Due to a bizarrely over-sensitive "terrornoia", the Livonia Holiday Inn was uncomfortable with our panelists and attendees talking about war in an open area during our convention. The discussion panel about "Warfare in Science Fiction" was located in an open area across from Alison Looney's Stuffed Animal Tea Party. So Dave Klecha came up with the idea to substitute "tea party" for "war". The panelists, John Scalzi, M. Keaton, Jeff Beeler, and Barbara Trumpinski-Roberts, picked up the idea and ran with it, substituting "going to the bathroom" for "dying", "sugar" for "ammo", "serve" for "shoot", "cup" for "target" and so forth. Here's
a link to a complete wave-file of the panel recorded by Tobias Buckell, which turned out to be both hilarious and seriously insightful about war in science fiction.
Scalzi: "Some books that are just plain tea porn. And tea porn is all tea all the time."
Beeler: "... published by Baen Books."
Keaton: "I, sadly, basically write tea porn, to cater to the hard core drinkers. But I need groceries, and if peddling tea is what you gotta do... and I enjoy it!"
Scalzi: "There's nothing wrong with tea porn, it's just another type of literature."
Keaton: "As long as you don't think you've invented the wheel, and accept that hello, this is a quick-chug-and-go, drop the book and you're done..."
Scalzi: "You're gonna quaff your tea, get on with your life."
Scalzi: "So much of tea serving is really automatic. You spend time thinking about serving tea you're going to get tea served to you first."
Keaton: "The stuff is scalding hot, you have no time to hesitate so it's a pure muscle memory."
Scalzi: "Right, exactly, and again it's a question of we have not conditioned people to deal with the fact that they have served tea and how do we deal with it."
Keaton: "The one thing we can comfortably say in closing is that tea drinking will always be in science fiction because if it
has leaves, it
will steep."
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