The author of the framing anthology 'A Perfect Vacuum' and the theoretical introduction 'Auto-Momus', acting as a faux-reviewer of nonexistent books.

The fictional author of 'Les Robinsonades', a novel exploring the sociology of isolation.

A logician, extreme conventionalist, and philosopher who survives the shipwreck of the Patricia and attempts to logically build a synthetic universe and social hierarchy from zero on an uninhabited island.

A fat, loyal, and properly stupid butler, valet, and footman invented/imagined by Robinson to elevate his own status as master.

The fictional author of 'Gigamesh', a highly complex, referential novel intended to outdo James Joyce.

A gangster condemned to hang in 'Gigamesh', whose name is an anagram of 'Shema' and 'Gig', representing the Antigod and the personification of evil.

A gynecologist in Cincinnati whom Maesch stomps in 'Gigamesh', his name acting as a dense, acronymic collection of allusions.

A lonely old hermit, possibly the former president or chief designer of General Sexotics, who wanders the dusty underground vaults of forgotten synthetic sex products after the Crash of 1998.

A former SS Gruppenführer who recreates an elaborate French royal court in the Argentine interior, aspiring to total transfiguration before being murdered by his courtiers over counterfeit dollars.

A former SS man playing the role of the Marquis de Beaujolais, who pounds his spouse and throws her whorish past in her face.

A youth in the colony who recognizes the horrifying truth of his surroundings and contemplates madness or escape.

An old prostitute from Rio who takes a fancy to Bertrand, gets him into bed, and sternly advises him to keep quiet to save his neck.

The fictional author of 'Rien du tout, ou la consequence', a novel attempting the ontological experiment of writing about nothingness.

Author who proposes draconian legal measures and an anticreative police force to stop underground creative activity and destroy the glut of existing cultural works.

A young Italian writer who authors 'The Idiot' to demonstrate a weak heresy against Dostoevsky and explore how love alters the shame and ugliness of the world.

A well-known critic who vehemently attacks the 'U-Write-It' literary erector set, viewing it as a pornographic disgrace and a desecration of classic literature.

A relentless coordinator who sets up headquarters in Majorca to direct a worldwide search through asylums, prisons, and dumps to discover unrecognized, first-order geniuses.

A client of Being Inc. who desires to be a stern judge or, in another arranged scenario, to heroically save Mrs. Brown in a train wreck.

A client of Being Inc. who wishes to flog his children while maintaining the conviction that he is an upright father.

The wife of Mr. Smith's friend, whom Smith intends to save in an arranged train accident orchestrated by Being Inc.

The young president of Being Inc. who takes on Jessamine Chest's unprecedented request for an unarranged life, leading to the discovery of the corporations' total control over destiny.

A millionairess who demands from Being Inc. a life of total authenticity, purged of all corporate arranging interference.

The German author of 'Die Kultur als Fehler' (Civilization as Mistake), who argues that culture is merely an adaptational tool to justify the biological miseries imposed by evolution.

Author of a two-volume work arguing that empirical probability is fundamentally flawed and using his own biographical thought experiments to prove it.

Creator of the personoids and author of Non Serviam, who observes his creations without intervening and considers demanding gratitude from them to be absurd.

Co-creator, along with Bovine, of the computer simulation of the human psyche that laid the groundwork for personetics.

Co-creator, along with Tammer, of the computer simulation of the human psyche.

A personoid inhabiting Dobb's mathematical universum who questions the nature of evil.

A 300th-generation personoid who philosophizes about God, justice, and morality, concluding that personoids serve only themselves.

Author of The New Cosmogony who theorizes that the universe's physics are the result of a Game played by ancient civilizations.

Author of 'The Mind-made Universe: Laws vs. Rules' who theorizes that the Players' cosmometamorphic power obliterates their memory, causing the Game to proceed in a cyclical collapse and rebirth.

A thinker referenced by Schuer regarding the state of the Universe after billions of years.

The narrator's teacher who reviewed the narrator's early drafts of the Game conception and suggested it might be a blueprint for the future.

The speaker delivering a lecture on the Game of Intelligences, presenting theories on the Universe as a palimpsest of Games.