Well, this makes me happy. The Booker Prize has finally given science fiction a seat at the grown-ups’ literary table. M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything has become the first bona fide science fiction novel to win the prestigious award. About time!

I love science fiction. Always have. Give me an alternate universe, a dystopian future, an alien civilization, a little time travel, and I’m perfectly happy. Apparently, I don’t need to be reading about someone’s complicated family relationships in a small English village to experience great literature. No offense to small English villages.

But here’s what I find fascinating about science fiction. Beneath all the aliens, strange planets, futuristic technology, and impending apocalypse are some rather enormous psychological questions.

What makes us human? What happens when everything we understand disappears? Are we really in control of our future? What would we become if the world as we know it ended tomorrow?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: What does the end of everything actually mean?

Maybe science fiction isn’t really about imaginary worlds. Maybe it’s about holding up a mirror to our own. It allows us to explore our fears, our hopes, our ridiculous human tendencies, and the possibilities of what comes next.

After all, sometimes it takes an entirely fictional world to make us recognize the one we’re living in.

So, congratulations to M. John Harrison. And a little hooray for science fiction. Perhaps the end of everything is actually the beginning of something.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another universe to visit.