Edwin St. John St. Andrew
The character who shares the names of not just one but two different saints as part of his full and legal identity is an eighteen-year-old who can traces his ancestry back to William the Conqueror. Once upon a time—and even in certain pockets of society today—he would be an example of what was routinely referred to as “good stock.” Pity, then, that he had the misfortune to call into question during a dinner party one night the whole darn concept of British imperialism and the white man’s burden to cultivate civilization among the savages. And so he finds himself on a steamer headed across the Atlantic, no longer welcome in the polite society of England regardless of his stock.
Olive Llewellyn
Flash-forward a couple of centuries and find Olive Llewellyn embarking on a tour to publicize a book which is about to be adapted into a movie. The first stop is, naturally enough, New York City. The Big Apple seems a long way from her home back on the moon in Colony Two. (So named because it was the second colony to be constructed on the moon.) Olive’s novel is titled Marienbad and---certainly not by incident in light of this novel being published in 2022—it is about a pandemic.
Gaspery-Jacques Roberts
Gaspery-Jacques Roberts of Contingencies Magazine will always be “the last journalist” for Olive. But is he really even a journalist at all? When Olive does a little snooping she eventually concludes that the whole Contingencies Magazine thing is a front for something much more mysterious. Turns out she’s right: Gaspery is a detective who also call the moon home and actually work for something with the slightly sinister name of the Time Institute.
Mirella and Vincent
Mirella Kessler first appeared in the author’s The Glass Hotel. By the time that novel concludes, it is presumed that Vincent has died. Mirella and Vincent were best friends in the earlier novel and the timeline is unchanged. However, Gaspery’s work for the Time Institute involves time travel and he is able to go back in time and Vincent very much alive at various points in the past. And for the record, both of these characters are female because, you know, names are a thing for the author, apparently.
