I’m barely awake on a rainy October Tuesday morning. My office is a chaotic mess and Tracey Thorn is singing about the mess of life while my temporary tinnitus plays along. There’s a suitcase on the floor, a pile of laundry for ironing in a basket and I’m drinking coffee to get my brain going for the recording of this morning’s podcast with Gary and our special guest.  We’re going to discuss Margaret Atwood’s new collection of essays, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, a book that provides a personal and not especially interesting view of science fiction. It’s not a bad book at all, but it felt like reading cotton wool. It left me feeling cloth-headed, and I’m not entirely sure why she wrote it, or why we’re interested in it. Perhaps the podcast will answer those questions.  If the recording works – we’re combining phone and Skype for the first time and the audio quality might be variable – it should be interesting.

And as the rain comes down I have to do all sorts of bits and pieces.  Work on the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is progressing well. The first twenty-four writers have been approached about their stories, and a remaining seven or so should be, either later today or tomorrow. I have had to omit Peter Straub’s wonderful “The Ballad of Ballard and Sandrine”, from Conjunctions, which I’d hoped to include but wasn’t available for contractual reasons. You should read it, if you can. That means I should meet my goal of having chosen the stories, contacted everyone, and finalised the contents as much as possible before leaving for World Fantasy.  I’ll be able to manage a lot of the process while away, and then can assemble the manuscript on my return home in early November. Progress!

We’re also off to see Steely Dan tonight. They’re touring with Steve Winwood and, while the timing is awful, I’m looking forward to it.  The rest of the day is getting ready for that, trip prep and working! Busy. Or at least my mind is.

We had podcast-fail yesterday. I put it down to my having had a late night but, for almost the first time, Gary and I didn’t really have much to talk about that was to do with science fiction. I can’t imagine this will continue. We’ll have another bash at it later today, I suspect. And, if that doesn’t work, will release one of the Reno interviews into the wild.

It does touch on a practical seasonal issue confronting us, though. Over the past three weeks we’ve submerged ourselves in the topic of the best of the year process. It was interesting, if occasionally troubling, and it’s fairly well covered. We need something else. And yet, it’s October. Mid-October. This is the time when the “end of the year” process begins for us. I’m busily finalizing the table of contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and I just had the first contact from my editor at Locus about the recommended reading list. The next three months will be about nothing BUT the best of the year. I’m not sure how we’re going to stop that leaking through into the podcast. We shall see, though.

I’ve been thinking a little about episode 68 of the Coode Street Podcast, where amongst other things Gary, Ian and I discuss the subject of “buzz”.  As sometimes happens with podcasts, we talked around it as much as we talked about it, but I realise now that I didn’t really discuss clearly what I mean by it, or how I recognise it.

For me, I get the impression that there is buzz around someone or something when a number of unconnected positive mentions of a book come to my attention. This could be a good review on a website, a positive tweet or two, some anticipatory comments on a podcast.  It’s when the profile of something rises about the background noise or chatter that’s happening in media, social or otherwise, to the point where I become aware of it, and become aware of it in a positive sense.

An example of this is Christopher Priest’s The Islanders. Now, I know I said on the podcast that Priest generally doesn’t get much buzz, but this book is getting some. I’m pretty sure I discussed it with Paul Cornell and Al Reynolds at Worldcon. I noticed Ian McDonald tweet about it yesterday. Strange Horizons reviewed it and Adam Roberts commented (having previously reviewed it).  People are talking about it and it’s getting terrific reviews.

That’s buzz.  I don’t know if it’s the kind of buzz that adds up to sales, but it’s there.  I suspect it’s the kind of thing that drives marketing departments to distraction, primarily because it’s organic and difficult to control.

Oh, and a quick personal PS: I continue to struggle with a virus that has been kicking my ass since last week. I’m upright, but only just, so comms are slower than usual.