Template:Character Elijah Baley is a plainclothesman, a homicide detective on the New York City police force. He is doleful with a quick temper, and has a strong sense of duty and loyalty and is very protective of his family and his status. Elijah was born in 4679 and died in 4762. His wife was Jezebel Baley. Their son, Bentley, became a leader in the second wave of interplanetary space exploration, and the planet Baleyworld is named in his honor.
Elijah 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 two hundred years after his death.
Baley, like most human beings of his century, is strongly agoraphobic, as all natives of Earth at Baley's time spend all of their time from birth to death in immense domed cities (caves of steel). The Earthmen 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.
His story as given to us begins when he is called to help solve the murder of a Spacer. The Spacers assign to him a robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, with whom he becomes life-long friends. He meets up with R. Daneel again much later where again he is asked to investigate the murder of a Spacer, this time on the planet Solaria. This made 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.
Television Actor: Peter Cushing