I literally posted a link to what appears to be a letter written by Szilard himself (please correct me if I'm wrong), directly citing Wells' story as inspiration in an account of his own relationship with the genesis of the atomic bomb.
I can't help but notice that you seem to have completely ignored it in the construction of your response. Perhaps you didn't read my comment very thoroughly.
I read it. You should read it carefully too. He says he read a book. He never says it was an inspiration.
Just because I do AI research and tell someone I watched Star Trek, does that mean I'm saying that my latest NeurIPS paper is inspired by Star Trek? No way.
The suggestion that he'd mention it in the very first sentence of an account of how he arrived at the idea for the atomic bomb, when in fact it was totally irrelevant at the time, is absurd on its face; and your analogy is terrible. A better analogy might be somebody asking you how you developed your "latest NeurIPS paper" and you responding by describing a Star Trek episode in which a (superficially) similar technology is used, before even mentioning your own work. And later, perhaps, recounting how you exclaimed Star Trek, here we come! when you had your key insight.
You've overextended your argument, and you know it. There is no use continuing this conversation if you're going to go to such absurd lengths to deny what's obvious.
I can't help but notice that you seem to have completely ignored it in the construction of your response. Perhaps you didn't read my comment very thoroughly.