‘The End of Everything’

The End of Everything (2026) is a literary science fiction novel by M John Harrison. It’s been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize.

In the story, Phillip Tennent lives by the sea in an impoverished future Britain. Communication with mainland Europe has broken down. New life forms exist in the sea. He ekes out a living by scavenging washed up objects and strange lifeforms from the sea shore.

The novel is a post-Brexit story, much like The Wall (2019) by John Lanchester, and Doggerland (2020) by Ben Smith. These three novels involve the sea, an isolated Britain, and a post-apocalyptic future.

The End of Everything is a work of literary science fiction. Where genre science fiction demands logical rules and a payoff with an explanation, literary science fiction keeps the world building relatively vague, focusing instead on the language and experience of the characters within that world.

In The End of Everything the narrative inhabits a dreamlike state. Part magical realism, part surreal metaphor. The lack of specificity enhances its mystery. It allows the story to operate as a cypher, a metaphor that’s open to interpretation. The world of the story operates in what feels like a surreal purgatory, a twilight world with sea dwelling lifeforms that have undergone a magical transformation, a rebirth even.