[mentioned in passing] Scientist who gave a radio lecture
that was broadcast on Mars.
Gaines Beecher
Resident agent general for the Mars
Company. He tried to stop the colonists' seasonal migration, and plotted
with Marquis
Howe to send Willis to
the London Zoo. After his machinations were revealed, adult Martians "sent him
away".
Herbert Beecher
Student at Lowell
Academy, son of Gaines
Beecher. He was one of the few students who did not live at the school,
and who approved of the new regulations (imposed by his father).
Human colony on Mars, named
after an ancient Martian
city. Located 30 degrees from the south pole, it was occupied only during the
southern summer. It was the annual migration from Charax to Copais
that the Mars
Company's representatives sought to cancel. [Persian, "fort".]
Chen (no other name)
Student at Lowell
Academy; son of a terrestrial employed at an outlying station.
Cleary (no first name)
Frank
Sutton's Catholic pastor in the Mars colony;
he shared a house with the Protestant chaplain.
Human colony on Mars, in the
far northern hemisphere, named after an ancient Martian
city and occupied only during the northern summer months. It was the annual
migration from Charax to
Copais that the Mars
Company's representatives sought to cancel.
Settlement on the Strymon
canal along the route from Charax to
Syrtis
Major, located near the ancient Martian
city of Cynia where the Strymon joins the canal Oeroe. It
consisted of merely a lunchroom, a bunkhouse, and a row of prefabricated
warehouses.
One of the South Colonists who attended the meeting to discuss the Mars
Company's refusal to provide vehicles for the annual migration. He
suggested legal action to enforce the right to migrate.
Pekingese dog that Donald
MacRae recalled in discussing poetic meanings of names; its family name
was "Willis."
Joseph Hartley
Colony hydroponicist. Because his infant daughter was sick and the power
had been cut off from the colonists' refuge during their rebellion against the
Mars
Company, he tried to surrender but was killed as soon as the soldiers saw
him. (Mrs. Hartley also appears.)
Relative of the Mars
Company's chairman and headmaster of Lowell
Academy, who took the position just as Jim
Marlowe started school there. He tried to turn the school into a military
academy, considering the colonists to be "barbarians" who needed repressive
discipline. He tried to steal Willis and
sell him to the London Zoo. Willis' recital of a conversation between him and
Gaines
Beecher revealed the Company's plans to prevent the colonists' semiannual
migration to a more tolerable climate.
Dr. Ibañez (no first name)
South
Colony psychologist called on to verify Willis'
ability to exactly repeat conversations, but not invent them.
a. Boarding student at Lowell
Academy. b. South colonist who sided
with Jamie
Marlowe in his dispute with Kruger
over the colonists' right to hold a meeting; he was the father of the Lowell
Academy Kelly.
Colonist who suggested attempting to negotiate with Gaines
Beecher after the Mars
Company refused to allow the colonists to migrate, pointing out that the
colonists were numerically superior to Company employees. (Probably Luba
Konski's husband.)
Luba Konski
Friend of Jane
Marlowe, who gossiped about Sarah
Pottle in Willis'
presence; Willis later repeated her words when Mrs. Pottle was present.
Site of a pilot plant for extracting oxygen from the iron oxide in Martian
sand. (Uncertain whether this is the African nation on Earth, or a Martian
locale named after it.)
Linthicum (no first name)
Aggressive colonist who advocated starting a war with the Mars
Company.
Boarding school provided for the sons of colonists. It was turned into a
military academy by Marquis
Howe. Migrating colonists took refuge in the school when their travel was
halted by Mars
Company representatives.
Physician in the Mars colony,
friend of the Marlowes.
James (Jamie) Marlowe, Sr.
Jim Marlowe's father. He led the Mars
colonists in defying the Mars
Company's attempts to keep them in South
Colony during the winter, and became a leader in the revolt against
control by Earth.
Mars
colonist and student at Lowell
Academy who discovered the Mars
Company's plans to prevent the colonists' regular migration to more
tolerable climates. Because of his friendship with the Martian
nymph, Willis,
the adult Martians helped him warn the colonists about the Company's plans and
to establish the colony's independence from control by Earth companies.
It was colonized by humans governed by an Earth corporation until their
revolt, but also inhabited by intelligent natives who were tolerant of the
human settlements as long as the humans caused no trouble.
Business enterprise that chartered the colonization of Mars. Its
policies showed more concern for profits than for the survival and welfare of
the colonists. It was overthrown when it tried to prevent the semiannual
migration between the northern and southern hemispheres, which decision
probably would have caused the deaths of many colonists from the extreme
winter weather.
Marsport
Human city near the Martian
equator. It was permanently occupied, mostly by employees of the Mars
Company.
Natives were described as averaging 12 or more feet tall, with three legs,
three eyes, and arms ending in "palm flaps". An ancient and contemplative race
not given to violence, they had the ability to "disappear" anything (or
anyone) that attacks them. They apparently remained in contact with the
physical world after death. Juvenile Martians were completely unlike adults,
resembling furry basketballs that occasionally extruded eyes or limbs, and
apparently possessing minimal intelligence.
South Colonist who asked Jamie
Marlowe's personal opinion of the migration crisis. She took over Lowell
Academy's kitchen when the colonists took refuge there.
Sarah Pottle
The Marlowes'
hypochondriac and self-indulgent neighbor. Willis
repeated in her presence gossip about her. She protested the charges against
Gaines
Beecher in the colonists' meeting. She and her husband were killed when
they tried to surrender to Mars
Company forces after the colonists took refuge in Lowell
Academy.
Proclamation of Autonomy
Largely cribbed from the United States Declaration of Independence, it was
sent to Chicago to announce the Mars
colonists' successful revolt against the Mars
Company.
proctor
Employees of the Mars
Company commissioned to maintain law and order (and mostly to enforce the
Company's authority).
Resident of Syrtis
Major, to whom Donald
MacRae sent a message about the colonists' situation at Lowell
Academy. He was arrested after he and others protested the situation.
Resident Agent General
Official title of the head of the Mars
Company operation on Mars.
Student at Lowell
Academy who made quite a profit repainting respiratory masks after the
headmaster forbade individual designs. Jim
Marlowe and Frank
Sutton paid him to hide their guns so they would not be confiscated, and
sold as much of their property as they could to him to raise money for tickets
home when they "escaped" from the school. Smythe joined the colonists in their
fight against Mars
Company.
Human settlement on Mars,
erected just north of the ancient city of Charax,
between the legs of the double canal Strymon.
It was inhabited only during the Southern Hemisphere's summer, as the winters
were intolerable even with special life-support precautions.
Double canal located in the Southern Hemisphere of Mars, near
the ancient city of Charax.
The name was originally bestowed by Percival Lowell, and was adopted by the
human colonists.
Francis (Frank) Sutton
Friend of Jim
Marlowe who accompanied him to Lowell
Academy. When Willis was
confiscated by the headmaster and the two learned about the Mars
Company's intentions for the colony, they fled the school and returned home to
mobilize the colony to resist.
Area of Mars where
Copais
was located. (It is unclear whether it was a political or a geographical
unit.)
Jan van der Linden
Lowell
Academy natural sciences instructor. He was suggested as a successor to Marquis
Howe after the Martians "disappeared" Howe.
Willis
Jim
Marlowe's Martian
"pet": furry and slightly larger than a basketball, with three retractable
legs and eyes. It was apparently sentient though simple-minded, and was able
to use human speech as well as exactly reproducing any sound it heard
including musical compositions and long conversations in the original voices.
It was actually the larval form of an adult Martian. His Martian name meant,
"In whom the hopes of a world are joined". The human scientific name is
Areocephalopsittacus Bron- [The character saying the name is
interrupted before completing it; the first part is Greek for "Mars parrot
head"; the "Bron-" is probably the first syllable of the discoverer's name.]
The Heinlein
Society was founded by Virginia Heinlein on behalf of her husband, science
fiction author Robert Anson Heinlein, to "pay forward" the legacy of Robert A. Heinlein to future generations of "Heinlein's Children."