There are even brief sequences seen from the alien perspective a date for the Estimated Completion Of Project (2 February 1980), and an instruction for the entire incineration of surviving terrestrial life-forms by 4 July 1979, exterminating human ‘indigenous mammals’ in the ‘Duluth-Superior artifact’. Disch shifts the narrative focus, with each of the core figures given voice at different times. The novel only becomes ‘New Wave’ when that religiosity is turned around, so that it’s viewed not only as a conscious part of the post-apocalypse genre tradition, but also as a knowing satire of them. The machines stop, with ‘Earth rapidly becoming uninhabitable for men’. The whole made a scene so strange, so terrifying, that Peter felt his limbs grow cold’. The patchy cloud above was ruby tinted, fading away to purple and black in the east. Behind the precipice of alien growth, away to his right, the sun was outlined as a dull red orb. ‘The tops of the plants spread like giant ferns, each interlacing with its neighbours. There’s a suspiciously similar plot to ‘Earth Our New Eden’ by veteran writer FG Rayer in ‘Authentic Science Fiction no.20’ (15 April 1952), where the Earth is seeded by alien plants, producing a ‘Green Twilight’.
Yet there are other even more precise precedents. It is another story of a dwindling community which has survived a catastrophe, although Disch handles it in his own way’ (in ‘SF Impulse’ no.11). As the ever-perceptive Brian Aldiss points out, although ‘Disch is an American. There’s a suspicious familiarity that the scenario encroaches other post-apocalypse novels, particularly George R Stewart’s 1949 ‘Earth Abides’, even as it assumes elements of Wyndham’s ‘School of Cosy Disaster’ SF. The cover-art for the 1979 Panther paperback edition announces ‘The Genocides’ as ‘The Best Post-Disaster Yarn Since ‘The Day Of The Triffids’,’ evoking certain obvious parallels.
There’s a playful frisson to conjecturing that this condition will not continue indefinitely. Humans have enjoyed ten-thousand years of relative stability.
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