Dated Power

As I’ve blogged about in the past (here and here, for instance) I’m fascinated by the way stories and characters become dated. Even if stories aren’t about a particular time, the little details frequently leap out at me.
The Power was a 1956 novel by Frank Robinson in which a government researcher becomes aware that someone on his team is “Adam Hart,” a psionic with terrifying power and charisma (the result of Hart’s amped-up mind being free of neuroses, irrational doubts, phobias, etc.)—and absolutely no interest in letting people expose his presence. As the research team drops like flies, can the protagonist identify Hart before becoming the next victim?
It’s a good book (though I think the ending is flawed) and became a good movie a few years later. But the relevance here is to the version I read last week, an updated edition in which WW II and Korea have been replaced by references to the Gulf War and Vietnam.
Maybe this was a smart marketing move—although speaking as a genre fan, I’ve never been bothered by reading old genre books—but I can’t help wondering what anyone who picked it up assuming it was contemporary made of some bits. The teenagers with Vaseline-slicked hair, for instance, date this just as much as the war references; for that matter, the hero’s constant pipe-smoking (in the workplace, no less) doesn’t seem terribly contemporary.
And of course, there’s only so much time before a reference to losing a son in Vietnam will make this just as outdated. So personally, I think: Why bother?