Anna Quibler – a hard-scientist administrator in charge of the Bioinformatics Division at the NSF; part of her job entails farming out grant proposals from scientists and science students nationwide to program directors under her supervision.
He is the science policy advisor to Senator Phil Chase and works tirelessly to introduce bills to Congress for climate change mitigation.
Frank Vanderwal – a University of California, San Diego biomathematician with an interest in sociobiology, working for a year at the NSF; he oversees review of biology grant proposals.
Drepung – a Tibetan Buddhist monk, he identifies himself to Anna as the assistant and translator for Rudra Cakrin, but is revealed later in the series to be the spiritual leader of the Khembalese.
Rudra Cakrin – ambassador from Khembalung to the United States; a Tibetan in exile, he pretends to be the spiritual leader of the Khembalese but is actually Drepung's assistant.
"[1]) Anna, a devoted wife and mother, is, in Frank's view, something of an ultra-rationalist; Charlie is amused by her constant search for quantifiable measurements in all parts of her life.
When they all get along well, and she becomes interested in their concern about the threat of rising sea levels to Khembalung, their small island nation in the Bay of Bengal, she invites them to come for dinner when they all have time.
Leo Mulhouse, a science director at Torrey Pines Generique, a biotechnology startup company in San Diego, searches for therapies for various human diseases.
He is alarmed to learn that his boss, Derek, has spent $51 million to buy another company which might (and might not) work in tandem; Torrey Pines has not yet been able to show any profits, which puts them at risk for sale to investors who might care to purchase or even quash any patentable techniques they come up with.
Frank, eager to return to California, writes an angry denunciation of NSF and leaves it in the in-box of the director, Diane Chang, for her to find the next morning.
Invited to the Quiblers' house to meet the Khembalis, he tells Anna about the woman; she is pleased to find him so excited and talkative, and urges him to track her down.
Using his climbing skills, he enters the NSF building from the roof, descends through the atrium skylight, manages his way down a large mobile, and gets into Chang's office.
Leo, now unemployed, witnesses this at his Leucadia, California home and, in the rainstorm, joins members of the United States Geological Survey and an army of volunteers in attempting to shore up the cliffs.
Frank constantly observes the people around him as if they were primates, roaming the African plains... he sees the world as a scientist even when he's just standing in an elevator.
But within the confines of this first entry in the series, you get a nice sense of toe-tapping tension as careers collide with cash and bounce back hopelessly, helplessly in the face of a nearly religious faith in the efficacy of capitalism.
Robinson shows a once-honored form of human activity now kowtowing to crass capitalism, and he does it with the kind of detail and finesse that makes the whole picture captivating.
"[5] The reviewer for SF Site was also interested in the scientific themes, calling the novel "one of the most chilling" and "one of the most important and thought provoking books" she had read that year: "Greed is the key, here, and it's a tragedy.