Dr. Fastolfe

Dr. Fastolfe is a Spacer scientist whose importance in the investigation’s closing events lies both in what he argues about the boundary between humans and robots and in the political future he urges the people of Earth to consider. Though he is not physically present in the final confrontation, his communication with R. Daneel Olivaw gives the Commissioner a reason to hear Elijah Baley, and his colonization program becomes the proposed path from guilt toward cooperation.

Identity and Presence

The story first establishes the contrast between Spacers and Earthmen through R. Daneel Olivaw, whom Baley meets at Spacetown Approachway. Daneel wears Earth-style clothes, but his posture, composed expression, and carefully arranged bronze hair mark him as a Spacer. The scene frames the distinction as something read from appearance and bearing, even before Baley knows what Daneel is. Later, Dr. Fastolfe challenges Baley to test that assumption rather than trust deductions from Daneel’s behavior: a pin, magnification, irregular breathing, an examination of expired air, or attempts to detect blood and a pulse could all help distinguish a humanoid robot from a human being. His list turns the question of identity into one of evidence and method.

Spacetown’s Boundaries

Dr. Fastolfe’s world is represented by procedures that distinguish City dwellers from Spacers as well as by the machines that make such distinctions possible. Before entering Spacetown, Baley learns from Daneel that City dwellers are customarily expected to shower; there will be no facilities for their use inside. At a later checkpoint, a surface draws a small sample of Baley’s blood for analysis, prompting anxiety about how thoroughly the Spacer authorities can investigate his health. These procedures establish that access is conditional: a visitor is admitted through a system that classifies and examines him. Fastolfe’s proposal to Baley for examining Daneel in turn exposes the uncertainty beneath such classifications: outward resemblance, bodily signs, and institutional rules do not by themselves settle what someone is.

Evidence, Identity, and Legal Standing

Fastolfe’s questioning of Baley focuses on how a claim about Daneel could be established. Rather than accept Baley’s speculative reconstruction, he asks whether Baley has carried out direct tests. The examples he offers—touching, observing, and measuring—make physical evidence a practical alternative to elaborate inference. This intervention is significant because Baley has insisted that Daneel is human, while Fastolfe presses him to investigate whether he is a robot. The exchange makes the detective’s confidence itself part of the problem: the distinction cannot be resolved just by what Baley believes he has inferred.

The question also has consequences beyond scientific classification. Baley points out that if Daneel identifies himself as a robot, he cannot serve as a witness in an Earth court, because robots have no legal status there. Daneel’s exceptional ability to remember faces would therefore not make his testimony admissible. The contrast is stark: Daneel may possess useful knowledge, yet the law excludes his evidence because of what he is. The episode situates Fastolfe’s scientific inquiry within a larger dispute over who can be recognized as a credible participant in human institutions.

The Final Confrontation

During the final confrontation, Daneel tells the Commissioner that he is in communication with Dr. Fastolfe, and that Fastolfe is communicating with him at that moment. Daneel explains that he has a self-contained subethenic unit, then warns that refusing to hear Baley could lead to damaging inferences. The Commissioner, who had ordered Daneel to restrain Baley under the First Law, falls silent and allows the accusation to be heard. Fastolfe’s influence is thus indirect but decisive in the scene: his connection to Daneel and the political weight attached to Spacetown give Baley room to present his case.

Baley accuses the Commissioner of having been at the Williamsburg power plant, obtaining the alphasprayer, and giving it to R. Sammy in a scheme intended to implicate him. He further alleges that the Commissioner arranged for a deliberately maladjusted guide rod to direct Dr. Genigel to R. Sammy’s remains, counting on him to diagnose what had happened. Baley puts away his blaster and tells the Commissioner that Spacetown will not accept his arrest. The confrontation makes clear that Fastolfe’s presence through communication has changed the balance of power: the accusation is no longer only Baley’s word against the Commissioner’s authority.

Colonization and Conditional Forgiveness

Once confronted, the Commissioner asks whether he will be prosecuted. Daneel answers that he will not be, provided he helps. The Commissioner agrees and calls what happened an accident, saying he did what he thought right. Baley then gives that promise a political direction: the Commissioner can begin by quashing the R. Sammy business, while helping advance space colonization. He argues that colonization is Earth’s only possible salvation and urges the Commissioner to consider it without prejudice, or to speak with Dr. Fastolfe.

Baley describes the policy as the Spacers’ central purpose: they continue to risk death by coming to Earth because they want the resumption of Galactic colonization. He argues that even Dr. Sarton’s murder might be considered a worthwhile sacrifice if it could move the Medievalist movement toward that goal. Daneel confirms that Baley is correct and offers to speak for Fastolfe and the Spacers generally, promising to forget the past if the Commissioner helps while warning that a later betrayal could be held against him. The settlement is therefore neither simple acquittal nor unqualified reconciliation. It makes the Commissioner’s future cooperation the price of leniency, and uses his guilt to enlist him in a project Fastolfe regards as essential to Earth’s future.