There was a time when a com­pa­ny like Volk­swa­gen could com­mis­sion var­i­ous lumi­nar­ies to write let­ters to the future, then pub­lish them in Time mag­a­zine as part of an ad cam­paign. In fact, that time was­n’t so very long ago: it was the year 1988, to be pre­cise, when no less an opti­mistic (or opti­misti­cal­ly bleak?) nov­el­ist than Kurt Von­negut was still active. At some point between writ­ing Blue­beard and Hocus Pocus, he com­posed a mis­sive direct­ed toward human­i­ty a cen­tu­ry hence (in 2088), which you can read even in this rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly year of 2024 here.

Von­negut begins with quo­ta­tions from Shake­speare and St. John the Divine, explain­ing that “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.” In his time, we knew full well “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. Who could wax wise with so much bad news pour­ing in?”

Of spe­cial import to him was the rev­e­la­tion 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.” Earth may have giv­en rise to human­i­ty, but it has not the capac­i­ty to care whether we or any oth­er par­tic­u­lar life form sur­vives on it. And so we must take it upon our­selves to ensure our own well-being, which requires liv­ing in accor­dance with what Von­negut calls “Nature’s stern but rea­son­able sur­ren­der terms”:

1. Reduce and sta­bi­lize your pop­u­la­tion.
2. Stop poi­son­ing the air, the water, and the top­soil.
3. Stop prepar­ing for war and start deal­ing with your real prob­lems.
4. Teach your kids, and your­selves, too, while you’re at it, how to inhab­it a small plan­et with­out help­ing to kill it.
5. Stop think­ing sci­ence can fix any­thing if you give it a tril­lion dol­lars.
6. Stop think­ing your grand­chil­dren will be OK no mat­ter how waste­ful or destruc­tive you may be, since they can go to a nice new plan­et on a space­ship. That is real­ly mean, and stu­pid.
7. And so on. Or else.

You can eas­i­ly imag­ine these words uttered by Von­negut him­self, but how about by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch? There’s no need to imag­ine: you can sim­ply watch the new video above, tak­en from a recent Let­ters Live event. Cum­ber­batch is one of the series’ star read­ers, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly inter­pret­ed let­ters by Nick Cave, Albert Camus, Alan Tur­ing, and oth­ers onstage. This advice to the “ladies and gen­tle­men of AD 2088” has proven to be one of his hits; you can hear anoth­er, ear­li­er read­ing here. Per­haps Von­negut’s words bear repeat­ing, but then, he always showed a sharp aware­ness that human­i­ty has few qual­i­ties as per­sis­tent as the inabil­i­ty to lis­ten.

Relat­ed con­tent:

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Watch James Earl Jones Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter Urg­ing High-School Stu­dents to Cre­ate Art & “Make Your Soul Grow”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch & Ian McK­ellen Read Epic Let­ters Writ­ten by Kurt Von­negut

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read­ing Let­ters by Kurt Von­negut, Alan Tur­ing, Sol LeWitt, and Oth­ers

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for the sweep­ing fan­ta­sy land­scapes of Lord of The Rings and The Hob­bit. Apart from being a cel­e­brat­ed author, the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of Anglo-Sax­on was also a devot­ed father who dot­ed on his chil­dren.

In 1920, a few short years after Tolkien returned from World War I, he began an endear­ing fam­i­ly Christ­mas tra­di­tion that would con­tin­ue for the next 23 years. After the birth of his first­born son, John, Tolkien began to write his four chil­dren let­ters from Father Christ­mas. These North Pole tales chiefly con­cern Father Christ­mas’ strug­gles against the north’s bat-rid­ing gob­lins, as well as the mis­chie­vous hijinks of his helper, North Polar Bear. An adept illus­tra­tor whose orig­i­nal draw­ings accom­pa­nied many of his writ­ings (see his book cov­er designs for Lord of the Rings), Tolkien includ­ed with many of his Christ­mas let­ters a set of charm­ing pic­tures.

The many let­ters were even­tu­al­ly col­lect­ed in a beau­ti­ful vol­ume called Let­ters From Father Christ­mas. Thanks to the good work of Let­ters of Note, we bring to you a sam­ple let­ter from 1925:

Cliff House

Top of the World

Near the North Pole

Xmas 1925

My dear boys,

I am dread­ful­ly busy this year — it makes my hand more shaky than ever when I think of it — and not very rich. In fact, awful things have been hap­pen­ing, and some of the presents have got spoilt and I haven’t got the North Polar Bear to help me and I have had to move house just before Christ­mas, so you can imag­ine what a state every­thing is in, and you will see why I have a new address, and why I can only write one let­ter between you both. It all hap­pened like this: one very windy day last Novem­ber my hood blew off and went and stuck on the top of the North Pole. I told him not to, but the N.P.Bear climbed up to the thin top to get it down — and he did. The pole broke in the mid­dle and fell on the roof of my house, and the N.P.Bear fell through the hole it made into the din­ing room with my hood over his nose, and all the snow fell off the roof into the house and melt­ed and put out all the fires and ran down into the cel­lars where I was col­lect­ing this year’s presents, and the N.P.Bear’s leg got bro­ken. He is well again now, but I was so cross with him that he says he won’t try to help me again. I expect his tem­per is hurt, and will be mend­ed by next Christ­mas. I send you a pic­ture of the acci­dent, and of my new house on the cliffs above the N.P. (with beau­ti­ful cel­lars in the cliffs). If John can’t read my old shaky writ­ing (1925 years old) he must get his father to. When is Michael going to learn to read, and write his own let­ters to me? Lots of love to you both and Christo­pher, whose name is rather like mine.

That’s all. Good­bye.

Father Christ­mas

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

Explore Rarely-Seen Art by J. R. R. Tolkien in a New Web Site Cre­at­ed by the Tolkien Estate

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Gertrude Stein con­sid­ered her­self an exper­i­men­tal writer and wrote what The Poet­ry Foun­da­tion calls “dense poems and fic­tions, often devoid of plot or dia­logue,” with the result being that “com­mer­cial pub­lish­ers slight­ed her exper­i­men­tal writ­ings and crit­ics dis­missed them as incom­pre­hen­si­ble.” Take, for exam­ple, what hap­pened when Stein sent a man­u­script to Alfred C. Fifield, a Lon­don-based pub­lish­er, and received a rejec­tion let­ter mock­ing her prose in return. Accord­ing to Let­ters of Note, the man­u­script in ques­tion was pub­lished many years lat­er as her mod­ernist nov­el, The Mak­ing of Amer­i­cans: Being a His­to­ry of a Fam­i­ly’s Progress (1925). You can hear Stein read­ing a selec­tion from the nov­el below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gertrude Stein Sends a “Review” of The Great Gats­by to F. Scott Fitzger­ald (1925)

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Alice B. Tok­las Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)