So fiction showing people were thinking about X at such and so a time not evidence people were thinking about X at such and so a time???

All the "get to the moon" or beyond SF, which per Robert Heinlein was an explicit goal of his juveniles, to teach the attitudes and what you needed to learn to to get into space, which he was later told actually worked for a number of Apollo project people was ... what??

Can't make fusion reactors that interesting and the SF series never tried except when they didn't get a chance to shut down properly and went boom (actually a very beginning plot point), but I'm glad for all the fiction creators who inspired me into a STEM career when I was young.