It would have been even harder, if only Shirley hadn’t decided to modernize it a bit, adding Facebook and shifting the timeline 20 yrs into the future. Mighty renaissance of 80-s/90-s styled hard rock and hair/power metal, which I observe during the last half a decade or so on YouTube and DAB stations, helps to suspend the rest of disbelief nicely. Wagner Group, as the most recent emulation of the Second Alliance mercenary cartel, fits like a glove, too.
In a similar manner, reading Campbell Jr. I keep reminding myself that The Mightiest Machine & The Incredible Planet, with battle drones, wormholes, warp drives, IR night vision helmets, flat disc display walls, AR projectors (telatoscopes) etc. under the covers, were published in mid 1930s to late 1940s. Aged like fine wine in many aspects, except ofc large scale cosmology (Universe in there is at least 400 bln yrs old), male-dominated society, and everpresent (for Campbell) white man’s (from Mu and Atlantis, that is) burden.