"The Man Who Came Early" is a science fiction short story by American author Poul Anderson. Similar in some respects to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Anderson's story sharply differs from Twain's in his treatment of the "primitive" society in which the time traveller finds himself and his assessment of a modern person's chances of survival in such a society.
"The Man Who Came Early" was first published in the June 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was reprinted in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Sixth Series[1] and the Anderson collection The Horn of Time.[2] In the 2010 collection Fragile and Distant Suns,[3] this story is included under the name "Early Rise".