The End of Everything, with M. John Harrison

From the first page of The End of Everything, we readers understand that in M. John Harrison's latest novel, the end of the world as we know it is perhaps the least of our problems.

For while society in Harrison's, quote, wrong UK has clearly broken down, the collapse has been accompanied, possibly brought on by, the arrival of a strange, possibly alien entity, the iGetty.

To avoid having to use the word possibly again, let's talk about what we do know.

Philip Tennant is a beach scavenger who stumbles upon an artefact, the term used for the strange, slippery, shapeshifting objects that seem to be a product of, or possibly, damn it, a by-product of the eye-getty.

The end of everything follows Tennant, and later his Aunt Marnie, as first one then the other try to rid themselves of this artefact, for money or just for their own sanity, as it develops into something increasingly human, perversely familiar to them both.

All very weird then, all very M. John Harrison.

The End of Everything is not a book that one should seek to understand.

Just like the iGetty itself, it works between the planes of consciousness.

It is, rather, a book that one should both absorb and be absorbed into, letting the sinister imagery and warping sentences work their magic.

And when this happens, what emerges is a portrait, fractured and through a glass darkly, of course, of the devastation of climate change, of the perils of AI, of the ruins of capitalism, of the farcical self-harm of Brexit, and of much else besides.

I'm John Harrison.

Welcome back to the Shakespeare and Company podcast.