oh lord, where to begin. rydra_wong has a bunch of links posts, if you have some time to spend. Basically, in a nutshell, a small group of science fiction/fantasy authors and editors have been getting into a dust-up with online fandom. It started with SFF writer Elizabeth Bear responding at her blog to a critique of one of her novels that was posted at a reader's personal blog, and things went downhill very badly. Anyone you ask is going to give you a slightly biased version of events; my own bias is that there never would have been a problem if Bear and her friends and associates had been able to accept criticism of the book (and themselves) gracefully, but that was not how it went, and now we've got things like Patrick Nielson Hayden (editor at Tor Books) deleting his Livejournal and his wife posting thinly veiled threats against the careers of anyone who's criticized him.