For more than half a century, M. John Harrison has been writing about decay and dispossession in a style that is at once restless and exacting. Often an audacious weaver of science fictions, he has also operated in a ruggedly realistic vein – though the distinction would probably strike him as bogus, a marketing position rather than useful framing.
The End of Everything occupies typical Harrison terrain, with notes of J.G. Ballard and David Lynch as well as more than a hint of Stanley Spencer’s paintings (think compost heaps and clutter). It picks up the thread of ‘The Crisis’, a short story in his 2017 collection You Should Come With Me Now, in which he imagined London’s Square Mile being taken over by iGhetti – which sounded as if they might be one of Apple’s less successful products but were in fact aliens, physically similar to stalks of rhubarb and able to ravage their surroundings.
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Now these creatures have extended their influence across the country. Cities are almost empty; militias roam the hinterland, bored and richly equipped. Ash falls like snow. Floods alternate with droughts. Roadblocks proliferate. Air travel has become impossible and the middle classes, having sold off their houses at knock-down prices and flogged their SUVs, line the docks in ‘smart casual’ attire waiting to flee.
