I said "literary merit", not merit in general. Sci-fi is very much not about the words used and how they're put together. The authors that can combine the two

I said "literary merit", not merit in general. Sci-fi is very much not about the words used and how they're put together. The authors that can combine the two are very rare - Wolfe, Douglas Adams, Ursula K. Le Guin, and often Russian authors, though that might be from the translation too.