"Midnight by the Morphy Watch" is a

horror fiction Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J ...

story about

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

, written by American author

Fritz Leiber Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. ( ; December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright, and chess expert. With writers such as Robert ...

. It was first published in '' If'', in July 1974. The story is one of a series of works by Leiber whose settings are places that he inhabited, and whose protagonists are based on himself.Poetry of Darkness: the Horror Fiction of Fritz Leiber
by Michael E. Stamm ; in ''Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II'', edited by Darrell Schweitzer, published December 1988 by

Wildside Press Wildside Press is an independent publishing company in Cabin John, Maryland, United States. It was founded in 1989 by John Betancourt and Kim Betancourt. While the press was originally conceived as a publisher of speculative fiction in both trade ...

Synopsis

When amateur chessplayer Stirf Ritter-Rebil (a "quasi-anagrammatic" version of "Fritz Reuter Leiber") purchases the custom-made

pocket watch A pocket watch (or pocketwatch) is a watch that is made to be carried in a pocket, as opposed to a watch, wristwatch, which is strapped to the wrist. They were the most common type of watch from their development in the 16th century until wr ...

which once belonged to Paul Morphy, his own chess skills are supernaturally boosted — but he also begins to experience side effects.

Reception

"Midnight by the Morphy Watch" was a finalist for the 1975

Hugo Award for Best Novelette The Hugo Award for Best Novelette is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The novelette award is available for works of fiction of ...

,1975 Hugo Awards
at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved July 22, 2018 and was ranked ninth in the 1975

Locus Award for Best Short Story The Locus Award for Best Short Story is one of a series of Locus Awards given every year by ''Locus Magazine''. Awards presented in a given year are for works published in the previous calendar year. Originally known as the Locus Award for Best Sho ...

.1975 Locus Awards
at the Science Fiction Awards Database; retrieved July 22, 2018 Mike Ashley called it "chilling".Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-fiction Magazines from 1970 to 1980
by Mike Ashley, published 2007 by Liverpool University Press, 2007

References

Works originally published in If (magazine) Works by Fritz Leiber Short stories about chess {{Fritz Leiber