Stories Within Stories

In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, in Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End and in two of Poul Anderson's Nicholas van Rijn stories, the characters sit comfortably, indeed share a drink, while one of their number recounts the story that is to be told. It is a comfortable experience to read a story narrated in this manner.

We vicariously share in the characters' comfort and security and expect to rejoin them in their comfortable environment at the end of the story even though, in media res, the perspective shifts from the point of view of those who are hearing the story to that of one of the participants in the adventurous activities being recounted although, obviously, someone who has lived to tell the story cannot be a fatality within it.

Nicholas van Rijn embarks on adventures in several of the stories in the History of Technic Civilization. However, in two he instead sits at home, hears the story recounted by someone else and, of course, makes relevant comments when it is finished. In "The Master Key," the detective skills that are part of his character are applied to the experiences of others just as, on other occasions, they are applied to his own. The reader should notice the colorful details that are described not only in the exotic environments that are the scenes of the stories but also in van Rijn's home environment, a penthouse with a garden on the roof of a skyscraper in a major city of flying cabs and cars.