# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Frederik Pohl.

- [Glenn Tropile](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/glenn_tropile.md): Glenn Tropile is a Son of the Wolf in a starving, ritual-bound world where every motion is measured against survival, and his restless hunger for something more has already marked him for a Donation he intends to survive
- [Howard Mooney](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/howard_mooney.md): Howard Mooney is a small-time operator wintering in a Sea Bright house, dodging stockholders from a failed frozen-food club and guarding his one warm room against the cold. When a shoeless stranger in a silvery leotard o
- [Peter Duane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/peter_duane.md): Peter Duane comes to in a ship's infirmary with a nurse watching his eyelids and a captain explaining that Andrias is locked below and the rifles never reached Callisto. He sabotaged the controls himself, trusting no one
- [Gala Tropile](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/gala_tropile.md): Gala Tropile stands in Citizen Boyne's house torn between ritual obedience and the husband who deliberately touches her arm, reminding her of their furtive quarrels and the deep importance they hold for each other. She w
- [Herrell McCray](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/herrell_mccray.md): Herrell McCray is a navigator aboard the faster-than-light Jodrell Bank, a man trained to trust mathematics over the lies of common sense, now sealed in a space suit in a warm room on an unknown planet. The hours-long ra
- [Citizen Germyn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/citizen_germyn.md): Citizen Germyn performs the ritual greetings and deprecations even as Haendl and his companion arrive with no breeding and alarming news: Tropile and other Wolves have been Translated, which Germyn insists is impossible.
- [Hatcher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/hatcher.md): Hatcher commands a research operation in which every previous subject has died, and he knows better than his helpers that this is no freak show but a matter of life and death. When a newly captured female cries out in pa
- [Mr. Harse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/harse.md): Harse carries confidential material in a dispatch case that shocks bellhops and sprays black fog when flashbulbs pop, drawing the whole lobby's attention to Mooney's carefully planned meeting. He is curious, literal-mind
- [Captain O'Leary](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/captain_oleary.md): O'Leary drags a terrified convict before the warden to prove the prison underground has sabotaged the tangler circuit, only to be met with platitudes and inaction. He understands that only the greaser-class electricians 
- [Haendl](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/haendl.md): Haendl runs the cramped, improvised shelter where Citizen Germyn arrives stripped of every social rule he once lived by, and he has no patience for questions while supplies are being distributed. He is busy, unsentimenta
- [Mac](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/mac.md): MacCauley—Mac—is a man whose luck runs bad and then worse, and the Kiddie's theft of his pocket is only the beginning. He chases the thief into a crowded street, collides with a drunk, and triggers a free-for-all that le
- [Mr. Burckhardt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/mr_burckhardt.md): Burckhardt and Swanson break into a sumptuous office and find a progress report on the Marlin Cigarettes campaign, complete with test groups and probability forecasts. Where Swanson sees nonsense, Burckhardt sees the exp
- [Guy Burckhardt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/guy_burckhardt.md): Guy Burckhardt is an ordinary husband in an ordinary town, rattled by a sound-truck that blares fire alarms and Feckle Freezer ads before breakfast. His wife Mary treats the uproar as a prank; Guy suspects something wors
- [Mary Burckhardt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/mary_burckhardt.md): Mary Burckhardt is the domestic anchor of the Burckhardt household, pattering up the stairs when Guy screams and shrieking back her best guess about what a Feckle Freezer might be. Where Guy bristles at the illegal racke
- [MacCauley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/maccauley.md): MacCauley is a man whose luck runs bad and stays bad, drifting through the floating population of Pallas with a sport-silk jacket and not much else. When a metals-mad asterite Kiddie lifts his pocket — slit and all — Mac
- [The Knights of Arthur](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/knights_of_arthur.md): Arthur is a prosthetic man — arms and legs gone, wired instead into whatever machine will have him — and the narrator's crew has been hauling him from city to city since the war. He longs to sail on the surface, somethin
- [Salva Gordy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/salva_gordy.md): Doctor Salva Gordy once taught mathematics and physics in Pasadena; now he sweats over a garden plot, smoking stubs and shaking his head at the rank crabgrass he cannot cut. When John de Terry, a former student, stumbles
- [Sue-Ann Bradley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/sue_ann_bradley.md): Sue-Ann Bradley is a woman doing hard time among the Greensleeves, still new enough that the eddy currents in the tangler fields catch her off guard and the guard's 'auntie' stings. She watches Flock scream across the ha
- [Vern Engdahl](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/engdahl.md): Vern is the ship's responsible man, the one who notices the East Side power plant billowing smoke and tries, with careful deference, to steer the Major toward trouble he'd rather ignore. His typewriters, rigged with endl
- [Svan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/svan.md): Svan moves among six wavering conspirators in a ground car, reading their fear and deciding, in fractions of a second, that unmasking the coward would only fracture them further. He takes the fatal task himself, then tri
- [Mr. Andrias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/andrias.md): Andrias inherited a Callisto where the first honest governor had begun stamping out vice and building representative government, and he squandered it into bribery, smuggled rifles, and rule by fear. Duane finds him bound
- [Kittrell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/kittrell.md): Kittrell sits beside Haendl on the warm, shaking floor of the binary planet, fitting cartridges into a clip and grinning at the chaos Tropile has set loose through the Pyramid network. He's one of the hauled-up men, weap
- [Wilmer Lafon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/lafon.md): Lafon once designed more than a dozen skyscrapers, none of which fell down, and now the guards parade inspection delegations past his cell to admire the sketches of the career he lost. His conviction cost him his Archite
- [Laurence Connaught](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/connaught.md): Larry was the narrator's friend, a man who could read twenty-three words and thereby walk through walls, open any vault, and survive any pistol. The narrator killed him in cold blood, not out of malice but because absolu
- [Swanson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/swanson.md): Swanson alone among Tylerton's citizens remembers each repeated June 15th, and that memory has made him a fugitive—dodging the role-changing strangers he calls 'them' and scavenging a mouse's existence at the fringe of l
- [Muhlenhoff](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/muhlenhoff.md): Herrell McCray is the kind of man who has learned to distrust common sense the way other men distrust strangers—when Jodrell Bank's reply arrives hours late, he does the math and accepts the impossible before he accepts 
- [Dr. Gordy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/dr_gordy.md): Salva Gordy once taught mathematics and physics in Pasadena; now he scratches a living from a plot of mutated soil, sharing his table with a ragged stranger who turns out to be an old student. He carries the quiet guilt 
- [Mr. Sauer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/sauer.md): Vern Sauer is the kind of shipmate who negotiates your surrender and his own promotion in the same breath—outraged to learn Sam was offered a hundred and fifty thousand while he only got forty, then cheerfully signing on
- [Citizen Boyne](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/citizen_boyne.md): Citizen Boyne moves through the ritualized world of Wheeling—salt twists, oatmeal stalls, the endless waiting for the Sun to blossom flame—but on this particular Sun Re-creation Day he breaks form badly enough that Germy
- [the captain](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/the_captain.md): A generic captain with a narrative presence.
- [Amy Bankhead](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/amy_bankhead.md): A lieutenant with a minor but defined role.
- [the Pyramids](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/the_pyramids.md): A group or entity referenced in the story.
- [Wolf](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/wolf.md): A wolf character with a protective role.
- [Alla Narova](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/alla_narova.md): A citizeness with a minor narrative presence.
- [Mr. Dorchin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/mr_dorchin.md): A minor character with limited appearances.
- [Citizeness Germyn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/citizeness_germyn.md): A citizeness with a role in the story.
- [Flock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/flock.md): A minor character with a small role.
- [Innison](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/innison.md): A minor character with a brief appearance.
- [Major Copeland](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/major_copeland.md): A major with a minor role in the narrative.
- [Sodaro](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/sodaro.md): A minor character with a small presence.
- [the Kiddie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/the_kiddie.md): A childlike character with a minor role.
- [Uncle Lester](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/lester.md): An uncle with a minor role in the story.
- [Walter Hutner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/walter_hutner.md): A minor character with multiple name variants.
- [Stevens](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/stevens.md): A white-haired character with a minor role.
- [the Ants Try Gordy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/the_ants_try_gordy.md): A minor character or entity with a brief appearance.
- [John de Terry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/john_de_terry.md): A minor character with a brief role.
- [Sam Dunlap](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/sam_dunlap.md): A minor character with a small presence.
- [Warden Schluckebier](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/warden_schluckebier.md): A warden with a minor role in the narrative.
- [Miss Mitkin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/miss_mitkin.md): A minor character with a brief mention.
- [Joe Hartman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/joe_hartman.md): A minor character with a small presence.
- [Liam O'Leary](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/liam_oleary.md): A minor character with a small role.
- [Leopards](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/leopards.md): A group of leopards with a minor appearance.
- [Captain Tillinger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/captain_tillinger.md): A captain with a minor narrative presence.
- [Chris Stoerer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/chris_stoerer.md): A minor character with a small role.
- [Aunt Mathias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/aunt_mathias.md): An aunt with a minor role in the story.
- [Marvin T. Roebuck](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/marvin_t_roebuck.md): A minor character with a brief mention.
- [April Horn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/april_horn.md): A minor character with limited mentions.
- [Mr. Van Pelt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters/mr_van_pelt.md): A minor character with a small role.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_18_se/characters