Elijah Baley

Elijah Baley is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's Robot series. He is the main character of "The Caves of Steel", "The Naked Sun", "The Robots of Dawn", and the short story "Mirror Image". He is talked about heavily in "Robots and Empire", which is set roughly 200 years after his death.

Biography

He is a plainclothesman, a homicide detective on the New York City police force. He is a doleful character with a quick temper. Like Sherlock Holmes, he is a pipe-smoker - a habit he fights against in "The Robots of Dawn". He has a strong sense of duty and loyalty and is very protective of his family and his status. His wife, Jezebel Baley, prefers to be called Jessie. Their son, Bentley, became a leader in the second wave of interplanetary space exploration.

Baley, like most human beings of his century, is strongly agoraphobic, as "The Caves of Steel" reveals that almost all natives of Earth of Baley's time spend all of their time from birth to death in immense domed cities (caves of steel) and rarely, if ever, travel to the outside surface. Baley's agoraphobia is an important personality characteristic and plot point in several of the novels in which he appears. This somewhat mirrors Asimov's own personality, as he was a well known claustrophile (a person who preferred to be in closed spaces).

Asimov's novels are typically devoid of profanity. Consequently, Baley's favourite expletive is "Jehoshaphat!" which he says in times of great stress or excitement.

In "The Caves of Steel", he is called upon to help solve the murder of a Spacer. The Spacers assign him a robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, with whom he becomes lifelong friends. He meets up with R. Daneel again in "The Naked Sun", where again he is asked to investigate the murder of a Spacer, this time on the planet Solaria, making him the first Earthman to leave Earth since the first wave of colonization. Later, in the "Robots of Dawn", he realizes R. Giskard's telepathic abilities long before anyone else does. Giskard modifies Baley's mind to prevent him from being able to tell anyone.

In later stories, it is revealed that Elijah becomes a legendary hero for millennia. A reference to him can be found in "Foundation and Earth".

Appearance in other media

In the 1964 British television adaptation of "The Caves of Steel", Baley was played by Peter Cushing. In the 1988 Koday VCR game "Isaac Asimov's Robots" Bailey was played by Steven Rowe.