M John Harrison Wins Booker Prize at 81 With AI-Tinged Apocalyptic Novel "The End of Everything"

M John Harrison, 81, has won the Booker Prize, becoming the oldest person to take the award. The prize carries £50,000, about $67,000, and the lift in sales and public profile that usually follows. It was announced on Monday at a ceremony in London.

The winning book is "The End of Everything," Harrison's 13th novel. It was his first appearance on a Booker shortlist, something critics have described as long overdue. He beat five other shortlisted writers: Marlon James, Douglas Stuart, Elizabeth Strout, Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry. Their books ranged from a queer epic set in 1980s Kingston to a campus satire set in present-day London. The judges worked through 163 entries over a year-long process to arrive at that shortlist of six.

The novel is short, 198 pages, and set in the near future on a windswept stretch of the English coast. Its central figures are Phillip Tennent, a beachcomber, and his aunt Marnie, who has dementia and a free-spirited streak. Mysterious objects known as the iGhetti have invaded the coast. An unnamed catastrophe has pushed the characters into a murky post-apocalyptic world in which the European continent appears to have vanished. The iGhetti can imitate humans, and their arrival evokes encounters with artificial intelligence.

Mary Beard, chair of the judges, told a press conference the book came out ahead for its "extraordinary expert writing" and its "huge ambition." She said one main point of the novel is that if, or when, such an apocalypse comes, it will be incomprehensible. In a statement she called it "the politics of now seen through the lens of the future." In dream-like episodes, the book alludes to Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the intrusion of technology into daily life. As is often true of Harrison's work, which has been called genre-bending and singular, atmosphere matters more than plot, and his elliptical, poetic style deepens the sense of gradual collapse.

Harrison said current affairs supplied the themes and the satire. He framed the question driving the book this way: what happens when all our expectations and explanations of the world become an ongoing disaster, yet we still have to make a life? He has said before that the 2008 financial crisis inspired him, and that he wanted to write about the "failure of explanation in society."

Born in Rugby, England, in 1945, Harrison is best known within science fiction circles. His credits include the Viriconium saga, published between 1971 and 1984, and "Light" (2002), the first volume of the Kefahuchi Tract trilogy. Both are regarded as major works of the genre. He is little known to the wider public, and when he made the shortlist, The Telegraph wrote: "Finally, he's getting his due."

Artificial intelligence was on the judges' minds throughout the selection. Beard said concerns about AI were "pretty high on this book," pointing to Phillip's artefact, whose sentience and nature the novel leaves unclear. In an earlier interview with AFP, she said the panel will have to think about AI's role in publishing and writing in coming years, adding: "You can't bury your head in the sand about that." Other judges had spoken of wanting a shortlist of books that were distinctly human and could not be replicated by AI.

The prize honors the best long-form fiction in English by writers of any nationality, published in the past year. Last year's winner was British-Hungarian author David Szalay, for "Flesh." With Harrison's win, judges say AI will inevitably remain on the agenda in future deliberations.