That is so cool. And to a certain extent, they're right. But, to paraphrase Walt Whitman , science fiction is large. It contains multitudes. Visit the science fiction section of your local bookstore and you'll find sf mysteries, sf military tales, sf thrillers, sf espionage stories, alternate histories, screwball comedies, sf romance and, yes, even literary sf.
Science fiction has it all.
It contains multitudes. You may not have read it, but odds are you're probably familiar with what is generally acknowledged as the first modern science fiction novel. It was written by Mary Woolstonecraft Shelley , the wife of the 19th century romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley , and it's been the basis for innumerable motion pictures. It's called Frankenstein . A lot of people think Frankenstein is a horror story, but it's really a story of science run amok.