Disch's first novel The Genocides (1965; see separate entry) is a brash, stylish affair that defied the traditional happy ending in which humanity defeats a terrifying and cruel invader from outer space. In it, the alien invaders wipe out humanity with ease; humanity never even has a glimpse of the great power that annihilates it. In the ethos of The Genocides, there is no spiritual world, no God, nothing to suggest that human beings are any more than mere animals, to be exterminated as pests in a farm crop. In this, it seems a great distance from The Businessman, in which the actions of individual human beings may have far-reaching effects in a universe that is vast in its spiritual dimensions.

His next novel The Puppies of Terra (1966) seems like more of the same, with human beings being merely domesticated animals for an extraterrestrial species, but it...