The Genocides

The Genocides is a 1965 science fiction novel by American author Thomas M. Disch. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965.
The Genocides describes the genocide of humans by aliens who seed Earth with enormous Plants. The Plants are massive and rapidly out-compete terrestrial flora, forming a monoculture. They appear unwholesome to the native fauna, and the extinction of all Earthly life seems inevitable.
The novel opens with a small rural community struggling for survival on the border of Lake Superior, a few years after the coming of the Plants and the collapse of civilization. The community, led by Anderson and his family, eke out an existence by siphoning sap from the Plants to irrigate their corn crop. Anderson is a conservative and religious man, harsh and uncompromising, but he has managed to keep his people alive and focused on survival. His rules include hostility to outsiders, who are routinely killed unless they are of use to the community.
Elsewhere, a group of vagrants encounter spherical machines that are incinerating every trace of humanity left on Earth. Fleeing the machines, the group runs afoul of Anderson's community, who kill all but two of their number: Jeremiah Orville, a mining engineer, and Alice Nemerov, a nurse. The novel implies that the dead are ground into sausage meat and consumed. Jeremiah assimilates into the community, but secretly plots revenge on Anderson and his family. In the process, he courts Anderson's thirteen-year-old daughter, Blossom, and befriends Anderson's educated son, Buddy....
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