Within seven years the alien trees or Plants, six-hundred feet tall with leaves the size of billboards, threaten to annihilate the last bastions of humanity. Apocalypse cannot lead to rebirth.Ī billion spores, “invisible to all but the most powerful microscopes,” sown by an invisible sower over the entire Earth create a veritable carpet of greenery across even the most inhospitable geographies (15). Disch conjures a frontier landscapes inhabited by the sinful. In the face of apocalyptic annihilation at the hands of a vast alien Plant spread across the Earth, biblical stories of redemption and (re)birth are subversively recast as either delusions or decrepit meaningless patterns. Disch’s The Genocides (1965) is an incendiary assault on our senses and expectations of trope and genre.
Richard Powers’ cover for the 1965 1st edition.
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