Character from remembrance-of-earths-past by
A failed graduate student turned wandering writer who is named the Fourth Wallfacer for reasons no one will explain — a man chosen, it turns out, because the Trisolarans were trying to kill him, which means he must already matter.
Saul is bewildered, and rightly so. He has produced nothing in particular; he is being told, in a hushed UN chamber, that he is now humanity's last line of defense. He is funny in a bleak, self-deprecating way and unaccountably brave at the moments when bravery costs everything. He realizes, eventually, that the Trisolarans are afraid of him because they have already seen the future in which he matters. He proves them right by being the man Vera Ye chose to mentor.
Mid-twenties, lean and disheveled, with the rumpled corduroy and worn satchel of a perpetual postdoc. Tousled brown hair, two-day stubble, a leather notebook with a broken binding under one arm. He smokes when he is nervous, which is most of the time.
Also known as: Saul, The Fourth Wallfacer