We live in a time when the quality of a book is often judged by its adaptability to audiovisual formats, or we learn about stories through the films or series that have been made about them. That's what happened to me with Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus I knew Mary Shelley's novel from its first film adaptation in 1931, with Boris Karloff playing the creature, or from the hilarious version by Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks in 1974. Since Guillermo del Toro released a new, captivating film this year, I finally decided to read Mary Shelley's original story and decide for myself whether I prefer the book or the movie (I need to find out if Mr. Noriguis's Morgan Freeman has already trademarked this line; I'm sure he has).

The day all the laws of nature that guide behavior have been discovered, human beings will no longer be responsible for their actions. This is the fear that made a 19th-century classic like Fyodor Dostoevsky –an engineer by training– strongly criticized the rationalization in Notes from Underground (in Catalan, by Angle Editorial, translated by Miquel Cabal). Published in 1864 in Russian, it is a novel about a frustrated and furious civil servant who dedicates himself to plotting impossible revenge and, at the same time, offers a harsh portrait of the challenges of the time and the future prospects of a society in crisis. Among the merits of Dostoevsky's book is a visionary note: the prediction of the algorithms that today decide what we read, what we listen to, or even with whom we should have sexual relations. Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky feared that all human actions would end up being mathematically computed: "Everything will be calculated and established with such precision that there will be no more action and adventure in the world."

Aristotle said that Plato was his friend, but that the truth was a greater friend. I don't see it at all clear, because friends respond, the truth is not. In this fragile life of ours, having a friend is having someone who stays by your side when you make mistakes and who, knowing each and every one of your defects, stays with you. If a friend calls me, I answer. If, for example, Carme Fenoll invites me to talk about the importance of reading in Almenar, I go; and if she wants me to debate the myth of Frankenstein at the UPC with Elia Barceló, author ofThe Frankenstein effect, "I leave everything".