I am Disco Barrington (he/they), a British-Trinidadian, queer, trans, disabled writer living in London. I work as a semiotician and cultural analyst, and review diverse romance, sci-fi and fantasy books on social media as @discobooks.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Bluesky: @discobooks.bsky.social
TikTok: @discobooks
Book link: Amazon (UK)
Book Elevator Pitch for Readers/Book Clubs
Fuelled by queer rage, THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS is a wild, multi-narrative ride through the last days of humanity and the fight for survival that follows.
Your new release, THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS, is coming out on 16th Sept 2026 – what has your author journey been like from draft to querying/submission to prepping for launch?
It’s been a wild ride! The idea for the book came in April last year, on the day that the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a ‘woman’ is based on biological sex. I was sitting in an airport, about to fly back to the UK from the Netherlands and thinking, “I don’t want to go. I don’t feel safe there anymore.”
I opened the notes app on my phone and wrote the first chapter as a short story, which was about a trans person forced to run a deadly race in a broken Britain. I thought I was done, but then a bigger story wouldn’t leave me alone. Night after night I found myself waking up at 2am, reaching for the laptop. I finished the novella four months later, just before the Online Safety Act passed, restricting many websites in the UK. Which is fitting, since the book opens in a Britain isolated by a digital blockade. That’s the thing about writing dystopian spec fic, your fears can come true a lot sooner than you think.
I sent it to Nefarious Bat Press on a whim. I loved Tradwife by TC Parker (who also co-runs the press), and we’d spoken about me contributing to a future anthology. When I came to her with a book instead she said, “hell yes, we want to publish it.” I was shocked. It couldn’t be that easy, surely?
For due diligence I then tried the agent route, mostly because it felt strange to immediately go with the first option. I queried fifteen agents and got a host of (very lovely) rejections.
One of them explained that conceptual novellas were a tough sell in traditional publishing and recommended going with an indie press. So I went back to Nefarious Bat and said, “let’s do it!”
I’m enjoying the experience with Nefarious Bat. I love that I can choose how much of the publishing process I want to be involved in. I picked the cover artist, briefed the cover, put together a wish list for authors to blurb, and so on. I can’t wait for it to be out in the world.
What comps are you using for THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS, and what were some of its media influences?
The book combines the nested narrative style of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars with the queer horror of Andrew Joseph White’s Hell Followed with Us, and the dystopian society of John Lanchester’s The Wall.
Beta readers told me that the first chapter feels a bit like Stephen King’s The Long Walk, which I’d not read. Although I then watched the movie, which was traumatising! And I see the parallels, but only for the first chapter. I’m not surprised my debut novella is apocalyptic. I’ve always loved curling up on the sofa with a sweet treat, and a sad movie or show about the world ending.
From The Walking Dead to Children of Men, Time of the Wolf, or the British post-apocalyptic show Survivors. Even as a child, one of my favourite shows was The Tribe. Most of the apocalyptic media I grew up with was majority-white, and Europe or US-centric. I was purposeful about setting part of my book in Trinidad. When the world ends, it ends for everyone, not just white people.
THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS is fuelled by queer rage and is also a personal book for you: can you talk a little bit about how your own experiences as a trans British-Trinidadian man have shaped this story and its characters?
I see myself in a lot of the characters. There’s a trans man running a race in a country that hates him; a mixed heritage person who has a crisis of faith; a scared couple just trying to survive in a collapsing society; a rebellious artist who refuses to comply.
I’m half Black, queer, trans and disabled in a country that is actively removing support and protections for those minority groups. The book cycles through a lot of the things that I fear most, for myself and my community, and for the world. But the best parts are inspired by my communities too — the people who resist, who look after each other, who find love amidst the chaos.
What other rep can readers expect in this book, and why was it important for you to include this?
A section of the book takes place in Trinidad, and I wanted to demonstrate how diverse the islands are. I am half Black, but I also have Chinese and Venezuelan great grandparents on my Trinidadian side. And there’s a mixed heritage character who represents this multiculturalism.
Elsewhere, there are East Asian and South Asian characters. It was important to me to diversify apocalyptic media, and to make it a global event.
I keep queer people at the heart of the story, with important lesbian and non-binary characters. I want our community to be central to apocalyptic stories, not the tokens that I grew up seeing.
This is a multi-narrative story which will take readers on journeys with several characters. How did you develop each character and their voice so that they would all be distinct, and what challenges did you meet along the way?
The book features vignettes in different styles: transcripts, prose, interviews, data visualisations and so on, charting the end of humanity. Some of these were taken from other unfinished dystopian novels. I had an epiphany late one night — that I had been writing separate projects that were, in fact, different points on the same timeline. I crushed them together, and a pattern emerged.
Each vignette was clear in my mind, I just had to get it on the page, to pinpoint that intense/scary/confusing/angry moment in a person’s life, and through them, see the next stage in the collapse of humanity.
The situations were all so distinct that I naturally saw very different people experiencing them.
The only chapter I had a particular issue with was a longer one in the middle, which was a very internal battle as a person has their beliefs challenged. I must have revised it at least ten times. It was difficult because it shows the process of disillusionment, when you realise you’ve been duped and you’ve been lied to. And that’s painful. It’s hard to let go of what you thought you knew. I hope people read it and see that it’s meant to be all of us. We’ve all been lied to, by the world and by the people in charge. That’s painful to realise. But once you let that go you can move forward and fight back. Even if the world’s ending.
Can you talk us through your worldbuilding process – when reimagining Britain as a dystopia, what were the factors you came up with to make it that way? How did you envision a war-time, flood-ravaged Britain, and what dangers do your characters face within this world – both physical and ideological?
Dystopian Britain is seen through flashes — news reports, letters, conversations in the pub. I had to choose my words carefully, to demonstrate that the world was broken without over-explaining.
In a way, that’s how we approach the world now. We’re looking at it sideways, putting limits on our doom scrolling, and avoiding the news if things get too heavy.
Every day there are little flickers of disaster that we all try to ignore. I just take them to the apocalyptic conclusion that haunts my dreams.
For my characters — some of them try to keep calm and carry on. Others actively engage, trying for better, or worse. They’re all in the same breaking world, but, like us, some choose to do something about it, and some don’t.
Can you share your favourite feedback or reader reactions for the book?
One of my beta readers sent me this text while she was reading it. It still makes me laugh: “You OK hun?”
Also, one of my favourite authors, Seth Haddon, blurbed the book, and I’m over the moon. He just got it, and summarised exactly what I was trying to do:
“Through apocalypse, dystopia, and renewal, the throughline of empathy, love, and human determination in Barrington’s THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS keeps the story profoundly human. An impressive debut that leaves the reader with a bittersweet, hard-won hope that feels especially resonant in our uncertain political moment.”
Elsewhere, I’ve been tagged in some really lovely reviews. I’m so, so happy people are enjoying my little angry book where everyone has a terrible time. Of course, I hope none of this happens. I hope things get better. But if some of these things do happen, one of my friends joked that the sequels could be I Told You So and Why Does No One Listen to Me?
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