An editor and producer of ASP (Apparent Sensory Perception) recordings who discovers and champions Lise's extraordinary talent. He narrates the story of her rise to fame and her eventual decision to upload her consciousness, left grappling with questions of identity and authenticity.

The aging last permanent inhabitant of the decaying Soviet space station Kosmograd. A stubborn old cosmonaut who refuses to abandon his orbital home even as political forces conspire to bring the station down.

A drifting young hustler who discovers a natural talent for holographic dogfighting, a competitive arcade game where players project mental images of World War I fighter planes. Fundamentally selfish, he abandons his injured partner Nance after winning the championship.

Known as Automatic Jack, a hardware expert and the narrator of 'Burning Chrome'. He partners with Bobby Quine to hack into Chrome's criminal empire using rare Russian military-grade ice-breaking software. A quiet, practical technician haunted by the aftermath of their audacious run.

A human data courier with a cybernetic memory implant in his brain, capable of storing and transporting massive quantities of encrypted data. Hunted by the Yakuza after a dangerous upload, he must decode the data before a built-in kill-switch destroys his mind.

A socially awkward linguistics lecturer at a community college who dresses badly and can never fit in at bars or parties. His obsessive pursuit of a shape-shifting woman leads him to abandon his career and ultimately transform into one of the belonging kind.

A thirty-year-old continuity writer for broadcast ASP (Apparent Sensory Perception) who suffers from chronic insomnia and has recently gone through a painful breakup with Angela. A former indentured worker who survived the New Secessionist wars.

An unnamed corporate operative and partner of Fox who helps recruit Sandii to lure Hiroshi away from Maas. After the scheme unravels and Fox is killed, he retreats to a capsule hotel to await Maas assassins, replaying events obsessively.

An unnamed freelance photographer hired to document American Streamlined Moderne architecture across California. While immersed in retro-futurist imagery, he begins hallucinating visions of an alternate 1980s that never existed.

A surrogate aboard a space station near the Highway singularity. His job is to be the first human contact for traumatised returning space travellers. Paired through a bone-phone implant with his handler Hiro, he uses drugs and deception to coax data from returnees.

A ruthless and powerful criminal operator who runs a vast empire from behind layers of defensive software (black ice). She controls money laundering, illegal operations, and wields enormous influence across the Sprawl. Jack and Bobby's hack destroys her operation.

A beautiful, animal-eyed woman who is one of the 'belonging kind' - mysterious entities that perfectly mimic human bar-goers, changing their appearance and mannerisms to blend into any social setting. She feeds on alcohol and produces money from slits in her own body.

A brilliant young console cowboy (hacker) who partners with Automatic Jack to crack Chrome's defences. He is infatuated with Rikki Wildside and motivated partly by jealousy of Chrome's hold over the Sprawl's underworld.

A fellow surrogate aboard the Highway station and Toby Halpert's partner. A long-legged woman with black hair and a Texas accent, she holds the record for keeping a returnee alive for two weeks. Like Toby, she desperately wanted to travel the Highway but was rejected.

An employee of the publisher Barris-Watford who connects the narrator with Dialta Downes for the Streamlined Moderne photography project. An old acquaintance from New York.

A virtually chinless, fashionably dressed pop-art historian with a mania for American Streamlined Moderne architecture. She commissions the narrator to photograph surviving examples of 1930s futurist buildings across California.

A corporate headhunter and the narrator's partner in New Rose Hotel. He mastermind the scheme to lure biotechnologist Hiroshi away from the Maas corporation, but is killed by Maas operatives when the plan goes wrong.

A young American cosmonaut sent to Kosmograd on what Colonel Korolev suspects is a mission to facilitate the station's deorbiting. He proves sympathetic to Korolev and helps him resist the bureaucratic forces trying to destroy the station.

A psychiatrist who serves as Toby Halpert's handler aboard the Highway station, communicating through a bone-phone implant. Together they form a handler-surrogate gestalt, merging into a single functional unit to process returning travellers.

A brilliant biotechnologist working for the Maas corporation whose research is so valuable that rival zaibatsu Hosaka schemes to poach him. Lured away by Sandii, he commits suicide when the betrayal is revealed.