Meet the Cast!

Tetsuko Breckenridge was born in Japan, to American parents. Her father, James, had been sent to Japan to head the Asian branch of his company. James and his wife, Patricia, soon fell in love with the people and culture of Japan, and when their daughter was born, they gave her a Japanese first name.

According to the Japanese-English Character Dictionary by Andrew Nelson, there are 13 kanji (the Chinese characters the Japanese adopted for their written language) that can be read "tetsu". The one her parents chose to write "Tetsuko" (Nelson #931, defined as "clear") was used in words that carried a "philosophical" meaning, as in tetsugaku "philosophy" and tetsugakusha "philosopher". But since Tetsuko was somewhat of a tomboy as a child, people tried writing her name with the kanji for "iron"(Nelson #4844), and her parents were sometimes exasperated enough at having to correct this "misspelling" that they toyed with changing her name to something in American English. Ironically, after her "transformation" Tetsuko began adopting the "incorrect" kanjiherself, so that "tetsu-ko" indeed wound up meaning "Iron Girl". ("-ko" [Nelson #1264] as the third syllable in three-syllable female names such as Rumiko and Etsuko is more correctly translated "child", but since this is a female name, the translation of "-ko" as "girl" is not unreasonable.)

The family lived in Japan for the first ten years of Tetsuko's life; but when her parents were killed in a tragic accident she was sent to America to live with her maternal grandparents.

One of the most influential scientists who have ever lived; although you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who can name one of her accomplishments, so secret is most of her work. Sonya has no one specialty, having graduated from four universities with four doctorates in four disciplines: medicine, physics, biology, and (just to p--s people off) liberal arts. (She actually graduated with her doctorate in medicine at the age of 17, but was prevented from fulfilling her internship and getting her license because of minimum age requirements.) Now, at the age of 37, she has accomplished what most of her more elderly colleagues could only imagine.

And as if possessing the world's most brilliant mind wasn't enough, Sonya is also one of the world's most beautiful women. She has the look of a woman in her early 20's; her enticing figure is, shall we say, "lushly endowed"; even her glasses seem to somehow enhance rather than detract from her sexy good looks. (She's been featured almost as many times in Playboy as in Scientific American, and isn't shy about displaying her considerable sex appeal.)