Rosalind Jackson of Warpcore SF stated that "It's easy to see this story as an allegory of the Arab-Israeli conflict."
"The Odyssey Gene" is a futuristic look at a population segregated into those who have or don’t have a specific variant of the Davies Gene, which grants immunity to a fatal infectious disease - "Positives", who are treated as second class citizens, and "Negatives" who are the majority of the population.