[Dave]

I think that last example is a little different to the others.

It may be easy to be writer, because you don't need a research budget, and there are no committees that you have to run ideas past, and no shareholders and stakeholders to please, so you are allowed to purely brainstorm, and use any throw-away ideas. However, good inventions, and innovative uses of new technology, they are money-making ideas, and why waste those ideas on a story when you could become the next Bill Gates?

In contrast, I too am surprised that no one predicted the deep ocean micro-organisms you described before they were found. Possibly, it is because alien life seems so much more interesting, that we overlook the wide variety of life that already exists on Earth. If you look closely, in detail, at a spider or a crab, there is nothing more 'alien' when compared to a mammal.