Andromache
wife of Hector, mother of Astyanax; Andromache’s royal father and brothers were slain by Achilles
Priam
son of Laomedon, elder king of Ilium (Troy), father of Hector and Paris and many other sons
Paris
son of Priam, brother of Hector, gifted as both fighter and lover; it is Paris who brought about the Trojan War by abducting Helen, Menelaus’ wife, from Sparta and bringing her to Ilium
Helen
wife of Meneleus, daughter of Zeus, victim of multiple abductions because of her fabled beauty
Hecuba
Priam’s wife, queen of Troy
Aeneas
son of Anchises and Aphrodite, leader of the Dardanians, destined in the Iliad to be the future king of the scattered Trojans
Cassandra
daughter of Priam, rape victim, tortured clairvoyant
Zeus
king of the gods, husband and brother to Hera, father to countless Olympians and mortals, son of Kronos and Rhea—the Titans whom he overthrew and cast down into Tartarus, the lowest circles of the world of the dead
Hera
wife and sister of Zeus, champion of the Achaeans
Athena
daughter of Zeus, strong defender of the Achaeans
Ares
god of war, a hothead, ally of the Trojans
Apollo
god of the arts, healing, and disease—“lord of the silver bow”—and prime ally of the Trojans
Aphrodite
goddess of love, ally of the Trojans, a schemer
Hephaestus
god of fire, artificer and engineer to the gods, son of Hera; lusts after Athena
Ada
a few years past her First Twenty, mistress of Ardis Hall
Harman
ninety-nine years old and thus one year away from his Final Twenty; the only man on Earth who knows how to read
Daeman
approaching his Second Twenty, a pudgy seducer of women and a collector of butterflies
Savi
the Wandering Jew, the only old-style human not gathered up in the final fax 1,400 years earlier
(*autonomous, sentient, biomechanical organisms seeded throughout the outer solar system by humans during the Lost Age)
Mahnmut
explorer under the ice-capped seas of Jupiter’s moon Europa; skipper of The Dark Lady submersible; amateur scholar of Shakespeare’s sonnets
Orphu of Io
eight-ton, six-meter-long, crab-shaped, heavily armored hard-vac moravec who works in the sulfur-torus of Io; Proust enthusiast
Asteague/Che
Europan, prime integrator of the Five Moons Consortium
Koros III
Ganymedan, buckycarbon-sheathed, humanoid in design, fly’s eyes, commander of the Mars expedition
Ri Po
Callistan, non-humanoid in design, ship’s navigator
Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo
Rockvec soldier from the Asteroid Belt
Voynix
mysterious bipedal creatures, part servants, part watchdogs, not of Earth
LGM
Little Green Men, also known as zeks ; chlorophyll-based workers on Mars, tasked with erecting thousands of Great Stone Heads
Prospero
avatar of the evolved and self-aware Earth logosphere
Ariel
avatar of the evolved and self-aware Earth biosphere
Caliban
Prospero’s pet monster
calibani
lesser clones of Caliban, guardians of the Mediterranean Basin
Sycorax
a witch, Caliban’s mother; according to Prospero, she is also known as Circe
Setebos
Caliban’s violent, arbitrary god, the “many-handed as a cuttlefish,” not from Earth’s solar system
The Quiet
Prospero’s god (maybe), Setebos’ nemesis, an unknown entity
About the Author
Dan Simmons is the Hugo Award-winning author of Hyperion and T he Fall of Hyperion and their sequels, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. He has written the critically acclaimed suspense novels Darwin’s Blade and The Crook Factory, as well as other highly respected works including Summer of Night, its sequel A Winter Haunting, and Song of Kali, Carrion Comfort, and World’s Enough & Time. Simmons makes his home in Colorado.