6233 Mulholland
LA 28/Cal.
3. ii. 63
Dear Dr. Lederberg,
Thank you for your very friendly letter and the fascinating paper that accompanied it.  The future will be alarming, yes, but certainly not dull.  Let's hope that the gentlemen who control our destiny will allow us to have a future -- not just a nuclear rotisserie or a long-drawn demographic chaos.  (I was briefly in India last year and came away abysmally depressed.  A net increase of nine millions a year; an under-employment rate of 100 millions; a literacy rate of about 20% -- and virtually no capital.  What can these poor devils do to hoist themselves up, as people to a slightly more human level of physical and mental life?)
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I hope very much that I may have an opportunity of meeting you before long.  Let me know if you ever come this way.  I myself expect to go north at the end of March for a lecture at Eugene, Oregon.  But I hope to stop on the way up or down at Berkeley.  Will you be at Stanford at that time?  If so I would[?] like to look in on you there.
Sincerely,
Aldous Huxley.