Characters in Red Mars

John Boone

The first human to set foot on Mars and the colony's most popular public figure, arguing for a Mars independent of Earth.

Frank Chalmers

The mission's chief American diplomat and political operator, and Boone's lifelong rival.

Nadia Cherneshevsky

The engineer who builds much of the first settlement, more interested in the work than in the politics around it.

Maya Toitovna

Leader of the Russian contingent of the First Hundred, entangled with both Boone and Chalmers.

Also in Green Mars

Ann Clayborne

Geologist and leader of the Reds, who opposes terraforming and argues Mars should be preserved as it is.

Sax Russell

Physicist and the colony's foremost advocate of terraforming, Ann Clayborne's intellectual opposite.

Arkady Bogdanov

Russian engineer working from Phobos, whose anarchist politics shape the settlement's independence movement.

Hiroko Ai

Biologist in charge of the colony's agriculture, and the founder of a distinctly Martian belief system.

Michel Duval

The French psychologist assigned to the First Hundred, who struggles with his own isolation on Mars.

Vladimir Taneev

Biologist whose medical research underpins the colony's longevity treatment.

Phyllis Boyle

Geologist aligned with the transnational corporations and with continued Earth authority over Mars.

Desmond Hawkins

A stowaway who lives outside the official settlements, known as Coyote.

Ann Clayborn