The panel is not dead. If Gwenda actually explains what she means by such a ridiculous statement, I’ll explain why she is wrong.
For those of you who do not fritter away countless days of your lives going to science fiction conventions: a panel is a discussion consisting of a few people (usually about five) sitting behind a desk in front of an audience nattering on about something for (usually) an hour.
As someone who only attended 1/2 panel and a reading due to various circumstances — up 1/2 panel from last year by the way — I think she may just mean that cons are great even without the panels. Just a guess.
It’s dead, dead, deadity dead dead!* (Unless it has Maureen McHugh or Karen Joy Fowler on it… and a few other people I’m too tired to list.) I just think the panel needs a rest for a bit, so that it can evolve into a more revolutionary, less frustrating form.
Possible involving the evolution of the SuperModerator, who renders all panels great.
*You realize the whole fun of saying something is dead is that the thing being pronounced dead never really is, right? See: the novel, the short story, books, god (er), jelly shoes. Etc.
Except I’m pretty sure that jelly shoes are dead. But Elvis is not. Nor feminism (right on sister!). Haven’t panels simply mutated into blogs, & lists, & forums (oh my!)?
Anon,
And the other half is having other people vehemently insist that whatever it is absolutely is NOT dead!
5:45AM in Madison about to get a plane back to NYC. Very, very, very tired.
Sleep would be nice, wouldn’t it? Safe trip, dear.
I think we should put together a panel at next year’s WisCon about whether the panel is dead or not.
Or at least a panel about how to have an effective panel.
And there was me thinking that “The Panel is Dead!” was some new pop group Gwenda had discovered.
Still, Jed is right, we should discuss these things. I recommend we found a new literary movement within SF that will write fiction based on the assumptions that the panel is indeed dead. Then there will be a massive reaction against it and panels will suddenly become much better.
That’s a great idea, Jed. Let’s do it! you can put in suggestions for panels for wiscon 30 here. Do it!
The panel has been lit on fire, blown up, qrushed into bitty pieces, and then blown up again into smithereens!
But it lives on!