Spoilers may be unmarked.
Main Cast
Joshua Valiente
Joshua was among the first people to use a stepper box on Step Day, having made his own along with others in his orphanage. Instead of panicking at being found in an unknown land, he gathered a dozen of the children together and stepped them back to Datum Earth. He subsequently became a minor stepping celebrity, and was recruited by Lobsang as a traveling companion on his journey to chart the Long Earth.
- The Confidant: He ends up as this to Lobsang. First by Lobsang's own design, then under his own effort.
- The Conscience: He also serves as this to Lobsang in his efforts to unite the Long Earth. While Lobsang has perspective no human being has, he knows very little about living a normal life, and Joshua informs him when he's overlooking something important.
- Disappeared Dad: In the later books, he misses out on some of his kids' moments. He starts trying to reconnect with them when they're adults.
- The Protagonist: Shares this rule with Sally and Lobsang.
- The Quiet One: He's very quiet by nature, preferring to spend his time exploring the Long Earth alone. His family, Sister Agnes, Linsay, and Lobsang are pretty much the only people he connects with.
Sally Linsay
Sally's father Willis invented the stepper box. But before he ever did, she and her mother's family already could, part of the small fraction of humans who could step naturally. Sally grew up spending time in the Long Earth, considering it her own Narnia, and when it opened up to everyone she appointed herself its informal guardian, guarding its inhabitants and protecting the environment.
Part of her stepping abilities includes the ability to find "the soft places", spots where a single step can take you dozens of Earths forward instead of one. This makes it possible for her to travel farther than anyone else, and leads to her being there waiting when Joshua and Lobsang finish their journey.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Downplayed. She's very standoff-ish, but she's not the most stable person.
Lobsang
An alleged Artificial Intelligence. Lobsang is a bunch of hyperconductive gel in a lab meant to be a supercomputer. As a Buddhist, he claims to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman who died the moment he was activated, and has been accepted by the United Nations as such. He can also step, another piece of evidence to his sentience. At the start of the series, he's most concerned with exploring the Long Earth and recruits Joshua as a traveling companion. Over the course of the series, he becomes the focal point around which the Long Earth is built (his artificial intelligence allows for vehicles to travel across worlds), and starts to consider the nature of mortality.
