Starship & Haiku, WOW

I've been reading my brains out lately, and want to send a big thank you out to W-M, for her recommendation of Starship & Haiku. I just started it.  I've been working my way through the journey that is Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart (and it is work!) and so "conventional" s/f is a total delight.

I'm finally looking at the question that has been brewing since 1984: How do you teach science fiction of a previous generation when their "future" is our past.  Maybe I need to follow Karen Tei Yamashita and come up with the appropriate equation Where the end of the world (E) can be predicted with absolute accuracy as the end of ten cycles of fifty-two years. E=520+T   The only problem being the correct identification of the beginning of the end (T).  

Do I subtract the copyright date of the book from the date of the fictional future to get x, and then add x to our current date (2006) to get a foreseeable future? Or do we just move on from the premise that the millenial war happened within the last ten years, changing life forever on our planet. 

1997 - 1981 = 16 years, so the millenial war will actually begin in 2022? 

Anyway, I'm lovin' this book. It's got everything: a giant sheet of fused glass, headhunters on the fiftieth floor of the Hilo Hilton, whales, and a broken moon.

Here's a taste: Hawaiian survivors and contemplate stowing away to Japan:

"You know, millions of people going to Japan every year, you know they have no plague there, they have cities, they have electricity, they have McDonalds, even, remember those?" (40)