Characters in "Empire Star"
- Comet Jo: Eighteen years old, the product of a simplex culture.
- Jewel: A tritovian (presumably a non-human life form) who spends most of the story in a passive, crystallized form. Jewel is also the narrator of the tale.
- Charona: The guardian of the gate to the spaceport, Charona and her pet 3-Dog are quite obviously a mythological reference to Charon and Cerberus. Charona is the first person in Empire Star to tell Jo about the concept of simplex/complex/multiplex.
- San Severina: Owner of seven Lll—far more than any being has ever owned before—who must rebuild eight worlds (along with fifty-two civilizations and thirty-two thousand three hundred and fifty-seven complete and distinct ethical systems) ravaged by war. San Severina is Jo's first tutor in the ways of galactic society. She helps Jo to move past his simplex upbringing and sets him on the path to becoming a multiplex being.
- Oscar/The Lump: Short for Linguistic Ubiquitous Multiplex, Lump is an artificial lifeform with a Lll-based consciousness and is Comet Jo's companion for much of the text. Towards the end of the story we learn that the Lll whose consciousness Lump is based on is none other than Muels Aranlyde. ("Muels Aranlyde" is an anagram of "Samuel R. Delany".) The LUMp said his use of "Oscar" was a literary allusion and since the person he originally claimed to be waiting for was Alfred Douglas, he is alluding to Oscar Wilde, Douglas's friend and lover.
- Ni Ty Lee: A young poet who seems to have experienced all that Jo, or anyone else for that matter, has experienced.
- The Princess: Stowaway on a military vessel headed for Empire Star. She is two years younger than Jo when they first meet, but she turns out to be a young San Severina.
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