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ladies and gentlemen of 2088 a.d.
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Edited and designed by Heidi Scammon This book was produced for Katherine Hughes’s Type III class at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Spring 2017. No portion of this publication may be reproduced by any means [electronic, mechanical, recording, photocopying or otherwise] without the explicit written permission of the author.
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Ladies and Gentlemen of 2088 a.d. Kurt Vonnegut’s letter to the future and nasa’s Mars report. Heidi Scammon
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It has been suggested that you might welcome words of wisdom from the past, and that several of us in the twentieth century should send you some. Do you know this advice from Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: ‘This above all: to thine own self be true’? Or what about these instructions from St. John the Divine: ‘Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment has come’? The best advice from my own era for you or for just about anybody anytime, I guess, is a prayer first used by alcoholics who hoped to never take a drink gain: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.’
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The currently known resources on Mars are massive, including extensive quantities of water and CO2 and therefore C, H2 and O2 for life support, fuels and plastics and much else.
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Our century hasn’t been as free with words of wisdom as some others, I think, because we were the first to get reliable information about the human situation: how many of us there were, how much food we could raise or gather, how fast we were reproducing, what made us sick, what made us die, how much damage we were doing to the air and water and topsoil on which most life forms depended, how violent and heartless nature can be, and on and on.
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Who could wax wise with so much bad news
pouring in?
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For me, the most paralyzing news was that Nature was no conservationist. It needed no help from us in taking the planet apart and putting it back together some different way, not necessarily improving it from the viewpoint of living things. It set fire to forests with lightning bolts. It paved vast tracts of arable land with lava, which could no more support life than big - city parking lots. It had in the past sent glaciers down from the North Pole to
grind up
major portions of Asia,
Europe, and North America. Nor was there
to think
any reason
that it wouldn’t do that again someday.
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At this
very
moment it is turning African farms to
deserts, and can be expected to
shower down
heave up
tidal waves or
white-hot boulders from outer space at
any time. It has not only exterminated exquisitely evolved species in a twinkling, but
and drained oceans
drowned continents as well. If people think
their friend, then they sure don’t
Nature is
need an n e
y. em
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Yes, and as you people a hundred years from now must know full well, and as your grandchildren will know even better: Natu
re
is ruthless when it
comes to matching the quantity of life in any given place at any given time to the quantity of nourishment available. So what have you and Nat
ure done
about overpopulation?
Back here in
1988, we were seeing ourselves as a new sort of
glacier, warm - bl
oo
d
ed and clever,
unstoppable,
about to gobble up everything and then make lo v e ― a nd
then
double
in size g a ai
n
.
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O n
s e c o n d
t h o u g h t ,
a I am not sure I could bear to hear wh t
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Na ture may have done about too you and
sm many p ople for too all a food su . e pply
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y az And here is a cr idea I would like to try on you: Is it possible that we aimed rockets with hydrogen bomb warheads at each other, all set to go, in order to take our minds off the tu re ca be deeper problem ― how cruelly Na n expected to tre t us, a
N a t
u
r e
i n
b e i n g
b t h e
y
N a t u r
e
- a n d - b
,
? y
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Now that we can discuss the mess we are in with some precision, I hope you have stopped choosing abysmally ignorant optimists for positions of leader p. shi
They were
useful
only so long as no-
body had a clue as to w h a t l ly re a
the p
ast
goi n g
wa s
on ― during
seven million years or so. In
my time they have been catastrophic as heads of sophisticated institutions
w i t h t o
r e a l o . d
w o r k
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The sort of leaders we those who promise
ulti
Nature through perseve we do
, but th
right now age and intelligence to
w o r l d what a p p e a r s s t e r n
b u t
r e
s u r r e n d e r
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need now
are not
imate victory over
erance in living as
hose with the cour-
o present to the to be Nature’s a s o n a b l e t e r m s :
1. Reduce and s tab 20
2. S t o p poisoning the topsoil. 3. S t o p preparing
ing with your re
4. T e a c h your kid
while you’re at it
p l a n e t withou
b il ize your populatio 21
g the air, the wate , an r
war for and start dea
eal problems.
ds, and yourselves, to
t, how to inhabit a sm
ut helping to kill it.
5. S t o p thinkin fix anything if y lion dollars. 6. S t o p thinkin children will be how wasteful or may be, since th nice new planet T h a t i s rea s 22
ng science can you give it a tril23
ng your grande O K no matter destructive you hey can go to a t on a spaceship ally m e a n , p i d
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7. And
O
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so on.
Or else.
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Am I too pessimistic hundred years
c about life a from now?
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Maybe I have spent too much time with scientists and not enough time with speech writers for politicians. For all I know, even bag ladies and bag gentlemen will have their own personal helicopters or rocket belts in A.D. 2088. Nobody will have to leave home to go to work or school, or even stop watching television.
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Everybody will sit around all day punching the keys of computer terminals connected to everything there is, and sip orange drink through straws like the astronauts. Cheers, Kurt Vonnegut
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Book designed and printed by Heidi Scammon in Boston, MA at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Spring 2017. Printed on Mohawk Superfine and clear acetate at 8 by 5.2 inches. Text includes Ladies and Gentlemen of 2088 a.d. by Kurt Vonnegut in the typeface Zocalo and Frontier In-Situ Resource Utilization for Enabling Sustained Human Presence on Mars by nasa in the typeface Klavika.