M John Harrison Becomes Oldest Booker Prize Winner for Sci-Fi Novel

M John Harrison, the 81-year-old author known for his work in speculative fiction, has become the oldest recipient of the Booker Prize for fiction. His 13th novel, The End of Everything, also holds the distinction of being the first science fiction book to win the award in the prize’s 58-year history. W ith his twinkling eyes and silver ponytail, M John Harrison doesn’t seem anything like his 81 years. The M stands for Michael, Mike to his friends. Which is almost as long as Harrison has been writing. “It’s interesting,” he replies, when asked if he feels vindicated, “that something that has an SF-adjacent feel can be regarded as a serious book and given the Booker prize, the End of Everything is the first sci-fi novel to have won the prize in its 58-year history. More neatly bearded Gandalf – it will surprise no one that, in his youth, Harrison read The Lord of the Rings every year for a decade, it is a bit like having coffee with a cheerier. Whether he likes it or not, Harrison is hailed as a titan of literary science fiction. As well as China Miéville today, and more surprisingly the Sex and the City star, and last year’s Booker judge, Sarah Jessica Parker, his fans have included giants such as the late Ursula K Le Guin and Iain Banks. According to it is a triumph of obfuscation. “I could explain some of it to you,” the author, Tantalisingly. “But no, I don’t want to. As critics have pointed out, The End of Everything deliberately resists definition. Road movie, science fiction and fantasy – even “a seaside novel”, he describes it as a mix of gothic horror. One thing it is not, Harrison is clear, is a dystopia, but rather a post-disaster novel in the tradition of early JG Ballard or John Wyndham. But he wanted to play with the conventions; he didn’t want the reader to know more than the characters. “It would be ordinary sci-fi,” he says, “if you were told it was the triffids.”.

Reflecting on the milestone, Harrison noted the significance of an SF-adjacent work receiving such recognition, stating that he has long rejected the constraints of literary genre. Despite being a veteran writer, he remains humble about his career, which includes winning the 2020 Goldsmiths prize for The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again and serving as a Booker judge in 2022. My problem has always been that I don’t believe in genre. Then move back slightly from the edge, my rule has always been push it as far as it will go. According to and then I looked at it again and thought, ‘Oh my God, there are so many ambiguities packed into that one word,’” he, With glee.

The End of Everything is a product of 15 years of writing, during which time the author felt real-world developments like AI, the refugee crisis, Brexit, and environmental collapse began to overtake his narrative. Describing the process of pushing his creative boundaries at 80, Harrison remarked that he decided to push the story over the cliff to see what would result. He aims to present the epistemological and explanatory collapse that occurs when societies lose their foundation. Which is fitting given that the novel is about – among many things – what happens when non-human intelligence takes over, our interview is delayed because of wifi issues. With real-world events overtaking him, the End of Everything took around 15 years to write. So he put what he had written away in a drawer and in 2015 “cannibalised” it for a short story called The Crisis. He was struck by what felt like the worst indigestion of his life. “I thought, ‘That’ll teach you to down two glasses of red wine and eat pizza before performing, during a reading of the story at an event in east London. He realised it was the blueprint for a whole novel. “I was like, ‘Wow, when he returned to The Crisis.

Set in a future Kent coastal town, the book explores a disintegrating Britain in the wake of an alien invasion. The invaders, referred to as the iGhettis, are described as tall bursts of light—a name Harrison chose for its layers of ambiguity, referencing everything from extreme wealth and technology to Freud. The iGhettis are a play on “I get it” (explanation), “I get stuff” (capitalism), Getty (extreme wealth), Apple (tech), I (Freud). “I wrote it down and I thought, ‘This is cheap.

The novel’s origins trace back to the 2007-8 financial crisis, which initially fueled Harrison’s creative rage. The project was temporarily shelved before he cannibalized sections of it for a short story titled The Crisis. A personal health scare—a heart attack just before his 70th birthday—eventually served as the catalyst for expanding that story into a full-length novel.

Born in 1945 in Rugby, Warwickshire, Harrison grew up in the shadow of the second world war. His childhood was influenced by an unusual library of trash novels hidden in a wardrobe, which he described as an extraordinary education for his imagination. Following his father’s death when he was 13, Harrison eventually pursued a writing career, taking on various roles including clerk and stable groom while couch-surfing in west London. And the family lived on an estate of modern houses built for postwar key workers, his father was an engineer.

Now living in rural Shropshire with his partner, writer and editor Cath Phillips, Harrison continues to work on new concepts using Moleskine notebooks. Despite his critical success, he remains blunt about the state of the world, suggesting that humanity is dream-walking into a desperate situation. While he views his work as a warning, he acknowledges that the novelist also has the responsibility to entertain.

As he enters what he calls his late stage, Harrison has moved toward a more mellow outlook regarding the publishing industry. Though his novel ends on what he terms a positive note, he maintains that he feels no hope for humanity. His primary ambition, held since he began writing in 1965, remains the dismantling of divisions between literary genres.