- everest: the unknown is a powerful arbiter of the imagination. at the time, we did not know what was on everest - as we did not (and still do not) know what's in the deepest parts of the ocean, or what was on the dark side of the moon. we could always guess, but you don't know until you can measure it. so, why couldn't there by something bizarre at the top of everest - martians, yeti, or even just a new species of ungulates? as asimov points out in his notes, we have now scaled everest and now know what's there. but, never forget that the point of this genre is to scale the unknown mentally, before we can actually observe.