I believe that some of the best "literary" fiction is also science fiction. For example much of George Orwell and Ray Bradbury, also Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula LeGui

I believe that some of the best "literary" fiction is also science fiction. For example much of George Orwell and Ray Bradbury, also Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula LeGuin. If you allow for the term "speculative fiction," you really start netting a huge catch. And more and more books once dismissed as "mere" genre titles will be considered to have "literary merit", however vague and dissatisfying that term may be. Isaac Asimov might be an example, also Tolkein.