Study Guide

Steven Byerley is a politician whose opponent, Francis Quinn, accuses of actually being a robot since no one has ever seen Byerley engage in normal human activities like eating and sleeping. His lack of a definite personal background is also troubling. Citing an invasion of privacy, however, Byerley steadfastly refuses to be drawn into a situation where he must prove he is, indeed, human. Quinn thus turns to Dr. Calvin for help in trying to determine whether his mysterious nemesis if robot or human from behavioral analysis alone. Calvin concludes he is not a robot when he violates the First Law of Robotics mandate against harming a human. Despite lingering questions when Byerley himself raises the possibility that what he harmed was actually not a human being a robot, the narrator’s history of robotics draws to a close with the single most powerful human being in the world perhaps not being human at all.