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

The 81-year-old’s postapocalyptic novel The End of Everything takes home the £50,000 award Guardian fiction editor Justine Jordan on M John Harrison’s win: A visionary writer gets the recognition he deserves Eighty-one-year-old M John Harrison has won the Booker prize for The End of Everything , a postapocalyptic novel set on a near-future Kent coast, becoming the oldest winner in the award’s history.

Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said that while plenty of previous winners had dabbled in science fiction, Harrison’s was “the first Booker winner to have emerged from the bona fide SF world”. She…