The 8-volume Callisto series by Lin Carter (Dell, 1972-1978). Covers by Vincent DiFate and Ken Kelly

After Burroughs worked chess — in its Martian version of Jetan — into his John Carter series with Chessmen of Mars, it practically became a rule that all later writers of Sword & Planet fiction had to do the same. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, John Norman did it in the Gor series and Ken Bulmer (writing as Alan Burt Akers) did it in the long running Dray Prescot series. I did it too in my 5 book Talera series.

It would be surprising then if Lin Carter didn’t do it. Carter made almost his entire fiction career off following the leads of ERB and REH (Robert E. Howard). And indeed, Carter did invent his own version of chess.

In the last of his 8-book Callisto series, called Renegade of Callisto, Carter pens his own version of ERB’s Chessman of Mars. Although Carter’s main hero in this series is an earthman named Jonathan Dark (Jandar), Dark has — like John Carter before him — recruited and befriended various allies on the moon of Callisto (called Thanator by its natives).

These include Koja, a Yathoon. The Yathoon are an insectoid race and Koja is very much modeled on ERB’s Tars Tarkas, the Green man of Mars who befriends John Carter. Renegade of Callisto features Koja as its primary hero and during the story Koja must face off across a game of “Darza” against another Yathoon leader in a game to the death.

While ERB, Norman, and Bulmer created versions of chess that are generally “more” complicated than actual chess, Darza is a greatly simplified version of chess that features only 6 pieces to a side. There are two sides called The Chacas and The Imas. The appendix of Renegade describes it in some detail.

The Callisto series is listed in order below, with information on the cover artists for the volumes that I have and have shown here, all of which are from Dell.

Jandar of Callisto (1972) (Ken Kelly Cover)
Black Legion of Callisto (1972) (Vincent Di Fate cover)
Sky Pirates of Callisto (1973) (Vincent Di Fate cover)
Mad Empress of Callisto (1975) (Vincent Di Fate cover)
Mind Wizards of Callisto (1975) (Vincent Di Fate cover)
Lankar of Callisto (1975) (Vincent Di Fate cover)
Ylana of Callisto (1977) (Ken Kelly Cover)
Renegade of Callisto (1978) (Ken Kelly Cover)

See the previous installments of Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction:

The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Dray Prescot and Gor
From Zelazny to Infinity

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for Black Gate was Two Classic Fantasy Anthologies: Barbarians and Barbarians II, edited by Robert Adams.