DUCHAMP VERSUS EINSTEIN — Science Versus Art

If you haven’t heard of Albert Einstein, go to the back of the class. If you haven’t heard of Marcel Duchamp, he was an Einstein contemporary who went out of his way to create works of art that, how shall we say, stood out? In 1919, he painted a moustache on the Mona Lisa - not the real one, thankfully, and if you thought Tracey Emin’s Unmade Bed was bizarre, then clearly you haven’t heard of Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel. Best not to mention his Urinal.

When he wasn’t creating bizarre works of art, Duchamp was playing chess, and he was rather good at it. Playing at a very high level, he usually lost more games than he won, but in 1932 he beat Eugene Znosko-Borovsky into second place at the Paris Championship. Znosko-Borovsky had won the same tournament two years earlier, and once beat Capablanca, so Duchamp was a class act. He also played a mean game of correspondence chess.

Albert Einstein on the other hand was a club player, and although an enthusiast, not a particularly strong one. So, had they met, there is little or no doubt who would have been victorious, all things being equal. But what if all things were not equal? What for example if a time traveller arranged a match for the two men in some weird continuum with a change in the rules?

That is the subject of Duchamp Versus Einstein, a short but snappy work that smacks of authenticity because one of its authors is a science fiction writer and the other is a chess player of Duchamp’s calibre, not to mention a mathematician. This is not the first time Messrs Hinz and Ilfeld have worked together. but it is their first major collaboration.

Christopher Hinz was born in 1951 and has a career in comics and science fiction dating back to the 1980s. Etan Ilfeld is a generation younger, an American ex-patriate who came to the UK to play in the Mind Sports Olympiad and ended up running it. He is also the owner of Watkins Books, based in London’s West End. The London book launch of Duchamp Versus Einstein was held last night at the nearby Goldsboro Books, where if you have £1300 to spare you can pick up a first edition of the second Harry Potter novel. Christopher Hinz couldn’t cross the Atlantic but sent a message; the New York book launch was held last month, and featured readings by both authors.

You can check out Duchamp Versus Einstein at Angry Robot Books, and while you’re at it, take a gander at Watkins.