M. John Harrison told The i Paper he didn't sleep at all on Monday night after winning the Booker Prize for *The End of Everything*.

"I just lay there in bed thinking, 'I just won the Booker prize'," the 81-year-old said with a laugh, describing how he staggered to the stage when judge chair Mary Beard announced his name, thinking "this is a really strange state to be in."

The i Paper notes Harrison has published 13 novels across a career spanning more than 60 years, and says taking in the victory "is going to be quite a long term process for me."

According to The i Paper, the Booker has never been bestowed on a science fiction author before — a snobbery that arguably explains why Harrison had, in its words, "spent 50 years toiling away in the mines without all that much recognition."

The Guardian's editorial calls the result seemingly impossible, noting that fans have hailed it as a victory for a long-marginalised genre, even as Harrison himself said "writing science fiction is the last thing I want to do" and insisted "I really hate categories."

The Guardian argues genre boundaries now belong to the past, declaring that today's polycrisis demands a polyphony of genres.

BookTrib reports that Harrison's dystopian satire won a unanimous vote from the judges despite being the shortest finalist on the shortlist at just 198 pages — and that it came as a dark horse, with many amateur reviewers expecting Marlon James' *The Disappearers* to win.

The outlet lists the rest of the shortlist as Luke Kennard's *Black Bag*, Rebecca Perry's *May We Feed the King*, Elizabeth Strout's *The Things We Never Say*, and Douglas Stuart's *John of John*.

Harrison, now the oldest-ever Booker recipient, joins recent winners David Szalay and Douglas Stuart, with the £50,000 prize in hand.

Frontline describes *The End of Everything* as set along the Kent coastline after an alien invasion by the iGhetti, translucent columns of light whose disasters are grimly labelled "bad patches."

The magazine reads the book as being about the flow of information itself — the captured "biological gadget" mimics and learns human behaviour much like large language models — and praises Harrison's refusal of classic sci-fi world-building exposition.

The i Paper adds that Harrison sees the iGhetti as a screen on which survivors project their fears, with the novel satirising climate breakdown, gentrification, AI, late capitalism and Brexit.

The i Paper quotes Harrison saying that at 81 age "brings on a certain recklessness": "There is a point where you say, 'It doesn't matter what I do now, because I'm going to die soon. I can do what I like now.'"

He also credits a heart attack a decade ago — suffered mid-reading of a story born of "pure political rage" at austerity, he told The i Paper — with motivating him to get fit and "really start doing your job."

Frontline frames the Booker at 81 as a belated but welcome acknowledgment of his subversive, genre-busting gifts.

Harrison told The i Paper he doesn't feel finished: "I've got close to what I want to say, but I haven't run out of thinking of new ways to say it."

On the literary culture wars, he said he isn't sure whether men are overlooked in publishing, suggesting young writers doing something different "would be more organic" than male-only presses.

The Guardian's editorial leaves the question open — whether the win marks a new frontier for publishing and literary awards remains to be seen — but predicts no shortage of fiction confronting a bleakly precarious future.