Good story. Good book. I love Asimov. One of the greats. He wrote as many if not more books of non-fiction, although those aren't what he's famous for. His book on Neutrinos is what inspired for me a lifelong fascination with particle physics. Never could handle the math, though.
Ralph Waldo Emerson took a bit more optimistic, if a bit cynical view on it:
"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore."
