Not Enough Octopusses (WisCon 32 panel)

"Not Enough Octopusses," ("Octopodes", as one of the panelists pedantically insisted--). This was one of the curious cases in which the person who proposed the panel didn't get put on it, although she was available (which may have been due to the apparent pre-con meltdown of the programming database--). The panelists, Mia Molvray, Doselle Young, Tom La Farge, and Ruthanna Emrys, put together an entertaining panel on "alien aliens," which was well worth while, but some of audience members would have liked to hear a bit more on the possibilities of octopodes as resident aliens, specifically. As someone said, "the more we learn about them, the weirder and cooler they are." The panel did generate a very useful question out of this panel which recurred in different form throughout the weekend. "Does your plot really REQUIRE an alien (elf, king, type of villain, etc.)?"