#The Chessmen of Mars

[gameraboy2]

The Chessmen of Mars, illustration by James Allen St. John, 1922

[chernobog13]

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS' THE CHESSMEN OF MARS THROUGH THE YEARS

John Allen St. John

Gino D'Achille

Roy Krenkel Jr.

Michael Whelan

Joe Jusko

[geekynerfherder]

'Headless Body Moved' by Frank Frazetta.

Interior illustration from the 'Thuvia, Maid Of Mars' / The Chessmen Of Mars' omnibus edition paperback, books 4 and 5 of the 'Barsoom / Mars' series written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, published in 1973 by Nelson Doubleday.

[craigfernandez]

[ungoliantschilde]

some Drawings by Frank Frazetta.

[balu8]

Frank Frazetta

[pulpsandcomics2]

The Chessmen of Mars by Gino D'Achille

[gloriousmonsters]

*voice of, apparently, the average living barsoom fan* yeah man the movie was super accurate. the way they made john carter a gruff disillusioned guy with a dead wife backstory? EXACTLY like him being a happy dude with no memory of his past who loves fighting. And the way they accurately grafted most of the plot beats from the first half of princess of mars onto the Terrifying New Weapon plot from fighting man of mars but made the villains of gods of mars responsible, except now they're a magic-y alien race with nothing in common with the therns and a bit in common power-wise with the episodic villains of thuvia, maid of mars? incredible attention to detail. can't believe it didn't get sequels. we could've seen mastermind grafted onto chessmen except it's still the fault of the therns somehow. what could've been...

[rjalker]

I click a random librivox audio with an interesting sounding title (The Chessmen of Mars).

it's by edgar rice burroughs.

are you kidding me.

[signalwatch]

Mars Read: The Chessmen of Mars (1922) http://dlvr.it/T8zkpJ

[audiobooks535]

audiobook : The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

[gameraboy2]

"Chessmen of Mars" Argosy All-Story Weekly, February 18, 1922 Cover by P. J. Monahan

[chernobog13]

Michael Whelan's cover painting for Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Chessmen of Mars, the fifth novel in the Barsoom series.

[geekynerfherder]

'The Banth' by Frank Frazetta.

Interior illustration from the 'Thuvia, Maid Of Mars' / The Chessmen Of Mars' omnibus edition paperback, books 4 and 5 of the 'Barsoom / Mars' series written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, published in 1973 by Nelson Doubleday.

[dragonsaffron]

My favorite example of this has to be Chessmen of Mars, which has a prologue wherein the author is visited by his astrally-projecting martian uncle, who proceeds to tell him a story about this cool thing that happened on Mars a little while ago, which is then described entirely in third-person.

"Why does this 19th Century novel have such a boring protagonist" well, for a lot of reasons, really, but one of the big ones is that you're possibly getting the protagonist and the narrator mixed up.

A lot of 19th Century literary critics had this weird hate-boner for omniscient narrators – stories would straight up get criticised as "unrealistic" on the grounds that it was unlikely anyone could have witnessed their events in the manner described, like some sort of proto-CinemaSins bullshit – so authors who didn't want to write their stories from the first-person perspective of one of the participating characters would often go to great lengths to contrive for there to be a Dude present to witness and narrate the story's events.

It's important to understand that the Dude is the viewpoint character, but not the protagonist. His function is to witness stuff, and he only directly participates in the narrative to the extent that's necessary to explain to the satisfaction of persnickety critics why he's present and how he got there. Giving him a personality would defeat the purpose!

(Though lowbrow fiction was unlikely to encounter such criticisms, the device of the elaborately justified diegetic narrator was often present there as well, and was sometimes parodied to great effect – for example, by having the story narrated by a very unlikely party, such as a sapient insect, or by a party whose continued presence is justified in increasingly comical ways.)

[pulpsandcomics2]

Chessmen of Mars by Frank Frazetta