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Concept
Courtship Rite
Summary
Courtship Rite is a science fiction novel by Canadian writer Donald Kingsbury, originally serialized in Analog magazine in 1982. The book is set in the same universe as some of Kingsbury's other stories, such as "Shipwright" (1978) and the unpublished The Finger Pointing Solward.
In the UK, the novel was entitled Geta, and in France, Parade nuptiale.
Courtship Rite was the first winner of the Compton Crook Award for best first novel, was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1983 and won the 2016 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.
Geta is a harsh planet settled by humanity centuries before the novel begins. The planet has one large satellite, Scowlmoon; the two are in a mutual tidal lock, so the moon is only visible from half the planet. The planet's day is about half as long as Earth's. Geta is much drier than Earth, with eleven separate bodies of water large enough to be called seas; most of the land area is desert.
The Njarae Sea, the largest, is a narrow body extending around a quarter of the planet's circumference from northeast to southwest. Much of the story takes place in lands along the east coast of the Njarae.
Terraforming was never, or very minimally, initiated on the planet's biosphere, leaving it very inhospitable to the descendants of the original settlers, who have become mythic, God-like creatures to its denizens.
Apparently the only Earth-life on Geta are humans, bees, and the "Eight Sacred Plants", including wheat, soybeans, barley, and potatoes.
Native, "profane" life includes plants, a wide variety of sea-creatures and "insects", but no large land-animals.
Each has a different biochemistry, so each is largely toxic to the other.
Parts of certain profane species can be eaten if prepared correctly.
As a result, food is a commodity that is very precious on Geta, and in most places the only source of meat is humans themselves. Cannibalism has insinuated itself into the very fabric of social and religious life.
On the other hand, humans are not at risk of infection from native bacteria, and seem not to have brought any pathogens with them.
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