In cases like this, it helps me to think of a simulation - that the book does not talk about - that has a specific framework and set of rules to decide whether to let people out of the portrayed present or not. I had that idea a long while ago and started to apply it to TV shows, books, news, even myself when I had a weird flashback to boring drug-induced times. It works well to kill the depression that can arise out of narratives (except song lyrics, music productions in general and Rick & Morty. once something feels like too many shrooms and too much LSD aka too much harmony in bullshitting oneself and the audience, the whole thing breaks down and I get an Agent Smith vibe, an Agent Smith that didn't age well at all)

Even more depressingly these works come to be used as a sort of handbook. Ostensibly Snow Crash is dystopian literature, but tech bros liked it and its author even has been co-opted as a "futurist" by Blue Origin. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash