# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Ray Bradbury.

- [Sim](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/sim.md): Sim is a child of the caves who steps out of the ordinary round of play, love, and marriage to volunteer among the six old men who breed their own scientists. The elder Dienc warns him plainly: stay and he will have no t
- [William Lantry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/william_lantry.md): Lantry is an outsider in a society where everyone sleeps on command, children tour the Incinerator to learn the clean fire death, and no one is pale. He gives himself away at every turn — claiming he has never been here,
- [Jove-Run Nibley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/jove_run_nibley.md): Nibley talks too fast and hobbles too slow, selling himself to Captain Kroll as an auxiliary computing machine for a run through the asteroids to Jupiter. Kroll remembers the drinking and the wreck; Douglas, the computan
- [Click Hathaway](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/click_hathaway.md): Hathaway survives an asteroid crackup with sixty minutes of oxygen and a camera that seems to have grown into his fingers. He and the Patrolman Marnagan are stranded on a pocked meteor plain, and Hathaway's first instinc
- [Leonard Sale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/leonard_sale.md): Sale wakes in the folded wreckage of his ship, breathes the air by sheer luck, and dances a little dance when Marsport answers and promises the rescue ship Logarithm in six days. The voices that greeted him in the dark —
- [Brandon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/brandon.md): Brandon — Brandy to those near him — is bound to the narrator by a familiarity that shapes how the story is told aloud. The passages place him alongside Nibley's desperate pitch aboard the Jove-Run, sharing the crowded, 
- [Mr. Stanley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/mr_stanley.md): Stanley stands outside the launch barrier as the crowd he's trying to save howls for his blood, a lone dissenter who thought laws would control the Rocket until the corporations smiled, bided their time, and pulled the l
- [Irish Marnagan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/irish_marnagan.md): Marnagan is the veteran of the crew, all thick lips and blazing green eyes, who suspects Gunther rigged the meteor and the crash as an ironic death for him. Trapped in a cave with forty minutes of air and impervious beas
- [Lyte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/lyte.md): Lyte flashes past Sim in a crowd and calls her name back over her shoulder, and in that instant he decides she is his friend, his love, his wife, the one who will lie beside him on the funeral pyre. Chion mocks the name;
- [McClure](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/mcclure.md): McClure shares sherry and cigarettes with Lantry and says almost nothing, but his eyes move, his color drains, and his hand tightens on the glass as he studies the man who claims to have come back from the dead. He is al
- [Sam Burnett](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/sam_burnett.md): Burnett has spent three thousand nights carrying fine lads burned down to the bone, and he tells Rice he doesn't care how he gets home anymore, just to shove him on shelf ninety-nine beside the dead. Then Lethla rises fr
- [Logan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/logan.md): Logan runs the ship with a sneer, needling Brandon for joining up to find his lost boy's body and calling him a coward who lacked the guts to fight. He claims a right to the work from the other war, though Brandon knows 
- [Captain Kroll](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/captain_kroll.md): Kroll commands a supply run through the asteroid belt to Jupiter, weighing the lives of men with families against his deep distrust of the old man Nibley, whose drinking once wrecked a ship. He is quiet, far-away, and un
- [Young Halloway](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/young_halloway.md): A young man whose fate intertwines with dark events.
- [Mr. Thirkell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/mr_thirkell.md): An enigmatic presence in a suspenseful narrative.
- [Mrs. Bellowes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/mrs_bellowes.md): A woman with a secretive and influential role.
- [Rice](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/rice.md): A character who appears in a tense confrontation.
- [Mrs. Morris](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/mrs_morris.md): A domestic figure whose actions affect the plot.
- [Lazarus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/lazarus.md): A figure associated with death and resurrection themes.
- [Chion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/chion.md): A character from a distant world or strange setting.
- [Lethla](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/lethla.md): A mysterious woman with a pivotal role.
- [Gunther](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/gunther.md): A character who provides crucial information.
- [Douglas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/douglas.md): A bitter and antagonistic figure.
- [Bruno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/bruno.md): A character with a forceful personality.
- [Nhoj](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/nhoj.md): A peculiar name suggesting an otherworldly origin.
- [Emil Barton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/emil_barton.md): A family member involved in a generational conflict.
- [Mom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/mom.md): A maternal figure in a domestic setting.
- [Dark](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/dark.md): A personification or character associated with darkness.
- [Old Piper](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/old_piper.md): A mysterious musician who leads children away.
- [Bella Stern](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/bella_stern.md): A woman with a connection to Samuel Stern.
- [Berman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/berman.md): A character who appears in a supporting capacity.
- [Dienc](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/dienc.md): A name suggesting an alien or unusual being.
- [Dad](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/dad.md): A paternal figure in a family story.
- [Mother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters/mother.md): A maternal figure in a domestic narrative.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_46_se/characters