Places

In other works by Poul Anderson, time travelers visit periods when years were not numbered but named for important events, like the Year of the Great Salmon Catch. In Beringia, 13,212 BC, Wanda Tamberly finds that places do not yet have consistent names. It depends who is talking, as if, instead of saying "Market Square," I said, "Where the Library is," and you said, "Where the former Town Hall, now a Museum, is." Wanda has to sketch maps and create her own names, like "Bison Swale."

The Tulat do tell consistent stories about sites. For example, in a certain hollow, in the spring following the Great Hard Winter, Khongan saw wolves bring down a bison. He fetched men who drove off the wolves so that they captured the meat and everyone feasted. Like the occasional finding of a still edible carcass, this is an example of how primitive peoples who did not yet hunt big game were sometimes able to supplement their staple diet.

Anderson shows us not only the daily life but also the occasional special events of the remote past. And this is sf because it involves time travel, although a steadily increasing part of the narrative is presented from the point of view of the people living in the periods visited by time travelers.