomed out of the same general body of work is certainly true, and like I said, E. C. Tubbs wasn't really all that different than a lot of the stuff written by Frank Herbert or Poul Anderson, or Larry Niven or all kinds of other similar authors of the classic science fiction scene.
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