Why do people keep saying that novelists “predicted” the future?

• “Jules Verne predicted the Submarine”

• “Edward Bellamy predicted credit cards”

• “E.M. Forster predicted the internet”

• “Arthur C Clarke predicted smart devices”

• “Ray Bradbury predicted voice recognition”

Novelists didn’t predict these technologies, they dreamed them up.

Technologists only built them because novelists had already come up with the vision for them.