Ann Clayborne was an important member of the First Hundred. As a geologist, she was opposed to terraforming from the beginning and became the ideological founder of the Red movement. As terraforming progressed she became ever more moody and silent; she was the eternal opponent of Sax Russell until they reconciled towards the end of their lives.

Ann Clayborne
Positions	Head areologist
Affiliations	First Hundred, Reds
Gender	Female
Appearance
Birth	ca.1980 USA
Death	– –
Ancestors	–
Descendants	Peter Clayborne

Early life

Ann was born in the early 1980s (perhaps in the year 1980) in the United States of America. She studied geology.

Selection of the First Hundred

In the training of the First Hundred in Antarctica, she and Sax became close. Out of misunderstandings and their ideological differences regarding terraforming in particular, their potentially romantic relationship turned into hate, with great consequences for the rest of their lives.

The Underhill years

She became Mars’s first and foremost areologist. She led the first exploratory expeditions on Mars’s surface. She had numerous public debates with Sax on the question of terraforming. She cherished Mars’s pristine environment, unsoiled by Man’s activity. Maintaining the planet in its primary form, as a “geology park”, is all she cared about.

The loss of Red Mars

She became the lover of fellow areologist Simon Frazier with whom she had a son, Peter. After terraforming became officially sanctioned, the effect on Mars’s environment became progressively obvious. Ann grew sour and even more introverted as a result.

The Underground and loneliness

After the revolution of 2061, she was rescued by the Areophany and hid in Zygote. She joined the underground, though she still spent a lot of time doing areology outdoors. She lost Simon from leukemia. With water and ice and vegetation in the open surface, seeing her red Mars disappearing forever, she oftentimes wandered alone in the surface and refused to carry tracking devices. After a real experience, for years she had a fear of being caught up in a lethal landslide. She refused to take the longevity treatment, which was considered as a suicidal move. She was assisted by Michel and Sax and escaped death. She participated in the Dorsa Brevia Conference where she defended Red views. She was recognized by her peers as a Red leader but did not actively take part in the violence caused by many Reds.

The Second Revolution and later life

During the independence revolution, she acted as a liaison between the Reds#Kakaze and the rest of the Martian rebels. After the failure of conservative Red views in the second revolution, she supported a more moderate, non-violent stance for the Red movement: to occupy high-altitude areas in order to keep them untouched and convince the population of the rightfulness of their cause through open debate.

In the long decades that followed, her moods became more extreme and schizophrenic-like until she developed what she called three personalities: the old Ann, an emotional “counter-Ann” and a third, new Ann born out of forgetting the scars of the past. Taking the memory treatment in Underhill, both she and Sax realized their mistakes and their mutual love. They spent together the last years of their lives.

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Burroughs was an important Martian city situated in a low point near Xanthe and Isidis Planitia.

Among the first Martian settlements to be founded, this tented city expanded very quickly until it became the biggest city on Mars and the planet’s commercial and administrative capital. In 2057, it was the place where the negotiations for the renewal of the UN Mars Treaty took place. Burroughs lost its dominant position in Martian affairs after the space elevator opened in Sheffield, however it remained a very powerful city thereafter.

Sax Russell, undercover as Stephen Lindholm, worked in Burroughs in the Praxis subsidiary Biotique in 2101-2102.

Due to its low altitude, a thick and long dike was built around it to protect it from the newly created Isidis Sea that was growing on the North. Eventually, Burroughs became a seaside city.

The dike was breached by Kakaze during the Second Martian Revolution. Burroughs was submerged. Its entire population had to be evacuated by foot to Libya Station, using breathing masks provided by Sax Russell’s Da Vinci team. Burroughs was represented at the Pavonis constitutional congress in the form of a refugee organization.

The ruins of Burroughs could later be visited by diving.

Kim Stanley Robinson named the city as a tribute to American author Edgar Rice Burroughs, who created the pulp series around hero John Carter of Mars.

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Simon Frazier was an English geologist, member of the First Hundred. He was one of the most important areologists of the early years and with Ann Clayborne they conducted some of the seminal work in their field.

Simon Frazier
Positions	Areologist
Affiliations	First Hundred, Reds
Gender	Male
Appearance
Birth	? England, UK
Death	ca.2091 Zygote, Mars
Ancestors	–
Descendants	Peter Clayborne

Simon Frazier. a very quiet power. English; public school education from age nine. He listens very closely, speaks well, but he says about one tenth as much as everyone else, which naturally gains him the reputation of a complete mute. He plays with this image, quietly. I think he likes Ann, who is like him in some ways, though not so extreme; in other ways very unlike. Ann does not joke with her image among the others, she is completely unaware of it American lack of selfconsciousness, versus Simon’s Brit irony.
– The Martians, p.14

Note: This information is from the story Michel In Antarctica from The Martians. Despite this story being non-canon, such information concerning character traits exclusively can be considered as canon. This story also mentions the English origins of Simon.

Quiet and taciturn in character, he was well appreciated by his peers. From the first years at Underhill he developed a romantic relationship with Ann, with whom he had a son, Peter, in 2047-2048. A Red, Simon kept in touch with John Boone despite his involvement in the terraforming effort.

After the First Martian Revolution in 2061 he was led to Zygote, where he lived making short areological expeditions with Ann around the south pole. He fell ill of leukemia and was taken care of in Zygote. His illness necessitated bone marrow transfusions and only young Nirgal shared Simon’s rare blood type. During the transfusions, Simon and Nirgal became close friends. was in the last days of his life before he died in ca.2091. His funeral was the first in Zygote.

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Nirgal was an important Martian political leader, the ectogene son of Hiroko Ai and Desmond Hawkins.

Nirgal
Positions	Free Mars leader
Affiliations	Areophany, The demimonde, Free Mars
Gender	Male
Appearance
Birth	ca.2077 Zygote, Mars
Death	– –
Ancestors	Hiroko Ai, Desmond Hawkins
Descendants	–

Early life in Zygote

Nirgal was born circa M-25 (2077) in Zygote. He was a sansei ectogene, the genetic son of Hiroko and the Coyote. From early on, he developed an extraordinary ability to sense heat, accurately estimate temperature, and somehow flow heat. He was very interested in Sax’s classes and asked lots of questions. He saw Sax and Hiroko as two opposited, one (Sax, the white) seeing the unexplained as a menace that should be treated by science, and the other (Hiroko, the green) exalting the unknown as something holy and powerful. He befriended Simon Frazier during his illness and was a bone marrow donor, but he could not prevent Simon’s death, which was Nirgal’s shocking first contact with human mortality.

In ca.2091, Coyote brought him along on a trip around the settlements of the underground, Nirgal’s first excursion outside of Zygote, during which they both learnt they were father and son. Nirgal decided he would travel all over Mars.

From early on, he bore an ambiguous relationship of love and competition in leadership with Jackie.

Sabishii University

As part of the demimonde, he studied ecological engineering at the Sabishii University, where he discovered a lot about the world. Thanks to Nanao, issei co-founder of Sabishii, he learnt lung-gom pa and became Mars’s best runner.

Free Mars leader

Along with Jackie, he was a charismatic leader of Free Mars and had many friends and followers. As soon as Art Randolph arrived on Mars in 2101, he and Nirgal immediately became close friends.

Nirgal helped greatly to prepare the second revolution.

Independence revolution and ambassadorship to Terra

Following the revolution, he was one of the Martian ambassadors to Terra in 2128.

Life as an ecopoet and a feral

After leading this eventful life, tired of searching for Hiroko and uninterested in politics, he became an ecopoet near Sabishii; his basin was devastated by a sandstorm.

He became part of a farmer, hunter and gatherer co-op. He very often took part in long-distance races across the Martian surface, which he won. He met Zo and flirted with her, until he discovered who she really was: Jackie’s daughter, playing with him.

In the 23rd century, he often visited the remaining First Hundred in Odessa.

Notes

In the short story Jackie On Zo in The Martians, Jackie discloses the long-hidden identity of Zo’s father as being Nirgal, which would add a heavy layer of unacknowledged undertext to these flirtatious games.

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