The Two Faces of Science Fiction

Very interesting article by James Wharris on the varietals of science fiction, mainly adventure versus speculative (personified nicely by Star Wars vs Star Trek). Lovecraft's late period science fiction sort of falls into both camps. Although there all flashes of modern day science in it, I can't really say that it feels predictive to me. Those seem more like details to add to the weirdness of the yarn.

Speculative science fiction is pretty much based on “What if?” Writers could imagine the impact of change, or wonder about unexplored areas of reality. Eventually, some of this speculative science fiction produced concepts that became popular, generating global memes, and then other writers wrote adventure science fiction using these concepts as if they were religious icons. Often adventure science fiction based on original speculative ideas have no new speculation on their own. A spaceship is just a spaceship, and alien is just an alien.