A Multi-Temporal Meeting Place

Poul Anderson, "The Nest" IN Anderson, Past Times (New York, 1984), pp. 71-111. 

Ironically, this volume refers to the possibility of a future Orwellian dictatorship and was published in 1984. Year dates that were science fictional settings have become publication dates. We refer to some works that are recognized as literature and to others that are genre sf but find a continuity of ideas.

"The Nest" is set in a single linear timeline although the initial impression is of multiple timelines:

a sabretooth has threatened the cattle;

there is a river called the Styx;

the narrator, Trebuen, is a quarter Neanderthal, rides an iguandon instead of a horse and wields a flintlock instead of a mere sword;

the hidalgo, Don Miguel Pedro Estaban Francisco de Utrillo y Gutierrez, is known from Lagash to London;

there are slaves, Nazis, Huns, Normans and a woman from the Martian Soviet.

Trebuen is not racially prejudiced but does not like those "...greasy little devils...," (p. 76) the Huns.

This will all be straightened out but first we must read through several pages of Andersonian action.

(Think "Martian" and "Soviet" and then combine them. What can be done with words.)