The perks of reading Asimov's

I was a fairly big sf&f reader in high school, but in college I decided I no longer had time to regularly read long novels, so I switched to short stories and got myself a subscription to the magazine Asimov's. I've discovered one of the cooler features of the magazine is the the "reflections" essay, which presents information on all kinds of random subjects. I suppose in theory it's supposed to be the sort of stuff a science fiction writer might work into a story, but almost anything can fit under that heading. One particularly memorable one talked about the author's fantasy of becoming Pope Sixtus the Sixth (there have been five popes named Sixtus thus far).

The most recent issue (September 2007, featuring "The Good Ship Lollypop") contains a piece that makes the entire issue worth buying just for it. Really, go out and buy it. It discusses ancient Assyrian texts in which kings brag about their slaughters of enemy citizens. The writer connects it with the present situation in Iraq and imagines Saddam reading these texts and idolizing the kings, but it has other applications. Readings of such texts are the best antidote to the popular delusion that human nature became suddenly depraved in the 20th century. They're also good context for Biblical accounts of divinely ordered slaughters: it makes clear that the reason for the slaughters was not because God really had a good reason for them, nor, on the other hand, because the Israelites were especially depraved, but rather simply because that was how war was done at the time.

Tags: science fiction, Asimov's, Saddam, Bible, Old Testament