10 Nov 2026, 03:55 AM

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After years on the margins, Harrison’s win for this resonantly disturbing dystopia brings the visionary writer the recognition he deservesM John Harrison becomes first science fiction author to win the Booker prizeA Booker prize for M John Harrison, at 81 the oldest ever winner, symbolises an extraordinary 60-year journey from the margins into the limelight, without ever compromising on a literary vision that remains deeply weird and unique. The End of Everything is baffling, unnerving, confusing – very purposefully so. It follows two lost souls on the Kent coastline, beachcomber Phillip and his artist aunt Marnie, decades after alien entities called the iGhetti have leaked into our world and triggered a slow-motion social collapse. The City of London is a battle zone; strange biological “artefacts” are washing up from the sea; people are unpredictably affected by episodes of psychic rupture that they call, with classic British understatement, a “bad patch”.But in the midst of catastrophe, what can one do but try to keep calm and carry on? In the real world, we’re currently supposed to be gathering our government-mandated three-day stockpile, though we’re not sure for what emergency – take your pick. And you can take your pick as to what the iGhetti might symbolise – late-stage capitalism? We are told they became more forceful in the 1980s, and cluster around the financial district. Brexit? In this novel, the continent does indeed appear to be cut off from England. Climate degradation? AI? The artefact that Phillip pulls out of the sea, hoping to sell it on the black market, shows the mimicry and uncanny self-actualisation of a large language model. Continue reading...

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