M. John Harrison wins the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary award... The first science fiction writer

British author M. John Harrison won the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary award, for his post-apocalyptic novel 'The End of Everything', which deals with a post-apocalyptic world.

On the 9th (local time), the Booker Prize Foundation selected Harrison, who is considered a master of fantasy and science fiction (science fiction) genre literature, as this year's Booker Prize winner.

'The End of Everything' is set on the Kent coast in southeastern England and takes place decades in the future after an unexplained catastrophe occurred.

In the book, the main character, Philip Tennant, and his elderly aunt Marnie struggle to survive under the threat of a large, unidentified being called 'iGhetti'.

In an article he wrote for the British media Guardian last week, Harrison explained that 'The End of Everything' is a story where failure to understand disaster is itself a disaster.

The strange beings that appear in the novel were described as immigrants from another dimension, and Harrison compared this to the gentrification (a phenomenon in which natives are driven out by the influx of outsiders) taking place on the southeastern coast of England.

He explained to readers, "I wanted to convey the bewilderment and confusion felt by the characters," and that what he wanted to convey also included the problem of the breakdown of rationality caused by Trumpism and the Internet.

Harrison's award holds special meaning in many ways.

At 81 years old, he is the oldest winner in the history of the Booker Prize. This is the first time that a traditional science fiction writer has won the Booker Prize. He also served as a judge for the 2022 Booker Prize.

Gabby Wood, chairman of the Booker Prize Foundation, said that although many of the past award-winning works had some elements of science fiction, “Harrison is the first Booker Prize winner from the traditional science fiction literary world.”

At the same time, he evaluated this award as "a historic award given to a writer whose literary capabilities accumulated over decades permeate every inch of his work."

In an appearance on BBC Radio last month, Harrison said, "As a novelist and critic, I have been working to change the balance of the literary world for the past 40 to 50 years," and said, "There is no reason why a well-written science fiction work cannot be recognized as a literary work."

Mary Beard, president of this year's jury, said that 'The End of Everything' was "a novel that looks at today's politics through the lens of the future" and that it was unanimously selected as the winner by the judges.

The Guardian said that this award was a rare moment when a writer who had been on the periphery of the mainstream literary world received official recognition from the literary world, and that it was a timely award that coincided with the era of artificial intelligence (AI).

Beard thought that the 'i' in Egeti implied something digital, although he was not sure, and Wood saw the post-apocalyptic landscape depicted in the book as having large-scale language models (LLMs) scattered throughout.

Harrison, who was born in Warwickshire, England in 1945, published his first short story in 1965 and has been working steadily for over 60 years.

He received the Arthur Clark Award, a science fiction literary award, for 'Nova Swing' in 2007, and the Goldsmith Award for 'The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again' in 2020.