A typical Crichton novel, Sphere is filled with a number of minor characters who are portrayed with a few deft touches that make them identifiable.

However, these characters appear only briefly and remain undeveloped. Others, such as Hal Barnes, Alice Fletcher, Tina Chan, Jane Edmunds, and Rose Levy, become personalities, although they primarily function as character types.

Five characters are represented with enough depth to take on the semblance of real people: Ted Fielding, Harry Adams, Beth Halpern, Norman Johnson, and Jerry. Fielding, a forty-yearold astrophysicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is inquisitive and vulnerable. In spite of his profession he functions on an openly emotional level and serves as a contrast to the seemingly more intellectual characters. Adams, a Princeton mathematician, is a black man whose exposure to racial bias has traumatized him so deeply that a reverse prejudice colors his perceptions and is the underlying motivation...