“Anhedonia," a new short story by British SF author and critic Adam Roberts

“Anhedonia,” a new short story written by British SF author and critic Adam Roberts, has been published in editor Mike Ashley's new anthology, The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF (July 2009). Here’s a description of the story, taken from Roberts' website:

Nearish-future humans, on a Mars base, encounter aliens, who in turn promise to gift mankind the wherewithal to travel ftl to the stars. But the aliens have taken away the crew's ability to experience pleasure, and they're an elusive, weird set of entities, so it's not clear why they have done so, or why they're prepared to hand over this galaxy-opening tech, or what their hidden agenda might be.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, anhedonia is
"a psychological condition characterized by inability to experience pleasure in normally pleasurable acts."

The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF contains five new stories and 20 reprinted stories. Contributors include Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, Eric Brown, Paul DiFillipo, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, and Robert Silverberg.