I am tempted to try this one just because it has won a major award, and I'm a huge sci fi reader.

However, I suspect I will be one of the one star or DNF reviewers - I haven't enjoyed any of the other M John Harrison books I tried. The ideas are usually interesting but the execution tends towards weirdness and not much plot. Great at creating atmosphere but not so good at holding my attention. Maybe I will give it a go...

Haven't heard the term "abstract" applied to a plot, unless you mean highly metaphorical? Genuinely curious in case it's something I'd like. What's an example, without giving too much away?

I'd say it's a deserved winner. I'm not usually someone who reads many booker prize nominees but I happened to have read I think at least 6/7 of the long list and I would say flowery plot and writing is common to getting nominated so I can't complain about that. John of John being far worse for this. I possibly if I had to pick my favourite I would have gone Helen of Nowhere or Switzy but that's simply I'm often very drawn into the type of story Fitzcarraldo publish, (Switzy not being Fitzcarraldo but of a similar vibe).

I think the key for me is sci fi being recoqnised as an important category in media creation. It's a genre that doesn't often get the big awards despite in my view often having some of the best character development and emotional and moral plot lines. Obviously TNG with the late great Patrick Stewart being a huge cultural influence for those reasons.

I have read The End of Everything and other M. John Harrison books, both conventional rock-climbing memoir and way out space opera.

IMHO if you like Harrison's prose and the atmosphere, keep going. Even if the plot is hard to make out. IHMO, If you are reading M. John Harrison for the plot, then you're in the wrong book.

I can see how some would be bored or baffled by this book, or even dislike it intensely. If you didn't like his other books, then this one is more in that vein, and in some ways more so. If so, you probably won't enjoy this one either.

He has said "A good ground rule for writing in any genre is: start with a form, then ask what it's afraid of" (1) He is deconstructing, not constructing, stories.

The End of Everything has an anti-plot, is set in anti-places and contains at least character that is anti-person.

If it's not for you then that's perfectly OK. I don't pretend to understand why it won an award, but I liked it. Probably. It's hard to be sure. And that's something out of the ordinary.

There are though, themes or images that are of a particular time and place (2026, South coast of England). Most notably Boats taking people across the Channel to some-place uncertain but "not here". If you are somewhere else then that image might not mean anything to you, but the resonance with current UK political discourse must be deliberate. And it helps to "get" it.

In the same way that his last book The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (2020) was about the fallout, the curdled nostalgia and communication failures of the post-Brexit moment. (2) Maybe. If it's "about" anything other than aquatic humanoids, dodgy jobs and fairy tales, IDK.

1) https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jul/20/m-john-harri...

2) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/19/the-sunken-lan...

> Harrison pierced the veil between "genre" and "general literary fiction"

Indeed, as did the much-missed Iain Banks. The Guardian's headline is tiresomely reductive, although of course that's no more than one expects from the press. I would suggest that Harrison's two best-known books are The Course of the Heart and Climbers, both of which fall squarely into the category of "general literary fiction".

Feel like Ishiguro got close, with Never Let Me Go making the shortlist and Klara and the Sun making the longlist, but neither of those feel like they had the gravitas to win it.

Curious what books you think should've potentially clinched it?

I haven't read the novel, but going by the Wikipedia article you could argue that just because it features astronauts on the ISS doesn't yet make it science fiction - as long as nothing unusual happens to the astronauts, what goes on on the ISS is no more science fiction than what an airline pilot does in their day-to-day job.

Even the author seems to agree (also from Wikipedia): "In an interview, Harvey stated that her goal was to write the novel as a "space pastoral", focusing on realism and the beauty of space rather than the speculative nature of science fiction."