Think of it like “Western” fiction. Every age has its own idea of what frontier America was really like, a highly detailed (and mostly misleading) picture of another time and place. Look at a selection of vintage nineteenth century pulp fiction, fin de siecle penny dreadfuls and film and TV westerns and see how our vision of the Old West has changed and been romanticized and subjected to merciless nostalgia. The process is actually quite rapid, note how western “fashions” (or our idea of how the nineteenth century frontiersman dressed) is constantly changing. Even the cowboy hat has undergone its own sartorial evolution, in shape, size, decoration, and style. Look at some old 19th century photographs of REAL cowboys out on the trail, and they look nothing like the blow-dried wimps we see in movies, TV shows, and country music concerts. Its was all floppy sombreros and baggy pants, no perfectly shaped Stetsons, designer jeans or kinky boots. Even the old cowboy flicks from the 1950s dress differently than the TV westerns of the 70s, or the dress worn by real cowboys in modern rodeos and ranches today. And if they can’t get the dress right, can you imagine how the rest of the history has suffered?

We view the Old West with nostalgia, a vanished paradise of free and independent men, brave entrepreneurs and bold settlers, when historians tell us it was a brutal and lawless place, a feudal wilderness of desperate repressed refugees dominated by ruthless land barons, vicious outlaws, and intermittent vigilante justice. In a way, we view the future in much the same distorted way, a land of jet packs and flying cars, vinyl miniskirts, plasteel and glassine. Although today, evolution is also taking place there, with dystopian fictional futures more and more like Outland, Blade Runner or The Expanse, instead.

Its not surprising we see the future, as well as the past, through the dark glass of our own time. Maybe our English teacher was right, both the Western and the space opera are just escape fiction, a brief relief from our own disappointing past and future.