Written in 1984: the sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel. It meant a hissing grey, a churn of static, the particular non-colour of no signal, and every reader knew it instantly because every reader had a set.

A dead channel is now blue. Flat, calm, municipal blue, or a courteous message about your input. The sentence describes a clear afternoon.

The sentence did not change. The world underneath it was replaced, quietly, by a standards committee, and the sentence stayed exactly where it was and became a different sentence without editing a character of it.

It is still the best-known opening of its decade and it is still doing work, and what it now means is something has drained out of that sky, which is arguably better, and which no one wrote.

The text is fixed. The referent is on a maintenance schedule.

Everything you consider settled is currently being revised by a committee, in another building, on grounds unrelated to you, and will continue to read correctly throughout.