Character guide

Unknown

major

Also known as I, mine, myself

He's the first-person voice of the van Manderpootz tales, a rich man's son who can't reach his desk on time but can be counted on to volunteer for any device that scrambles perception. Twice burned by inventions — once loving a dead girl, once an ideal who never existed — he swears off romance while his father quietly prefers his lateness to be caused by science rather than 'vision starlets. His susceptibility and self-deprecating humor make him the perfect guinea pig for stories about how much of reality is just point of view.

Dan Burke

major

Also known as Burke

Dan is the narrator of the Paracosma sequence, a man whose initial suspicion — 'A swindle!' — dissolves the moment the electrolyzed story floods his eyes with an unearthly forest, elfin music, and a girl named Galatea. The tension that defines him is the tug between the shabby hotel room he can still feel under his feet and the mossy, sunlit world he desperately wants to believe in. His willingness to trade a hangover for Paradise is what launches the story's central question: which world is the shadow, and which the substance?

Van Manderpootz

major

Also known as Manderpootz, the great van Manderpootz, the incomparable van Manderpootz

Van Manderpootz is the genius at the center of the Dixon Wells stories, a man who treats his own mind as a natural wonder and his assistant's offhand remarks as seeds of epoch-making discovery. His flaw is not incompetence but boundless self-admiration: he invents devices that let people see through another's eyes, then hands them to Dixon without ever testing them himself. His psychons, cosmons, and chronons give the stories their comic-serious engine — the notion that thought, light, and matter are interchangeable, and that a great man's ego might be the only reliable constant.

Tweel

major

Tweel is the companion Dick Jarvis picks up on the Martian plain, a creature whose piping speech, hopping gait, and baffling intelligence make him both ally and puzzle. What sets him apart is his alienness: he reasons by his own rules, builds tools no human would conceive, and communicates through a logic Jarvis can only half-follow. His loyalty and strangeness together carry the early-middle arc of 'A Martian Odyssey,' forcing the reader to ask what it means to meet a mind that is truly not our own.

Dick Jarvis

supporting

Also known as Jarvis

Jarvis is the narrator of 'A Martian Odyssey,' a practical, good-humored scientist who stretches out in the cramped quarters of the Ares and spins the tale of his solo scouting flight south. His resourcefulness — and his willingness to treat a bird-like Martian as a colleague rather than a specimen — is what keeps him alive and what makes the story's encounters possible. He matters because his curiosity, not his caution, drives the expedition's first real contact with an alien mind.

Galatea

supporting

Galatea is Dan's guide into Paracosma, a world she calls 'Land-beyond-the-world,' where she speaks a language he somehow understands and moves with a warmth that feels more real than the hotel carpet under his feet. Her teasing challenge — 'Do I seem ghostlike?' — cuts to the heart of the story's paradox: she may be a product of the liquid story, or Dan may be the phantom. Her easy certainty about which world is real is what pulls Dan, and the reader, deeper into the illusion.

Leroy

supporting

Also known as little Leroy

Leroy is one of the four Academy-selected scientists crewing the Ares, a man whose dapper composure and proven courage earned him a seat on humanity's first Martian voyage. After days alone in the southern wilderness with Jarvis, he returns pale, bandaged, and dressed in rags, his eyes fixed in an ecstasy Harrison likens to a man who has seen Heaven and Hell together. His shattered nerves and rapt silence make him the expedition's most unsettling witness to whatever waits beyond Thyle.

Harrison

supporting

Also known as the sardonic Harrison

Harrison commands the Ares and its four-man crew, a man whose dry humor and blunt manner keep the expedition grounded even as Jarvis and Leroy radio back reports he dismisses as screwy. He listens to Jarvis's account of the ostrich-like Tweel with the skepticism of a man who has spent too many weary days on a half-dead world, needling his chemist even as he absorbs the implications. His grounded, sardonic presence frames the story's central tension between sober scientific caution and the bewildering strangeness of Mars.

Denise d'Agrion

supporting

Also known as Denise, So Denise

Denise d'Agrion belongs to the strange aftermath of van Manderpootz's subjunctivisor and idealizator experiments, a woman whose existence Dixon Wells can neither fully confirm nor dismiss. She is bound up with Dixon's susceptibility to feminine charms and his recurring humiliation at the hands of the professor's inventions, one of the two women he names when tallying the year's disasters. Her presence haunts Dixon's romantic misadventures, standing as the emotional cost of dabbling in realities that may never have existed.

Carter

supporting

Also known as the humble Carter

Carter serves among the expedition's supporting crew, a humble presence whose reliability contrasts with the more volatile temperaments around him. He is the sort of man whose steadiness matters most when the environment itself becomes unreliable, whether on a dying Mars or in the shifting realities of van Manderpootz's laboratory. His understated role grounds the expedition's human texture, reminding readers that discovery depends as much on quiet dependability as on brilliance.

Dixon Wells

supporting

Also known as Dixon

Dixon Wells narrates his own misadventures as a reluctant engineer and full-time heir, forever arriving late to the office and forever falling for dancers, singers, and women who may not exist. His father tolerates his tardiness more readily when the cause is van Manderpootz's experiments than when it is Tips Alva or Whimsy White, and Dixon himself has grimly sworn off romance after the idealizator disaster. His weakness for feminine charms and his habit of stumbling into the professor's schemes make him the perfect narrator for stories about love, time, and the hazards of point of view.

The Captain

supporting

Also known as captain

The Captain leads the four-man Academy expedition aboard the Ares, a man whose blunt demands for straight answers cut through his crew's evasions and half-finished radio reports. He assumes a gruffness with the returning Jarvis and Leroy, growling over their tattered state while pressing for the full story behind their cryptic message about escaping Paradise. His insistence on beginning at the beginning structures the narrative, making him the skeptical anchor against which Mars's wonders are measured.

Putz

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or assistant.

Professor Ludwig

minor

Also known as Ludwig, old Ludwig

An elderly scientist or academic figure.

Leucon

minor

Also known as Old Leucon

An ancient or wise figure encountered in a story.

Miss Fitch

minor

Also known as the plain and unattractive Miss Fitch, the charming Miss Fitch, Fitch

A woman who undergoes a transformation or is courted.

Haskel van Manderpootz

minor

Also known as old Haskel van Manderpootz, old van Manderpootz

An older relative of the inventor Van Manderpootz.

Joanna Caldwell

minor

Also known as Joanna, Miss Joanna Caldwell, Joan Caldwell

A woman who interacts with the main characters.

The Other Martians

minor

Also known as the Martians

A group of native Martian beings encountered by explorers.

The Grey Weaver

minor

Also known as Grey Weaver

A mysterious or mythical entity in a story.

Tips Alva

minor

Also known as Tips, Alva

A minor character, possibly a performer or associate.

Lisa Fitch

minor

Also known as Lisa, the glorious Lisa, Fitch

A beautiful woman, possibly related to Miss Fitch.

Einstein

minor

A historical figure referenced or appearing briefly.

Isaak

minor

A named individual with a small role in a story.

The Martian

minor

Also known as Martian

An individual Martian encountered in a narrative.

Roger Bacon

minor

A historical figure who appears as a character in a story.

Old N. J.

minor

Also known as old N. J.

An elderly or venerable character mentioned by initials.

Thoth

minor

A mythical or god-like figure referenced in a story.

Karl

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or friend.

Xanthus

minor

A named character with a brief appearance.

Yvonne

minor

A woman who appears in a story.

de Lisle d'Agrion

minor

Also known as de Lisle

A relative or associate of Denise d'Agrion.

Fancy Long

minor

A minor character with a colorful name.

Whimsy White

minor

Also known as the calculating Whimsy White

A minor character described as calculating.

Gogli

minor

A named character with a small role.

Friar Bacon

minor

A historical or legendary figure appearing in a story.