Mercedes Lackey Cancelled

Mercedes Lackey is a grand dame of Fantasy fiction. She's published over 140 novels, and might be one of the most prolific professional SF/F authors of all time. She's of an older generation of writers as well. Born in 1950, she's over 70 years old at the time of this publishing.

SFWA is the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. They are the trade organization that represents authors interests in the publishing industry. They host an annual conference, and at that conference also give out one of the most prestigous annual SF/F writing awards. They have also succumed to woke capture, several years back.

Yesterday, at the annual SFWA conference, Lackey was on a virtual panel. The panel was "Romancing Sci-Fi & Fantasy." Lackey praised Samuel R. Delany, a revered grandmaster of SF/F. She refered to him as "colored." The panel continued without incident.

Afterwards, SFWA removed the panel from the internet. They censured Lackey, kicked her out of the conference, and removed her from all the other panels she was scheduled for. They are having further discussions as to what to do next, including possibly re-running the full panel without Lackey.

Lackey obviously meant no harm. She is older, and likely was confused by the changing lingo, and mixed up the "colored" of her youth with the "of color" that is the standard now.

This confusion is intentional. Woke is the new cool. The whole point of rapidly changing language is to make sure that the old and out-of-touch can't keep up. That's how you can tell who's cool. It would certainly be a travisty if Lackey was still cool.

But it's spiteful and ugly to expel and shame someone for not being cool. Especially when that someone is a revered elder of your tribe. SFWA has done a disgusting thing here, and they likely won't acknowledge it for several years (if ever).

Lackey will probably be asked to grovel and beg forgiveness, and won't be readmitted into the cool kids club even if she does so. Meanwhile, the grieving and shaking cool kids continue to claim that Lackey's misstep is "illustrative of the power differentials at play in SFF," bemoaning how powerful Lackey is, and how oppressed they are. Despite the fact that they had one of the most powerful SF/F organizations in the country excommunicate a famous author in a matter of hours for a trivial mistake.

At least I can take solace in the fact that cancel culture isn't real.