The work is still fiction and the characters described in the work become less and less helpful over time as it becomes difficult to try to fit them into the co

The work is still fiction and the characters described in the work become less and less helpful over time as it becomes difficult to try to fit them into the context of today's society. This becomes more true the further you get from the time the novel was written and it is this lens of time passed which allows us, as a society, to filter out many of the mediocre ideas that are no longer helpful and hold onto the works that are more fundamental. So yes, time matters as does the context in which the works were written. The world itself has become more integrated and capital much more mobile and the role of government is also less clearcut than it was in the middle of the 20th century. Many of the dangers of overreach in government that the writer was worried about have been reduced but at the same time new dangers, including those of global corporations overreaching into our daily lives, have increased. TL;DR: Snowcrash is probably more helpful to understanding this story than Atlas Shrugged.