Ben Rosenbaum, the great new sf writer whose story, "The Ant King" is one of the finest pieces ever published by the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (and with whom I'm currently collaborating on a story called "True Names"), has just released his story, Embracing the New, which Asimov's Magazine published this year, under a Creative Commons license.
The Bereft worked in the new mines, carving the green stone from the cliff face. Their fur had been shaved, because of the heat. Many of them had bloody claws, torn by the stone. Vru tried to look away. He had rarely seen so many Bereft. Their bodies were muscular, powerful… and naked of Ghennungs. It was horrible, yet there was something about those empty expanses of skin that called to him, like a field of untrodden snow.
The green stone glittered, embedded in the gray rock. Khancriterquee had been yelling at the foreman all day. Why use the idiot Bereft? They understood enough to be useful in the older mines, with the older gray stone. But this wonderful new green stone, in which so much detail would be possible — the perfect stone for gods, won from the Godless — was difficult to extract, and they were incapable of learning to do it. They had ruined every large piece so far.
"They are useless! Useless!" Khancriterquee screamed at the foreman. "Why could you not get real people?"
