The Genocides
First edition, 1967
The Genocides (1965) by Thomas M. Disch opens with an epigraph from Jeremiah: "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." It is an accurate summary. The novel follows a small community in rural Minnesota in the years after alien spores have blanketed the Earth, germinating into enormous Plants, six hundred feet tall at maturity, that have displaced every other form of vegetation and effectively ended human civilization without any apparent awareness that humans exist. The aliens never appear. There is no invasion in any dramatic sense, no communication, no conflict. Humanity is simply in the way.
The community is led by Anderson, a patriarch of grim religious conviction who interprets the Plants as divine punishment and his own survival as proof of righteousness. He is wrong about nearly everything, including his own authority, and Disch is unsparing about it. The survivors eventually take refuge inside the Plants' vast root systems, and the novel closes with a brief, devastating epilogue in which the alien harvesters arrive, strip the earth, and immediately plant a second crop. The final line, "Not, however, man," closes what may be the most coldly efficient extinction narrative in science fiction.
The comparison to Wyndham's Day of the Triffids is natural but the novels are doing very different things. Wyndham's survivors rebuild; Disch's do not get the chance. Published as a paperback original by Berkley in 1965, this British edition, published by Rupert Hart-Davis in 1967, is also the first hardcover appearance of the novel.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, bound in dark red boards. London: Ronald Whiting & Wheaton, 1967. #11119.
Near fine in near fine dust jacket with short closed tear on front.
The community is led by Anderson, a patriarch of grim religious conviction who interprets the Plants as divine punishment and his own survival as proof of righteousness. He is wrong about nearly everything, including his own authority, and Disch is unsparing about it. The survivors eventually take refuge inside the Plants' vast root systems, and the novel closes with a brief, devastating epilogue in which the alien harvesters arrive, strip the earth, and immediately plant a second crop. The final line, "Not, however, man," closes what may be the most coldly efficient extinction narrative in science fiction.
The comparison to Wyndham's Day of the Triffids is natural but the novels are doing very different things. Wyndham's survivors rebuild; Disch's do not get the chance. Published as a paperback original by Berkley in 1965, this British edition, published by Rupert Hart-Davis in 1967, is also the first hardcover appearance of the novel.
Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, bound in dark red boards. London: Ronald Whiting & Wheaton, 1967. #11119.
Near fine in near fine dust jacket with short closed tear on front.
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