The pattern of The Genocides is a familiar one in popular fiction. The novel presents a desperate situation in which people under extreme stress are reduced to their basic personalities, their civilized facades having been stripped away. Their adventures are followed as they meet each new test in their efforts to survive. Disch twists the familiar plot line by showing the characters slowly losing their battle against a relentless enemy. They slowly lose their farmland, their farm animals, their homes, and their refuges. As they retreat, they also lose their civilized morality; they are reduced to murder and cannibalism. The subplots of sexual infidelity, lust, and greed that spice up such novels as Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936), also an "end of a civilization" novel, make the passions of people seem trivial when set against the horrible events in The Genocides. Disch's principal literary technique throughout the...