‘We are dream-walking into a desperate situation’: the Booker prize winner on his sci-fi alien invasion wakeup call
He is a sci-fi titan but M John Harrison has just exploded into the mainstream – with The End of Everything, an apocalyptic novel set on the Kent coast. Does he really think we have no hope left? With his twinkling eyes…
Source: The Guardian ·
He is a sci-fi titan but M John Harrison has just exploded into the mainstream – with The End of Everything, an apocalyptic novel set on the Kent coast. Does he really think we have no hope left? With 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. And last night he became the oldest author to win the Booker prize for fiction, for his 13th novel, The End of Everything. Our interview is delayed because of wifi issues, which is fitting given that the novel is about – among many things – what happens when non-human intelligence takes over. The End of Everything is the first sci-fi novel to have won the prize in its 58-year history, 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…