M John Harrison becomes first science fiction author to win the Booker prize

M John Harrison, 81, won the 2026 Booker prize for The End of Everything, becoming the oldest winner and the first author from the science-fiction world to take the award. His short, 198-page novel unfolds on the Kent coast decades after an unexplained catastrophe. Phillip Tennent and his elderly aunt Marnie try to survive as mysterious, shape-shifting beings called the iGhetti appear, their origins and motives left unclear. The judges chose the book unanimously, praising its unsettling effect, dry humour and unexpected note of optimism. They saw its central idea as a world-ending disaster people cannot comprehend, where familiar rules no longer apply - and as a way to examine present-day politics through a future setting.

Harrison has published fiction for six decades and has long been admired in speculative fiction, while remaining less recognized in mainstream literary circles. He has argued that well-written science fiction should be considered literary fiction. The novel’s aliens also evoke the displacement caused by gentrification on England’s south-east coast; Harrison links its confusion to declining rationality in the age of Trumpism and the internet. The Booker win brings major recognition to a writer whose earlier honors include the Arthur C Clarke award and the Goldsmiths prize. The £50,000 prize is also the first Booker win for Serpent’s Tail, the independent publisher behind the novel.