The Three Branches of Sci-Fi

Popular science fiction has developed three major branches, each derived from a certain science fiction tradition. Each "school" or "family" is distinct and tends to gather a certain number of mutual fans... thought that's hardly a rock-solid rule, and some fans of some works look at anything similar to "their" work is automatically a rip-off.

The three branches are:

The future will be terrible (or terribly cool, or both).
Exploring space will be terrible (or terribly cool, or both).
Let's have war in space. (And it will be terrible, or terribly cool, or both.)

The Future Will Be Terrible: The oldest vein of science fiction is where this finds its roots. H. G. Wells wrote a lot of stories about how tomorrow is going to be terrible. "The Sleeper Awakes" and others strike me as typical of his works in this area. Pop culture approaches to this are almost any science fiction work that doesn't take place in space, such as Terminator, Robocop, Minority Report (never seen it and don't know much about it, but from what I've heard it fits this category perfectly), and Soylent Green.

Exploring Space Will Be Terrible: Space exploration in fiction has always been far too exciting. It probably, however, is derived from travel literature of the Age of Exploration; works like Marco Polo's journals and Gulliver's Travels (admittedly a satire) are the ancient roots, but there's a more recent category, found in works such as The Voyage of the Space Beagle. The early pop culture explorations had enough strong similarities to Voyage, in fact, that author A. E. van Vogt sued their creators for infringement. What were these early works? Star Trek and Alien. (And if you read this, a story that was later integrated into a longer narrative as part of Voyage of the Space Beagle, it's easy to see where he got the idea.) Works such as Predator, where space comes to Earth (in small scale), are similar.

Let's Have War in Space: The first work that can be said to really fit into this category is The War of The Worlds, which was followed shortly by a schlocky, unauthorized (and completely hilarious) sequel that sort of qualified as the first space opera. Other works that set up for this type were the Lensman series and other space operas, and military science fiction such as Starship Troopers. The best-known example of this in pop culture is certainly Star Wars, and there are plenty of others, like Flash Gordon and, well, almost any other thing that has a science fiction label and takes place in space.

I could go on and on, but for now I'm done.

-Signing off.