So "speculative fiction" would cover the whole spectrum from present-day tech to outright fantasy. It would get around the question of classifying what's halfway in between, what's sometimes called "science fantasy".
I think that a present-day-tech story would qualify as speculative fiction if it featured people being creative with our advanced technology -- technothrillers and the like.
This gets into a genre that may be called periodpunk or technologypunk about people being creative with the advanced technology of various periods.
Stonepunk -- like Jean Auel's stories
Bronzepunk -- Bronze Age, like Pharaonic-Egypt Old, Middle, New Kingdoms
Sandalpunk, classicpunk, ironpunk -- classical Greco-Roman
Castlepunk, candlepunk, middlepunk, plaguepunk, dungeon punk -- medieval
Clockpunk -- Renaissance
Steampunk -- 19th cy.
Dieselpunk -- early 20th cy.
Atomicpunk -- 1950's
Transistorpunk, psychedelicpunk -- 1960's
Spacepunk -- what people imagined space travel to be like in past decades, like retrofuturism
Finally, I can't resist quoting Isaac Asimov on how not to write about cars:
"The automobile came thundering down the stretch, its mighty tires pounding, and its tail assembly switching furiously from side to side, while its flaring foam-flecked air intake seemed rimmed with oil." Then, when the car has finally performed its task of rescuing the girl and confounding the bad guys, it sticks its fuel intake hose into a can of gasoline and quietly fuels itself.
There could be the excitement of a last-minute failure in the framistan and the hero can be described as ingeniously designing a liebestraum out of an old baby carriage at the last minute and cleverly hooking it up to the bispallator in such a way as to mutonate the karrogel.
