"Aster removed two scalpels from her med-kit to soak in a solution of disinfectant. Her fingers trembled from the cold, and the tools slipped from her grasp, plopping ungracefully into the sanitizer. In ten minutes’ time, she’d be amputating a child’s gangrenous foot. This shaking and carrying on would not do."
These opening lines of the novel seem to be unremarkable except for describing a rather gruesomely unusual medical procedure performed on a child. It will take some time to understand the truly remarkable circumstances attached to these opening lines. Aster is clearly a talented surgeon and would in most cases be expected to belong to the upper class in her society. Her society is one enclosed aboard a starship named Matilda that left earth three centuries earlier. And, indeed, the division of society resembles that part of earth familiarly known as pre-Civil War Dixie. Aster is from that part of society that occupies the lower decks literally and figuratively. She is talented, intelligent, and a vital asset to Matilda. She is also essentially a slave by birth.
"…so my three little sisters would go to stay with this upperdeck woman who was a schoolteacher and had a mission to make all the little dark lowdeckers into readers. So they could read about the Heavens and the Promised Land and so they could memorize prayers. She’d tell my baby sisters that if they read and said their prayers and obeyed the Sovereignty, Matilda ’s journey to the Heavens would be made sure. She taught this with such fervency that she must’ve actually believed it. What a sad thing. Nothing is more sad than a person who believes in something so clearly not true."
The metaphor of the Matilda’s stark division of class according to deck level makes the story obviously one that is a commentary on racial discrimination. That is not the only significant issue, however. This cosmic society has a particularly complicated theology. The ship itself is supposedly headed to the Promised Land and thus reflects back upon Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and into the wilderness for forty years. The political leadership for those in the upper deck, the Sovereignty, becomes a commentary on the profound wisdom of the separation of church and state. The intrusion of the state into the issue of religion proves to be a self-serving justification for any sin that needs to be rationalized. In this issue, the story reflects the modern -ay earth just as much as the Antebellum society. Melusine’s insight into the tragedy of believing in things patently untrue is indicative of the reality that using religion for political propaganda is still an effective tool for controlling many if not all.
“Aye. You gender-malcontent. You otherling. Me too. I am a boy and a girl and a witch all wrapped into one very strange, flimsy, indecisive body. Do you think my body couldn’t decide what it wanted to be?”
Aster is speaking to the Surgeon General of the ship, Theo Smith, who is also her lover. This assessment of herself and Theo is not made in a vacuum. As if confronting issues like racism and religious hypocrisy were not enough, the author even finds a way to get gender conventions and subversion into her story. The utilization of a spaceship as a microcosmic metaphor for life on earth is nothing new, of course, but it offers incredible possibilities for writers with a vision. Introducing the issue of gender fluidity into this trope allows for additional insight into how discrimination and prejudice are based upon biases originating from a fundamental flaw in binary ideology. Any time the complexity of the world is reduced to an either/or proposition, trouble follow.
