Written by Gillian Polack | 29 July 2011

Satima asked me for an account of my voyages, since they're all terribly speculative. I'm going to cheat, however, and give you an account of the wet and cold part of my travels. I'm writing this in Montpellier and the warmth is soaking me in contentment. It was a very wet trip until now. London was the driest part, which came as a surprise. What did I do in London, and why is it so important to Satima that I report on it for Specusphere?

I arrived at an unholy hour on 29 June and made it to Sloane Square in plenty of time to walk round the square, quite lost, three times, sporting my Canberra showbags (this was my answer to London's exclusive shops and the fact that my sense of style couldn't compete). Eventually I found my way to the Antelope, where the British Science Fiction Association bought me cider and listened politely to me reading and asked me many questions.

I knew I was with people I liked when someone cried from the back 'name and shame' when I was commenting on bad approaches to history by a well-known fiction writer (if Vector writes up the interview, names will probably be named there, so I shan't repeat myself here) – one thing I love about British SF is the very robust approach to criticism. There were no personal attacks on any writer, not that night and not during the masterclass (of which more shortly) but there was a great deal of close critical attention and discussion of what writers do and how they do it. This was what marked the BSFA meeting, and why I strongly recommend you drop in on one if you're in London. It wasn't about me, but about the genre and exploring it. My guestliness was a vehicle. The room was full of humour, intellect and goodwill. They're a lovely mob and I wish I could export them, en masse, to Canberra.

My day ended up quite long, as the BSFA folks bought me dinner, afterwards. It was a very nice welcome to Britain. I don't know how much sense I made after a 26 hour flight and an impossibly long day, but I had a fabulous time.

The fabulosity of time continued the next day. It really did feel like a few days removed from ordinary reality, full of thought and entertainment, liberally seasoned with new friends and alcohol.

That British Science Fiction Foundation Masterclass is something very special. Halfway through I realised that quite a few of the participants were frequent offenders, travelling quite a fair way to attend it, year after year. A few were like me, PhD students or university teachers. It is the best in-service training conceivable. While the focus was on science fiction, the critical tools we carried away will work for all speculative literature and, in fact, most genre literature of any variety.

We did close analysis of themes, close readings of text, broad views, narrow views, alternate views. It reminded me of the various ways of looking at Torah I was taught when I was a teen. One can understand texts, one can reconcile texts, one can react emotionally, and intellectually, and within the genre and without the genre and in a thousand ways. The masterclass opened doors and allowed us to see many rooms beyond and many other doors, still to be opened.

The teachers were an excellent choice. Claire Brialey, Paul McAuley and Mark Bould had very different minds and very different approaches. Watching how they taught gave us options for our own teaching. Claire tends to ask a lot of questions and then see where our arguments lead us; Mark lectures and shows what the cutting edge is doing and then drags us there with him; Paul offers a theoretically old-fashioned literary approach. I say 'theoretically' because he's not offering literary theory, but the approach of a working writer who knows his stuff exceptionally well. From the outside, the approaches looked straightforward, but, like the difference between describing Paul's approach and actually experiencing it, the classes had an enormous dynamic that took us all in new directions.

I was extraordinarily fortunate after those first few days. While I went on to do some Medieval stuff (both for my current novel and because I am a Medievalist and had a paper to deliver at the International Medieval Congress) I also managed to meet up with a whole bunch of writers. This meant that I talked through a lot of what we discussed in both the masterclass and at the BSFA meeting with the people who are at the coalface.

I was struck that genre ceases to matter for quite a few writers. It looms large in the minds of many critics, and of course our perception of it informs where books go on shelves, but Chaz Brenchley and Elizabeth Chadwick think about their writing from very similar directions, and Aliette de Bodard and Brian Wainwright both look for an emotional link with a character to find a way into worlds that are essentially alien. Underneath the genre markings, good novelists share a great deal.

I'll leave you to ponder that, while I explore the Middle Ages and work on my time travel novel. I have earned my week of summer in the south of France. I've also learned a lot about writing and I want to see if I can make some of what I've learned work for my own writing. In effect, I've come full circle since my first night in London. It was about me, then about everyone else, and now it's about me again. That's the big thing I learned in London – what good critics say can transform writing.

NOTE: Thanks to the ACT Government and the University of Western Australia, without whom none of this would have been possible.