For a variety of reasons, I often like to try and read or watch early works in a genre. And just as often, I’m rather disappointed in those works. Early works are often clumsy expressions of an idea that suffer badly in comparison with later explorations of those same ideas. Plus all the barriers that changes in linguistic style and social mores can bring to an appreciation of books and movies from even a few decades ago.

All of that is to say that reading the 1939 Lest Darkness Fall was not at all painful. It’s a time traveler/alternate history, with a twentieth century archaeologist hand-wavingly transported back to the late Roman Empire. It was a breezy read, and I found nuance in our main character’s successes and failures as he attempts to just survive and then to stave off the Dark Ages.

The Kindle edition I’ve linked to above is both reasonably priced and contains a couple of related stories by modern authors.