Rosa Montero: "Novels are born from the unconscious, where dreams are also born."

Novels are born from the same place where dreams do, reflects the Spanish writer Rosa Montero (1951) during her visit to the International Book Fair (FIL) in Lima , where she presented the latest volume of her science fiction series , which this time explores identity and the passage of time , two of her great obsessions.

"All my novels are born from the unconscious; they're like dreams you dream with your eyes open. You don't choose the stories you tell; rather, the stories choose you and come to you with the same apparent autonomy with which dreams come at night," the author expresses in an interview.

The Madrid-born writer presented Animales difícils in the Peruvian capital, which concludes the science fiction series starring the android detective Bruna Husky and which, despite being set in the 22nd century, deals with its traditional concerns, such as the passage of time.

"The meaning of writing is the search for the meaning of existence , and you always write in the same way. I don't care whether I go to the 22nd century with Bruna, or to the 12th century, I'm talking about the same things, I always try to shed light on my obsessions and I write with the same expressive, stylistic ambition," says Montero.

In this sense, he admits that he is tempted to answer "if we can talk about another topic," when journalists ask him why he always writes about death and the passing of the years, because "living is getting rid of time."

" You have to write the books that you need and that emerge . Suddenly, one day, an idea appears in your head. You don't know why it excites you, why it disturbs you and fills your head and heart so much that it doesn't fit in your chest, and you say to yourself: 'I have to tell this, I have to share it.' And that's when the novel is born," he explains about his creative process.

Difficult Animals is the finale of the series that includes Tears of Rain, The Weight of the Heart , and Times of Hate , and addresses the unconsciousness with which we are creating "an indifferent God," as the writer defines superintelligence.

"When I started thinking about this fourth novel , I didn't know it would be the last, because these books are 'stand-alone.' All I wanted was to create a world I could visit whenever I wanted," he says of the series.

However, she assures that, as soon as she began to develop the story, she realized that it was the last , because it goes through a double struggle, since Bruna must solve a mystery as in the rest of the volumes, but in this one she explores her new identity, one of the great problems of the human being, according to the author.

" This double struggle makes the novel very epic and of enormous scope . So, I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to write another Bruna Husky novel of such scope, and to write a worse novel, well, the truth is that I think it should have been finished now, so I'm delighted," she maintains.

Despite being a woman of letters, Montero says she has always been passionate about science and technology, as she has demonstrated in other works, and expresses concern about the future that artificial intelligence poses.

" Artificial intelligence can do absolutely anything to us . It can manipulate us into puppets and dictate what we want to think, feel, buy, vote, and it's already happening. It's terrifying, and nothing is being done to regulate it," he says.

As part of the scientific community, the author emphasizes the importance of including neurological rights in the human rights charter , so that this future superintelligence does not turn against humans themselves.

" I want to leave a little bit of hope . That future isn't a done deal; we're making it today, and we can control it... We have to reach an agreement; we still have time to control the brutal power of AI, but we have to get moving. For now, we're not doing anything we can to control it," he adds.

But despite the dizzying technological advances, Montero assures that in the future there will also be room for art , as it is something intrinsic to the human race.

" As long as we remain human, we will need art . As the French abstract painter Georges Braque said, art is a wound made light. A phrase so beautiful, so lovely that I have it tattooed on my leg. Without art, what are we going to do with life's wounds without trying to turn them into light so that they don't destroy us?" he asks.