# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Robert Sheckley.

- [Pid](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/pid.md): Pid belongs to a small, claustrophobic watch crew — Cassel, Morse, Edwardson — stuck in a ship with a detector dial, a greasy deck of cards, and a mounting dread of the mind-grabbing aliens they're supposed to be monitor
- [Dan Drake](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/dan_drake.md): Drake is the reluctant voice of reason among the men at Vuanu, facing down Cable's panicked attempts to radio for rescue while Sorensen backs him up. He carries the weight of Eakins's last instructions — hide the transmi
- [Mr. Morrison](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/mr_morrison.md): Morrison came to Venus with twenty thousand dollars and a plan: one rich strike, then marriage to Janie and an ocean farm back on Earth. Eighteen hundred miles into the waterless waste, he's learned that the desert can k
- [Charles Dennison](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/charles_dennison.md): Dennison is a Harvard- and MIT-trained plant biologist who has lived alone with his research since thirty-two, publishing papers and selling an insecticide, content in his austere bachelor's seclusion. After three years 
- [Warm Anders](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/warm_anders.md): Anders is on the verge of a good evening — a before-party drink with Judy, whose smiles he has catalogued by number — when a voice with no body asks him for help and tells him he was 'warm' just then. Rather than panic, 
- [Colonel Cercy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/colonel_cercy.md): Cercy sits across from the Ambassador as the alien calmly describes an undetectable, unjammable beacon that will broadcast Earth's location for as long as he lives — and that he cannot switch off. Cercy's response is imm
- [Hellman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/hellman.md): Hellman and Casker are stranded prospectors who land on a spined, mountain-covered world in search of water and food, their supplies nearly gone. Where Casker tears open crates hunting for anything edible, Hellman linger
- [William Sorensen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/william_sorensen.md): Sorensen is the steady hand on the beach, watching through binoculars as animals swarm the ketch and Eakins swims for shore with the creatures in pursuit. When Eakins' voice comes back over the walkie-talkie strangely ca
- [Tom Morrison](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/tom_morrison.md): Morrison has spent twenty-one days and eighteen hundred miles crossing a waterless waste three times the size of the Sahara, down to his last ten dollars and following traces of goldenstone. He daydreams about Janie and 
- [Al Cable](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/fred_al_cable.md): Cable is one of three men on a vessel parked in space, monitoring a dial that will signal the approach of a mind-grabbing alien presence. He banters about bridge partners and three-million-dollar card debts, but his real
- [Mr. Gelsen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/gelsen.md): Gelsen is a thoughtful man in a room of officials and displaced homicide detectives, asked to accept that machines can now prevent murders before they happen. He says yes, he supposes he does agree, but the unease linger
- [Cost of Living Carrin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/cost_of_living_carrin.md): Carrin lives surrounded by A.E. appliances—the Auto-towel, the Kleen-presser, the Wall-reminder reciting chores he hasn't done—and a finance man is due in half an hour. Miller's suicide nags at him even as he tries to en
- [Fannia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/fannia.md): Fannia commands the cramped, fuel-starved ship crawling toward Thetis, trading insults with his navigator Donnaught while plotting a detour to a Galactic Survey cache on Cascella. He is practical to the point of paranoia
- [The Quedak](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/the_quedak.md): The Quedak is a selfless pilgrim of the universe, convinced that Quedaks owe a duty to the native fauna of planets, and its body screams with every centimeter of its crawl toward Captain Jensen's Southern Cross. It slips
- [Casker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/casker.md): Casker belongs to the small, carefully chosen team Cercy assembles to assassinate the Ambassador, a being whose defense is to become each particular weapon aimed at it. The council's early sessions—Harrison's gamma-ray f
- [Edward Eakins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/edward_eakins.md): Eakins appears at the edge of the clearing while rats, hermit crabs, and a bird of paradise press the men back, and Cable raises a rifle at him before Sorensen slaps the muzzle aside, insisting Eakins can't help what he'
- [Professor Carver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/professor_carver.md): Carver negotiates with Deg, the village medicine man, for sersee juice—the red-berry elixir that means life to the people of Loray—while Fred fumes and brandishes beads and knives. Carver's diplomatic fiction, that he is
- [Professor Micheals](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/professor_micheals.md): Micheals guards his ten-year custom of a week of absolute rest at his New York State farm, until his hired man Conners shows him a truck-tire-sized thing that sheared two inches off a spade. Prodding it with scientific c
- [Professor Darrig](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/professor_darrig.md): Darrig is the only member of Cercy's four-man assassination team genuinely fascinated by the Ambassador as a problem to be solved, not merely a target to be eliminated. He draws on Apache folklore about Metal Old Man's u
- [Captain Somers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/captain_somers.md): Somers never appears in the classroom himself, but his past exploits surface as the kind of vivid, half-legendary material that Eddie McDermott finds far more compelling than Carner's rules about avoiding cliches. The re
- [Eddie McDermott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/eddie_mcdermott.md): Eddie sits through Carner's lecture on avoiding cliches with mounting indifference, sneering at the earnest horn-rimmed student and stifling yawns while the instructor explains why aliens need understandable emotions. By
- [Ger the Detector](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/ger_the_detector.md): Ger accompanies Pid and Ilg on a dawn infiltration of a human atomic installation, his Displacer pulsing as he takes the coloration of plants and logs. But when a small animal darts past, he instantly grows four legs and
- [Mark Rogers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/mark_rogers.md): Rogers arrives on Earth broadcasting a signal no human method can jam, calmly informing Cercy that stopping the transmission is impossible because it ends only with his life. When Cercy empties six rounds into him, he si
- [Mr. Watkins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/mr_watkins.md): A minor character with limited but notable presence.
- [Stephen Rajcik](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/stephen_rajcik.md): A minor character with specific mentions.
- [Frank Conners](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/frank_conners.md): A minor character with recurring mentions.
- [Malley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/malley.md): A minor character with notable mention count.
- [Macintyre](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/macintyre.md): A minor character with recurring appearances.
- [Max Krandall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/max_krandall.md): A minor character with limited appearances.
- [Williams](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/williams.md): A minor character with few mentions.
- [Jane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/jane.md): A minor female character with some mentions.
- [Harrison](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/harrison.md): A minor character with recurring mentions.
- [Cassel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/cassel.md): A minor character with limited presence.
- [Donnaught](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/donnaught.md): A minor character with high proper mention count.
- [Mr. Pathis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/mr_pathis.md): A minor character with limited appearances.
- [Officer Celtrics](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/officer_celtrics.md): A minor character with a law enforcement role.
- [Judy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/judy.md): A minor female character.
- [C. R. Jones](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/c_r_jones.md): A minor character with limited presence.
- [Monty Byrnes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/monty_byrnes.md): A minor character with limited presence.
- [Oro](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/oro.md): A minor character with few mentions.
- [Captain Jensen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/captain_jensen.md): A minor military character.
- [Mr. Miller](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters/miller.md): A minor character with limited appearances.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_48_se/characters