Everything Has Already Been Invented: A Refute

“Everything that can be invented, has been invented." --Charles Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Patent Office, 1899
At one of my writing groups, a fellow writer said off-handedly (during a discussion about creating mythical beasts in fantasy writing) that, “pretty much everything has been written, so you shouldn’t worry about reusing or recycling known tropes, like unicorns or dragons. Around the room, people nodded and no one refuted him. The conversation moved on to whether or not your fictional c...