BURN THE WITCH! “Swarm Cyber-Shaming” In The SFWA. “Given the prevalence of academic jargon from Cultural Studies or other Studies departments in their comments, I imagine a goodly number of the criticizers on the SWFA discussion boards and the broader Internet are either university instructors or possessors of an advanced degree from one of those programs. For many individuals under the age of forty who have been through the university system, mau-mauing may seem normative, or at least unremarkable. . . . The virtually thoughtless piling on is perhaps the most appalling. So many of the criticizers whose comments I have come across admit they haven’t even read the columns in question. Once the ball of shunning and shaming got rolling, hundreds of onlookers, alerted by social media, jumped on the bandwagon, attracted by the enticing glow of participating in shared moral outrage.” It’s a high-tech lynching.

If this account arouses your sympathies, why not buy a book from Mike Resnick and/or Barry Malzberg? And I suspect that the real “radioactive aura” is more likely to attach to the SFWA and the journals in question.