In each of his novels, Disch seeks to convey a truth about the human condition and to create a new twist in an established literary form. In his first novel, The Genocides, Disch seeks to combine truth with a kind of literary gamesmanship. The novel is dystopian; it falls under the science fiction subcategory of stories about invaders from another planet that is archetypally represented by The War of the Worlds (1898) by H. G. Wells. At the time of the writing of The Genocides, the film version (Allied Artists, 1963) of John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951) had achieved much repute. In Wyndham's book, seeds fall to earth from outerspace. The resulting plants are at first merely curiosities or are cultivated. They eventually begin walking and attacking people. Chaos ensues, with a courageous protagonist eventually discovering a way to battle the plants, which seem impervious to...