Incredibly, panelists are hardly ever considered on the basis of fitness for participation. Years ago on the musksite I wrote up a bunch of things I heard from panelists over the years. Let's see how many I remember.
but when I was a baby writer, new to the scene, I wrote mini essays about my fitness to be a panel participant for everything I signed up for, because *there was less for anyone to google*. I *needed* to sell myself on the forms, because my track record otherwise wasn't very impressive.
Ah yes, there was the best-selling urban fantasy author who was on a panel about Lovecraft and knew so little about him that he declared that Lovecraft was from Maine and that he was anti-racist because Cthulhu ate everyone, white brown red or stripe-ed. (Yes, she said "stripe-ed.")
A self-published author of kid mysteries on a panel about magical realism was entirely unfamiliar with the subject, and asked the rest of us if invisible ink (used by the kids in their books!) was a good example of "magical realism" because it is real, but seems like magic.
The panel on zines, the moderator of which insisted on pronouncing "zighns."
Susan Casper, on a panel about the best books of the year, declared that she didn't read much anymore, and took out her knitting.
(After this panel, it was explained to me that if you did three panels at Worldcon, you'd often have your membership refunded, and Casper was Gardner Dozois's wife.)
The guy who recommended hiring a patent lawyer instead of a literary agent to better sell your books to publishers.
The panel on the crossovers between science fiction and postmodern fiction which was an hour castigating Ulysses by James Joyce, which a. is not postmodern fiction, and b. none of the panelists except me had read.
The panel on the Transformers cartoons in which two of the panelists insisted on screening a scene in which some robot died and then when the lights went back up after the snippet was over they were in TEARS and HOLDING one another.
Same panel: another panelist confused comic book writer Simon Furman with racist LAPD officer Mark Fuhrman. Not the names, the people.
Person on a panel who didn't like that I asked each panelist a question during introductions so went to sit in the audience. She jumped up more than once to explain that she had many "water brothers" that she still had sex with all the time.
The topic was the quasi-genre of slipstream.
May 7, 2025 04:31A panel on which someone recited Heinlein's three rules for publishing fiction, and the man next to her said "Yeah, well I have my own three rules!" and then recited Heinlein's three rules for publishing fiction too.
A panel on flirting in which a man stood up to denounce the practice of girlfriends borrowing sections of the Sunday newspaper just because he was looking at another section. Proper girlfriend behavior is only to read a section after he was finished with it.
And this is leaving aside all the political fits people have on panels about guns or Austrian economics or women or metrosexual snowflakes or whether China Mieville beats people up because he looks big and has a bald head etc etc.
And then there's the audiences. Holy shit, just electrify the floors of the convention center and be done with it.
the fuck are water brothers
on second thought, no, don't tell me, it will just annoy me
It's from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Water is rare on Mars, so if you share water you're basically family. Sex-having family.
I dunno why you thought "it will just annoy me!" would discourage me!
oh god once they start busting out the Stranger In a Strange Land references i start edging away with a quickness
"Water brothers"??
It's from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
The Christopher Priesthood.
