Julius Enderby is a fictional character in Isaac Asimov's Robot series.
About Julius[]
Julius Enderby is the Police Commissioner of New York City. A career bureaucrat who values order and procedure, Julius Enderby rose through the ranks of the New York City Police Department to become Commissioner. Despite his high rank, Enderby is portrayed as a nervous, indecisive, and highly conventional man, prone to anxiety and deeply uncomfortable with disruption. He is a known and committed medievalist, a fact evidenced by his affectations like wearing archaic eyeglasses (despite the availability of contact lenses) and installing a window in his office.
Enderby's life is upended when a Spacer, Dr. Roj Nemennuh Sarton, is murdered in the Spacer Sector of New York. As the highest-ranking police official, Enderby was present in the Spacer Sector for a meeting with Sarton, a circumstance that immediately places him under suspicion. Terrified of the potential political fallout, Enderby is pressured into handling the investigation. He assigns his old university friend, Detective Elijah Baley, to the case, partnering him with the Spacer agent R. Daneel Olivaw. Crucially, Enderby withholds the fact that R. Daneel is a humanoid robot, knowing Baley's antipathy toward robots would cause him to refuse.
As the investigation progresses, Enderby's behavior becomes increasingly erratic. His medievalist sympathies are not merely an affectation; he is a member of the underground "Society for Humanity," which seeks to prevent Earth's modernization and interaction with the Spacers. Fearing that Baley is getting too close to the truth and that his own role in the conspiracy might be exposed, Enderby orchestrates a complex frame-up against Baley. He plants evidence suggesting Baley destroyed the office robot, R. Sammy, and exploits his knowledge of Baley's wife's membership in the medievalist group to create a motive.
When confronted by Baley, Enderby initially tries to suspend and arrest him. However, under intense pressure and with R. Daneel present, Enderby's composure breaks. Baley deduces and proves the truth: Enderby had gone to the Spacer Dome intending to destroy R. Daneel, whom he saw as a symbol of the Spacer threat to Earth's culture. However, due to his severe myopia and having broken his glasses moments before, he mistook Dr. Sarton, who had designed R. Daneel in his own image, for the robot and killed him accidentally with a blaster. The fragments of his broken lens, found in the door tracks of the crime scene, provided the physical evidence of his early, unauthorized presence.
Enderby confessed to the accidental killing, motivated by his ideological belief that he was saving Earth. His subsequent breakdown revealed a man overwhelmed by guilt and fear rather than malicious intent. Given his high position within the medievalist movement, the Spacers, represented by R. Daneel, offered him a deal: instead of facing trial and creating a massive interstellar incident, he would use his influence to reform the medievalists. His new mission would be to steer their reactionary energy away from sabotage and towards the goal of space colonization, thus serving the Spacers' ultimate aim of helping Earth help itself. Enderby agreed to this arrangement, understanding that his guilt could always be used against him if he betrayed their trust.
Appearances[]