Master Gerald of Cambray

by Nat Schachner

Release: June 1939
Format: Novelette
Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Unassuming Gerald Cambray, a professor of Latin at Harvard in 1939, has a dizzy spell and wakes in Paris of AD 1263 where his accent in speaking Latin is considered odd and his makeshift plan to earn a living by teaching astronomy brings dangers that even his brazen, swashbuckling young student, Guy of Salisbury, might be unable to forestall.

— Michael Main

“My subject,” he began, “is the science of astronomy. I am going to be frank. In my land and time . . . uh. . . that is—” Guy frowned. He had warned him against any mention of that insane delusion of his about having been catapulted back from a future age. But Cambray recovered himself. “What I meant is that there are far greater masters of this science where I come from. I am familiar only with the skirts of this knowledge. Yet what I have to say will be novel to you, and will doubtless upset many of your present concepts.”

DEBUT

“Master Gerald of Cambray,” in Unknown Fantasy Fiction, June 1939.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Middle Ages (AD 476 to 1454): AD 1263

Time Travel Methods

Time Rifts: —My guess is that I stepped into a space-time warp.

Themes

Language Difficulties: —The man did speak a queer Latin.
Technology and Science from the Future: modern astronomy

Groupings

Unknown (periodical): June 1940

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 1939 ⋙ to Paris, AD 1263. Note: Gerald.