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?"