This is a small collection of 6 stories that originally appeared in a variety of magazines in the 50's and 60's and were revised by the author before being collected here. There is not a general theme or relationship between the stories despite what the cover blurbs might suggest. The Salvador Dali-ish cover caught my eye. The stories were a mixed bag and I've read better by Anderson. A little heavy handed with the anti-soviet stuff. "The Man Who Came Early" was one of the better ones and I know I have read it before but I couldn't figure out when or where. It has been rather heavily anthologized over the 60 years since it was first published. ( )

Warning: review contains some spoilers. This is a collection of stories set in very varied times, the far future, the near future, and the past. Most of them (except perhaps the last) have a bittersweet or very sad flavor. The first one, "The Horn of Time the Hunter" involves a spaceship crew finding what seems to be an abandoned colony on a promising planet; eventually they discover what has happened to the colonists,but only after one of their crew has been killed and partially eaten. "A Man to My Wounding" is set in a near future after a non-total atomic war; the current convention is that there are no full-scale wars, but rival nations may declare a "state of assassination" during which highly trained assassins try to take out enemy leaders. The narrator is a US protection agency man assigned to stop an assassination, which he does, but only after figuring out the target is not the obvious current leader but a potential future leader, a dangerous escalation of the system. "The High Ones" involves another space explorer party, this time divided between "sovietist" Russians and Americans (and others) confronting what appears to be a highly advanced alien culture which is strangely unresponsive to their efforts at contact. I found this one uncomfortably didactic. "The Man Who Came Too Early" is about a modern American who finds himself in early Iceland' his inability to adjust to the culture results in his outlawry and death. While this makes a good point about the unlikelihood of all the stories in which a modern person lands in the past and becomes a superhero, it is depressingly tragic. "Marius" is also sad. A leader of a successful Resistance against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe is tempted to assume permanent power, provoking some of his own comrades to turn against him. Lastly "Progress' is the most cheerful of the stories, about a post-apocolyptic (but again, not totally devastated) world in which a team from a Pacific island confederation takes out an attempt by a Bengali industrial culture (aided by an American scientist) to develop fusion power. This is oddly anti-technological for Anderson, but at that point he apparently felt cultural diversity was more important than technological progress. ( )

I've always enjoyed the Anderson that I've read and, particularly for this era of science fiction, I think that the short story can be a much stronger vehicle than the full-length novel. Anderson is in top form here with stories that combine time periods, space travel, post-apocalyptic futures, and well written characters. My favorite of the bunch is probably the last story, "Progress," which takes us to a Earth that is healing from a long-ago nuclear destruction and running into conflicts as the now-powerful Maori people try to keep the other societies in balance and stop any chance of future nuclear wars.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-horn-of-time-by-poul-anderson-1968.htm... ] ( )

Another compilation of several of Poul Anderson's short stories. As always, the contents are a bit of a mixed bag:

1. The Horn of the Time Hunter - a scout ship arrives on a previously colonized human settlement to find the settlement in ruins and abandoned for thousands of years. As they search for some remnants of the lost colony they find more than they could have bargained for - the descendents of the original colonists. Unfortunately the colonists don't recognize the visitors and the visitors certainly don't recognize the colonists who are no longer quite human.

2. A Man to My Wounding - In a near future society, countries have evolved beyond the need for war - they carry out their projections of strength on a far more personal level - assassinations. Our hero is one of the best counter-assassination agents in the US and he's trying to hone in a chinese operative that he knows is the US, but he doesn't know the target.

3. The High Ones - In my opinion, the best of the lot. A group of stranded colonists encounters what appears to be a highly advanced civilization - but the alien's behavior is quite odd - very detached. A warning about what could happen when machines usurp our ability to think.

4. The Man Who Came Early - A US-born MP is tossed back into medeival Iceland where he struggles to adapt and integrate himself into society. This appears to be a precursor to Three Hearts and Three Lions.

5. Marius - Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do learn history must live with the consequences of doing what must be done to avoid repeating history.

6. Progress - In a post-apocalyptic earth, new societies have been founded and the dominant power of the time must make hard decisions about how to allow the world to rediscover various lost arts and technologies. ( )