"The Man Who Came Early" is a science fiction short story by American author Poul Anderson. Similar in some respects to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court , Anderson's story sharply differs from Twain's in his treatment of the "primitive" society in which the time traveller finds himself and his assessment of a modern person's chances of survival in such a society.
"The Man Who Came Early" was first published in the June 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction . It was reprinted in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sixth Series [1] and the Anderson collection The Horn of Time. [2] In the 2010 collection Fragile and Distant Suns, [3] this story is included under the name "Early Rise".
The story is presented in the first person, related by a Saga-Age Icelander named Ospak Ulfsson. During a violent thunderstorm, an unexplained phenomenon transports the titular 20th-century American US Army MP back in time to Ospak's homestead. The American, who becomes known as Gerald "Samsson", is an engineering student drafted to serve at Keflavik during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Gerald is taken in by Ospak's family who assume him to be a shipwreck survivor. Although his engineering background gives him many ideas of how to improve life for the Icelanders (such as advanced sailing vessels), his lack of practical know-how, and his oversophisticated ideas when set against the nature of 10th-century life, lead to none of his suggestions being implemented. Knowledge of 20th-century metallurgy does not endow him with the highly specialised skill needed to work in a 10th-century smithy, and his attempt to do so ends with a costly fiasco. Also, knowing the theory of how to design a large metal bridge is not a sufficient base for constructing a small wooden bridge over a rivulet with medieval carpentry tools.
There is also a whole series of misunderstandings caused by social and cultural differences. Gerald tries to tell the Icelanders that in his country there are no blood feuds because the government takes care of punishing all wrong-doers. However, his listeners have no concept of a vast impersonal government and its law-enforcement agencies; Gerald's words, when translated into concepts familiar to his listeners, are taken to mean that all law-enforcement is done by the King in person – whereupon the amused Icelanders remark that such a King would be too busy to beget an heir. And conversely, when Gerald tells that he had been a military policeman and describes the task of one, they are astonished at what they see as his foolhardy courage of "offending all the men in the war host" - since Vikings would absolutely not have tolerated the petty regulation of their dress and personal life which is common for soldiers in a 20th-century army.
Then, Gerald guilelessly mentions that his family owns no land and lives in one apartment of a big house where many other families live - not realizing that he has just plunged his social status sharply down, as in this rural society a landless man is far down the scale. And when he boasts that the United States is a free society, but admits that US citizens may be called up for military service even at harvest time, his shocked hosts conclude that the US is the worst and most monstrous of tyrannies - since in their economy, calling up the farmers in harvest time would doom their families to starvation, unaware that in modern times far fewer people need to farm.
Meanwhile, Gerald and his host's daughter fall in love with each other. A rival suitor from a neighboring clan, annoyed at her preference for the "useless" foreigner, insults Gerald, who then challenges him to "fight it out" - not realizing that in this society, duels between free people are fought with weapons and often to the death, and that fighting bare-handed "is for slaves". Trapped in a holmgang and about to be cut down, he uses his gun and kills his opponent, which is deemed dishonorable and thus not protected as a lawful killing during the duel.
In order to avert his host becoming entangled in a blood feud, Gerald departs on his own - which leads to his being outlawed and hunted down. When making his last stand, his ammunition runs out ("his magical weapon failed him" as the locals see it) but he gives a good account of himself with a sword seized from a fallen opponent, killing several men and permanently injuring a scion of the neighboring clan before being finally killed.
The ending of the story suggests that, in time, Gerald's burial barrow would come to be regarded as the tomb of "an ancient hero" and that he would in death find the place in Icelandic society which he did not gain in life, and would come to be idolized by those who see the tomb as a relic of a better time, wishing they lived in his age.
Steven H Silver has described the story as "a response to" L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall , [4] while Jo Walton states that it is an outright rejection of de Camp. [5]
Black Gate considers it "first rate", [6] while Paul A. Carter states that, as a "tale of the modern man displaced in time to a harsh and unforgiving environment which dooms him", it is "more sophisticated" than Nat Schachner's "Master Gerald of Cambray". [7]
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two people with matched weapons.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.
Holmgang is a duel practiced by early medieval Scandinavians. It was a legally recognized way to settle disputes.
The Simple Art of Murder is the title of several quasi-connected publications by hard-boiled detective fiction author Raymond Chandler:
Lest Darkness Fall is a 1939 alternate history science fiction novel by the American author L. Sprague de Camp. Lest Darkness Fall is similar in concept to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but the treatment is very different.
Hrafnkels saga or Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða is one of the Icelanders' sagas. It tells of struggles between chieftains and farmers in the east of Iceland in the 10th century. The eponymous main character, Hrafnkell, starts out his career as a fearsome duelist and a dedicated worshiper of the god Freyr. After suffering defeat, humiliation, and the destruction of his temple, he becomes an atheist. His character changes and he becomes more peaceful in dealing with others. After gradually rebuilding his power base for several years, he achieves revenge against his enemies and lives out the rest of his life as a powerful and respected chieftain. The saga has been interpreted as the story of a man who arrives at the conclusion that the true basis of power does not lie in the favor of the gods but in the loyalty of one's subordinates.
Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel by American writer Mark Twain published on 28 November 1894. Its central intrigue revolves around two boys—one, born into slavery, with 1/32 black ancestry; the other, white, born to be the master of the house. The two boys, who look similar, are switched at infancy. Each grows into the other's social role.
Behold the Man is a existentialist science fiction novel by British writer Michael Moorcock. It originally appeared as a novella in a 1966 issue of New Worlds magazine; later, Moorcock produced an expanded version that was first published in 1969 by Allison & Busby. The title derives from John 19, Verse 5, in the New Testament: "Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them Behold the Man".
Evangeline Walton was the pen name of Evangeline Wilna Ensley, an American writer of fantasy fiction. She remains popular in North America and Europe because of her “ability to humanize historical and mythological subjects with eloquence, humor and compassion”.
The literary genre of science fiction is diverse, and its exact definition remains a contested question among both scholars and devotees. This lack of consensus is reflected in debates about the genre's history, particularly over determining its exact origins. There are two broad camps of thought, one that identifies the genre's roots in early fantastical works such as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. A second approach argues that science fiction only became possible sometime between the 17th and early 19th centuries, following the scientific revolution and major discoveries in astronomy, physics, and mathematics.
Króka-Refs saga or the Saga of Ref the Sly is one of the Icelanders' sagas. Written in the 14th century the saga relates the adventures of Ref Steinsson, whose unpromising origins lead him to greatness in both combat and subterfuge.
The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant are an autobiography, in two volumes, of Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th President of the United States. The work focuses on his military career during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. The volumes were written in the last year of Grant's life, amid increasing pain from terminal throat cancer and against the backdrop of his personal bankruptcy at the hands of an early Ponzi scheme. The set was published by Mark Twain shortly after Grant's death in July 1885.
William John Warner, popularly known as Cheiro, was an Irish astrologer and colourful occult figure of the early 20th century. His sobriquet, Cheiro, derives from the word cheiromancy, meaning palmistry. He was a self-described clairvoyant who said he learned palmistry, astrology, and Chaldean numerology in India. He was celebrated for using these forms of divination to make personal predictions for famous clients and to foresee world events.
"Eutopia" is a short story by American writer Poul Anderson that originally appeared in Harlan Ellison's 1967 science fiction anthology Dangerous Visions. It later appeared in Anderson's 1981 collection The Dark Between the Stars and the showcase The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century (2001).
Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu or the Saga of Gunnlaugur Serpent-Tongue is one of the sagas of Icelanders. Composed at the end of the 13th century, it is preserved complete in a slightly younger manuscript. It contains 25 verses of skaldic poetry attributed to the main characters.
Three Hearts and Three Lions is a 1961 fantasy novel by American writer Poul Anderson, expanded from a 1953 novella by Anderson which appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine.
The use of the pen name of Mark Twain first occurred in Samuel Clemens's writing while in the Nevada Territory which he had journeyed to with his brother. Clemens/Twain lived in Nevada from 1861 to 1864, and visited the area twice after leaving. Historians such as Peter Messent see Clemens's time in Nevada as "the third major formative period of Mark Twain's career" due to his encounters with "writers and humorists who would both shape and put the finishing touches on his literary art." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain states that despite the few "disagreeable experiences" he had there, Twain "thrived in Nevada." Among those things he learned was "how far he could push a joke", a lesson learned from some "disagreeable experiences" he brought upon himself.
Chapters from My Autobiography are 25 pieces of autobiographical work published by American author Mark Twain in the North American Review between September 1906 and December 1907. Rather than following the standard form of an autobiography, they comprise a rambling collection of anecdotes and ruminations. Much of the text was dictated.