“Damaging characteristics.”
There is a moment in this essay that has stuck with me.
Clarke is getting one of his books signed.
“‘The Country Towards Moon’s Rising’ was transformed into ‘The Country Beyond Moon’s Rising.'”
I tried to get into Dunsany shortly after reading that.
The sort of writer I would ask other writers about when I met them.
I returned to Dunsany after that and got another cheap paperback - Dunsany’s Wonder Tales.
But again I bounced off.
And I couldn’t say why.
Dunsany grabbed me as a character himself, but I couldn’t really bring his work to life.
Maybe this will change.
Not Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, surely?
Then I remembered that bit in Fowler about Dunsany being a chess champion.
It’s whimsical, but it’s serious.
And it’s sinister AF.
Was this, finally, a way in?
Dunsany came up with his variant in 1942, and there is something of wartime to it.
In Dunsany’s chess, Black has all the normal pieces in all the normal places.
But White has 32 pawns, arranged in four lines.
Only Black’s pawns have the two-step option on their first move.
White wins by checkmating Black, but Black wins by removing all 32 pawns.
Even before I sat down to play this myself: cor.
What a brilliantly horrible set-up.
But here it’s something else.
It’s chittering and scrabbling, order versus a kind of chaos.
It’s The Flood from Halo.
No wonder a similar variant is called Horde Chess.
Reader: I have now played Dunsany’s chess.
Several games, as Black and White.
It is a monster.
I started as Black, which I thought would give me the edge of familiarity.
But even before you’ve moved it’s wretched.
You’re not looking across at your noble opposites anymore, no more battlefield as mirror.
Every pawn I took just allowed another to ooze forward into its place.
It was like being stalked by a small ocean.
About halfway through my first game as Black I gave in to panic.
I started throwing my own pieces away for a reason I didn’t really understand myself.
I just felt like I had to do something to be out of this grim, oppressive game.
Knights and bishops, my queen, even my beloved rooks all went into the waves.
Playing as White was, somehow, even worse.
I imagine it’s a bit like maneuvering a delivery lorry after learning to drive in an Isetta.
I simply had no idea how big I was anymore.
My pieces didn’t feel like pieces, but the tendrils and frills of a single, hideous entity.
I kept bumping into myself, blocking myself, getting bits of myself stuck on the scenery.
I am a bad but enthusiastic chess player.
I love a game.
But I have never played games as wild and disturbing as these.
There is fear here and horror.
I keep coming back to that visit with Clarke and Dunsany, the autographing, the quill.
