If there are writers with the gift of opportunity, Leonardo Cano (Murcia, 47 years old) has shown that he is one of them. Seven years after debuting with The middle agesa novel with a generational vocation that was a finalist for the Premier Roman de Chambéry award for the best first European novel, returns with This is the core (Gutenberg Galaxy), a science fiction novel. Although matured during those seven years, the book cannot be more punctual in its appointment with the present: in the novel, a man who has contributed to developing the most important algorithm of the near future dives into his memories before transferring his consciousness to the digital medium, which is the way in which humanity has achieved a kind of immortality, a “definitive life.” Artificial intelligence, programs based on neural networks, metaverse, Neuralink, brain implants, the gender question, the political reaction of those who have been “postponed” by technology… all of this comes together in a book that has been awarded the LV International Prize from Novela Ciudad de Barbastro and that walks a path of scientific fiction that, surely, many writers will follow in the coming years. A novel that, however, keeps a core (pun intended) behind that shell of science fiction: a thriller in which we begin to understand how its protagonist is actually looking for something very human.
Ask. Isn’t seven years a long time between novels? What have you been doing all this time?
Answer. Write (laughs). And found a creative writing school in Murcia. Renaissance Club.
P. And that name?
R. I founded it with Miguel Ángel Hernández. We are Michelangelo and Leonardo, it couldn’t be called anything else (laughs). But yeah, I think I’m a slow writer. I like to mature ideas a lot.
P. During that time there are writers who publish many books.
R. Well, when I see the albums, movies and books of authors who release many a year, I think that they must have little work behind them (laughs). But if I see that there are six years behind it, I think it will be great. It’s a prejudice, of course. But that’s how I am: I work a lot before writing, I take a lot of notes, I reflect on them and then I work from drafts. That is, I like to look at a draft, read it, think about how to improve it, make another version and another version and another version, until I believe that what reaches the reader is the best possible version.
P. Is that like a painting, which is not finished, but abandoned, or does it really reach a point where it says: I am satisfied?
R. I think it was Borges who said that to publish was to stop correcting. I correct until the end, but it is true that there comes a point where you think that it is almost done, and what Oscar Wilde said happens to you: I spent the entire afternoon adding a comma that I removed the next day. Then, it’s finished.
P. The novel could not be more current. Did you add themes or did you have it in mind from the beginning?
R. It may seem strange, but I had it in my head from the beginning. Eight years ago, artificial intelligence was something I was obsessed with. I remember that in the first draft there was one thing that was GPT, natural language processing. When I wrote it I thought: I don’t know whether to remove it because people won’t understand it. He also talked about Geoffrey Hinton, the father of AI… and now they have given him the Nobel Prize.
P. What science fiction references have you used for the novel?
R. When I write I stay away from other novels that may deal with the same topic as me. I already know that, as Eugenio D’Ors said, everything that is not tradition is plagiarism, but I have tried to keep it away from obvious influences.
P. No science fiction, then?
R. There is some movie, of course, like Herlike Ex Machinasome novel like the Zero K by Don Delillo, but in reality what I have done is read a lot of articles about deep learningon transhumanism, the newsletter from MIT… I discovered that I had a second cousin who was an expert in artificial intelligence with whom I started talking and I saw that I could more or less understand all that. But in terms of literary references, in reality my treatment is that of my usual suspects: Michelle Houellebecq, Don Delillo, Virginie Despentes, Marguerite Duras… those types of people who talk about what worries them, about what they suspect is behind the life that is seen with the naked eye.
P. Do you think that literature asks us to go for a bit of this aspect of science fiction? Should writers scrutinize this rapidly changing present?
R. The future looks more and more like science fiction. The things we can think of happening five or ten years from now are… magic. There is a phrase by the scientist Edward Wilson that says that our problem is that we have paleolithic sentiments, medieval institutions and technology of gods. The technology we have now, in 20 years will be paleolithic.
P. Are you comfortable with the dystopian label?
R. No, I’m always optimistic. My novel goes a little in another direction, but I am optimistic about technology and about the future. Things change. There are things that we see with concern, but perhaps the people who are locked in their house within the metaverse are… happy. In the end, the dystopia is within oneself, it is how one knows how to deal with technological advances and the future. If 30 years ago you said that today there are people who live at home watching series, ordering food at home and writing on the networks, many would have said that the present is dystopian.
P. Paying with bitcoins.
R. Bitcoins are a gift that God has given to nerds for all the hardships they have suffered in their lives.
P. A lot of technology, but the core of the novel has a lot to do with the relationship between the protagonist and his daughter.
R. There is remorse on the part of the character, who has put aside his work as a father in order to achieve a prodigious achievement for humanity. It is a topic that I am passionate about. I remember reading the statements of Stephen Hawking’s first wife, in which she said that he had been very cruel to her. The word he used was cruel. And I thought, surely there will be a lot of men and women in the world who have been terrible human beings, but who have achieved things that make us better. It’s a contradiction… disturbing. And you have to exploit it.