Poul Anderson

“Quixote and the Windmill” is a short story by Poul Anderson, published in November 1950 in Astounding Science Fiction. In the future, Earth has achieved full automation: production is almost entirely automatic, machines perform all routine tasks, and human beings live surrounded by comfort, leisure, and abundance. The workday is minimal, basic needs are met, and people can devote their time to creativity and recreation. In this world of technological utopia, two men drink in a bar as they drown their frustration over a world that seems no longer to need them.

“The Man Who Came Early” is a short story by Poul Anderson, first published in June 1956 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. An elderly Icelandic farmer from the tenth century recounts to a Christian priest the mysterious arrival of a stranger who, after a great storm, appeared wandering along the shore. Dressed in unfamiliar clothing and carrying strange artifacts, the newcomer claimed to come from a thousand years in the future and from a great nation that did not yet exist. Though skeptical—and at times taking him for a madman—a family decides to take him in and offer him shelter. Grateful, the man tries to adapt to that primitive society while recounting astonishing tales of his own time.