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Chess Variant Quotations: Burroughs

E. R. Burroughs is most well known for his stories of Tarzan the apeman, but he also wrote a series of books with adventures that took place on the planet Mars. The fifth one of this series, the Chessman of Mars, mentions a chess variant. Here a quote from the beginning of the book. The author gets a visitor, who will be telling him the story as it appears in the book.

For a moment he fingered the chessmen idly. "We have a game on Mars similar to chess," he said, "very similar.

And there is a race there that plays it grimly with men and naked swords. We call the game jetan. It is played on a board like yours, except that there are a hundred squares and we use twenty pieces on each side. I never see it played without thinking of Tara of Helium and what befell her among the chessmen of Barsoom. Would you like to hear her story?"

See also the webpage on Jetan.
Webpage made by Hans Bodlaender, based upon an email of Alberto Monteiro.
WWW page created: November 20, 2000.