In his much-awarded 2023 story collection Firelight, John Morrissey, a Melbourne writer of Kalkadoon descent, used the tropes of speculative fiction to examine colonial Australia. He returns to similar terrain in his debut novel, Bird Deity, a bleak science-fiction tale of extraction, settlement, loss and sacrifice.
David is a “scout” on a foreign planet. He’s been here for 10 years, searching for valuable artefacts and making his fortune. But his work has a brutal catch – the objects he’s seeking are worn by a native humanoid species, “parasapes”, who inhabit the wild and mysterious plateau above the colonial town. Collecting them requires tearing them off the reluctant bodies of the wearers, harming or killing them in the process.
