“The Man Who Came Early” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1956. You can read it on Archive.org. It is story #12 of 22 for The Best SF Stories of 1956 group read. Asimov and Greenberg picked “The Man Who Came Early” for The Great SF Stories #18 (1956) and in Richard Lupoff’s What If? Volume 1, his anthology that reevaluated the Hugo awards, thought “The Man Who Came Early” was the “single finest story” of 1956. “The Man Who Came Early” has been well anthologized.

Science fiction writers often reply to earlier science fiction writers in their fiction, and “The Man Who Came Early” is Poul Anderson’s reply to Mark Train’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and to L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall. Both classic time travel novels are about men who are thrown into the past and use their scientific knowledge to gain power and success in less scientifically aware times. Anderson attacks the assumption that modern knowledge would give any time traveler an edge in the past.

Twain’s character, Hank Morgan, goes from the 19th century to the time of King Arthur via a knock on the head. De Camp’s Martin Padway travels to 535 A.D. Rome by being struck by lightning. Anderson’s Sergeant Gerald Roberts returns to about 1000 A.D. Iceland also via lightning strike.

Poul Anderson admired medieval societies, and often used them in his fiction. I’ve read where Anderson claimed such societies are about as complex as what he thinks humans could handle. What impressed me most about “The Man Who Came Early” was the historical details of ancient Iceland. I’m sure Anderson delighted in writing that part of the story.

The plot involving the hapless Gerald Roberts was less appealing to me, but I thought it made a good case for Anderson’s supposition that time travelers from the future will not have an advantage because they know more. If you’ve seen James Burke’s documentary television series Connections, you’ll know he’s right. Knowledge and skills are tied to time and culture.

I believe Anderson’s description of Gerald Roberts fate is spot on. And I was impressed with Anderson’s point of view character, Ospak. I do not know anything about Iceland, either current or past, but Ospak’s voice in the story felt very realistic. He was both wise and insightful. Ospak was also compassionate towards his daughter Thorgunna even though Ospak knew she fell in love with the useless man from the future. Ospak even believed Roberts was from the future, and vaguely perceived why he couldn’t adjust to living in the past. Anderson did a great job describing an alien culture to us.

I was impressed with “The Man Who Came Early” the first time I read it. I’ve never been a big Poul Anderson fan, but reading it made me want to read more of Anderson’s work. I was still impressed, maybe even more so, with this second reading. I find it hard to like most time travel stories because they are so hard to believe. Even if time travel was possible, I find it harder to believe people could overcome the language barrier. Anderson claims that Icelandic is one of the few languages that hasn’t changed much in a thouand years. That might be true, but I’m still skeptical. Kids just two or three generations younger than me already use so many words and phrases that I can’t decipher without checking my iPhone.

In some ways I wonder if “The Man Who Came Early” would have been a better story if told from Gerald Roberts point of view. Wouldn’t we identify more with the frustrations of surviving in the past if we followed the time traveler? I’m sure Anderson was enamored with creating Ospak’s character, but from a storytelling point of view, wouldn’t seeing the experience from Robert’s eyes have been more intense? I’m reminded of Thomas Jerome Newton, the Martian who came to our planet in The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis. Newton’s experience of being a stranger in a strange land was emotionally gutwrenching.

I was surprised that my friend Mike didn’t like “The Man Who Came Early” when he emailed yesterday:

My problem with time travel stories is that the plots feel manufactured and synthetic. Character development is sacrificed on the altar of clever machinations.

I realize that "The Man Who Came Early" is a widely praised story, but it felt emotionally flat to me. Everything feels like a plot device, complete with a far-fetched love interest and a convenient adversary (red shirt).

I agree with Joachim Boaz: "There isn’t much redeemable about this stilted caper.  Well, Poul Anderson’s pessimistic theme that the modern man is unable to function in the past despite his superior technology is somewhat interesting despite the story’s poor delivery."

I completely disagree with Boaz’s assessment that the story was poorly delivered. I thought Ospak’s tale exceedingly well done. It let us see an ancient Icelandic perspective that felt genuinely possible to me. I do believe if we followed Roberts’ perspective, we would have felt a greater sense of frustration and tragedy being a time traveler, much like what Karl Glogauer experienced in Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock.

I experienced several levels and kinds of emotions in the story, so my experience is much different from Mike’s. I’m curious how other people felt. If you’ve read the story, please say below in a comment.

The discussion on Facebook has been positive so far.

James Wallace Harris, 12/23/23