To create When It Changed, editor Geoff Ryman (author of the multiple award-winning novel Air), set up science fiction authors with scientists, and had them develop stories together. The awesome list of contributors includes Paul Cornell, Justin Robson, Liz Williams, Kit Reed, Adam Roberts, Gwyneth Jones, Ken MacLeod and Ryman himself. According to the publisher's Facebook page:

When It Changed is an attempt to put authors and scientists back in touch with each other, to re-introduce research ideas with literary concerns, and to re-forge the alloy that once made SF great. Composed collaboratively – through a series of visits and conversations between leading authors and practicing scientists – it offers fictionalised glimpses into the far corners of current research fields, be they in nanotechnology, invertebrate physiology, particle physics, or software archaeology. From Planck's Length (the smallest indivisible distance) to Plankton (potential saviours of the Earth's ecosystem), from virtual encounters between Witgenstein and Turing, to future civilisations torn asunder by different readings of the Standard Model, together these stories represent a literary 'experiment' in the true sense of the word, and endeavour to isolate a whole new strain of the SF bug.

Ryman told the news department at Manchester University, where he's based at the University's Center for New Writing:

We wanted to go out and locate what is fresh and new in the sciences, and gives writers a chance to work with researchers to come up with different, contemporary themes. When it Changed actively extends the scientific repertoire of fiction — all fiction, because we have mainstream writers as well. But it gave some of the best SF writers I know of a chance to work closely with a scientist. Some of the ideas they've come up with are mind-blowing ... round the world particle colliders, virtual research, or suits that heal their wearers. And the scientists get to comment or explain.

The book's launch party is tomorrow, Oct. 24, in Manchester, UK. We can't wait to see a copy! Too bad it's not out in the U.S. until April 1 next year.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot of "Fulcrum," but I will mention a few of the things that were cool about it. Its main characters, Orlando and Grace, are aliens who look just human enough that they have to keep reminding everyone that they're not human. There are also some hints that their sexuality doesn't quite work the same way as ours, including a great scene involving tea.

A lot of the story's "noir" comes from two thuggish guys who hang around the Kuiper Belt station, waiting to be shot out into deep space on a probably deadly prospecting run: Jack Solo and Draco Fujima. They both have virtual-reality sex bots that follow them around, and Jack's sex-bot, Anni-mah, is a quivering masochist. She literally follows him around asking him to hurt her, and it's disturbingly creepy. But then it's only much later that Jones reveals that "A softbot sextoy (and this was why the bots had been only a passing phase on earth) inevitably reflects the owner's secret identity."

There's a lot more twisted and unsettling but fascinating stuff — including a murder mystery and a weird quasi-creature that could be the most valuable object in the universe — in "Fulcrum." [Fulcrum by Gwyneth Jones]

DeNiro's review starts out by asserting that space opera hasn't crossed over to the mainstream as much as other subgenres of science fiction have. Cormac McCarthy may have made the post-apocalyptic dystopia story respectable with The Road, but nobody's writing literary epics about "hyperactive starships."

And then DeNiro launches into his actual critique of The New Space Opera: most of the stories are actually about posthuman characters who have been modified to survive in deep space. They've given up so much of their humanity to become spaceworthy, it's made them emotionally inacessible to readers. And they're tiny, against the massive scale of galaxy-wide intrigues and thousand-year wars. (I definitely found this to be a problem with some of the stories in the volume as well, when I read it last year.) Contrast this with old-school space opera, which was comfortable putting regular old humans in charge of its starships.

But the stories fail to engage with the fact of their characters' emotional dissociation as part of the narrative. And if you're going to write alienating mini-sagas about transhumanism, DeNiro suggests, you need masterful prose instead of the merely serviceable writing in this anthology. Most of all, the anthology promises "fun," but delivers careful, hide-bound stories instead. DeNiro does pick out a few exceptions, including James Patrick Kelly's "Dividing The Sustain" and Tony Daniel's "The Valley Of The Gardens."

DeNiro's bracing critique gave rise to an interesting roundtable discussion, which he participated in, over at SF Signal, which mostly dealt with the meta-question he raised: why hasn't space opera crossed over to the mainstream the way other SF sub-genres have? Authors from the anthology tried to answer, or refute, DeNiro's question.

Kage Baker asks why space opera needs to be relevant anyway. Paul McAuley attempts to claim that Doris Lessing's Canopus In Argos series was mainstream. (It's probably the least mainstream of all her works.) Tobias Buckell cites the popularity of Star Wars as proof that space opera really is mainstream. Anthology co-editor Jonathan Strahan argues that you shouldn't think of space-opera as entrenched within the science fiction field, but rather as at the center of the SF field. Gwyneth Jones says space-opera is more versatile than people give it credit for, and it's a good vehicle for asking questions about statecraft.

In the end, though, none of them addressed DeNiro's question of whether "new" space opera has to gain its newness by jettisoning the humanity of its characters. And whether that might be part of the reason why it's not relatable for readers who aren't die-hard science fiction fans. [Rain Taxi] and [SF Signal]