Perspectives

Events on the world-stage that are current to us now will be history in the future and therefore can be referred to in futuristic sf and in future histories. That part is easy. But what will future attitudes to our current conflicts be like? Don't just project our attitudes onto our descendants! Let us quote from Poul Anderson and James Blish:

"'...you know, enmities needn't be eternal. I daresay, oh, for instance, Governor Saracoglu and Admiral Cajal had ancestors on opposite sides at Lepanto.'"

-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, March 2011), pp. 437-662 AT XVIII, p. 661.

In fact, the Governor and the Admiral are both for Terra against Ythri but, later in the Technic History, Ythri helps Terra against Merseia. Still later, the Terran-Merseian conflict is no more.

"'If an Englishman of around 1600 had found out about the American Revolution, he probably would have thought it a tragedy; an Englishman of 1950 would have had a very different view of it. We're in the same spot. The messages we get from the really far future have no contexts yet.'"

-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1973), 127.

And, if reading sf doesn't broaden our perspectives, then nothing will. Because I read sf, I used to think while still at school, "Things will not always be as they are now." Since then, much has changed.