The Gentle Vultures

"The Gentle Vultures" is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in the December 1957 issue of Super-Science Fiction, and was reprinted in the 1959 collection Nine Tomorrows. The story is one of a number that Asimov wrote expressing his abhorrence of the cold war nuclear arms race, but its lightly ironic flavor has earned it more positive critical responses than those drawn by the bitter moralism of Silly Asses and Darwinian Pool Room. The Hurrians, a small, tailed, vegetarian primate species have found on their space travels that large, non-tailed omnivorous intelligent ape species always end up destroying themselves in a nuclear war. The Hurrians adopted the policy of helping to rebuild the remains of these planetary societies after their nuclear wars, while extracting tribute and genetically modifying the inhabitants into more peaceful races. They are not acting completely selflessly, either: as is discovered in the subsequent conversation with a captured human, each race "helped" in this fashion pays the Hurrians a "modest" contribution, choosing the product that this race is best at. In one case, an otherwise poor race pays in its own members, by forfeiting a set number of individuals into servitude each year. Publication: Super-Science Fiction, December 1957 Editor: W. W. Scott Cover: Kelly Freas