Free Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 by Wyrm Publishing

will have to adapt my whole physiology, I will have to gestate the embryos inside me.”
    Liu is silent for so long that I give up my view of the stars and turn to face him. He is staring at me. “What exactly do you have on your to-do list that ranks more important than this?”
    I pause. “If they made the smallest mistake, if even one gene region is tainted with pathogenic code, I will die.”
    “Since when were you more afraid of dying than of not having a purpose?” Liu’s lips curl in an expression I now know to indicate amusement. “How human of you.”
    The words fall on me like a blow. He is right — only two days ago I was contemplating suicide. I fall back on an older argument. “An ambassador would be properly trained for such a task, which I am not.”
    “You thought you couldn’t guide the Legacy through her transition, but you could,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that your own society marked you a castaway. It doesn’t matter what life you had before. You are capable of things you haven’t even dreamt of yet, and it would honor us to be the ones who help you discover those things.”
    I go very still. I do not dare to hope this could be true. It violates a paradigm so deep-seated in my psyche that I did not even suspect its existence until now.
    Liu says, “Humans aren’t in the habit of changing their given names. Surnames, though, were originally descriptive — you were named for your profession, or the village you came from, or your parentage.” He pauses, the silence almost livid in the air. “You don’t have a surname.”
    If I was frozen before, now I am a comet lost between the stars — even my molecules feel stuck. I am sure I could not look away if I tried. I know Liu knows how Sheekah naming works.
    Liu smiles, though somehow the expression seems grave, as if he understands exactly what it is he’s doing. “I think we’ll call you Ohree Brightbearer, if the sound of it suits you.”
    “Yes,” I say, hardly able to breathe. “Yes, it suits me fine.”
    I am named, and there is work ahead of me.
    About the Author
    Gwendolyn Clare has a BA in Ecology, a BS in Geophysics, and is currently working to add another acronym to her collection. Away from the laboratory, she enjoys practicing martial arts, adopting feral cats, and writing speculative fiction. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Asimov’s, Ekaterina Sedia’s Bewere the Night anthology, Daily Science Fiction, and Abyss and Apex, among others.

The Future Sounds of Yesterday: A Sequence of Synthesizers in Science Fiction
    Christopher Bahn
    Music and technology have always gone hand in hand — and the explosive flowering of music as an art form in the last century is also the story of the explosive growth of technology. Indeed, people have recognized the potential of computers to revolutionize music since before there even were computers. In 1842, writing about the theoretical uses of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, computer-science progenitor Ada Lovelace enthused that once the fundamentals of harmony and musical composition were properly understood, “the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.” (And there’s something wondrous about a woman at the dawn of the Victorian Age dreaming of something now commonplace with electronic groups such as Daft Punk.) Like computing itself, electronic music began as the arcane province of technology specialists and slowly became a truly democratic force that put the power to change the world — or at least soundtrack it — in the hands of everyone. And because cutting-edge technology is particularly good at sounding alien and futuristic, it’s meshed perfectly with science fiction as a subject matter. Below is a brief history of the ways those three elements — the music, the tech, and the SF themes — have intersected and influenced each other, in various media, over time.
    The Day The