Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
I tend to disagree with that, IMO the best science fiction stories are good stories that literally could not exist as stories, without the science fiction element.
I'll give a couple of Clarke examples. The Nine Billion Names of God and Childhood's End
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Indeed.
The generally accepted guideline is that if the scientific/technological element is removed and the story falls apart, it is Science Fiction. If the SF elements are removed and the core story survives then they are just props, decoration, or a setting and it isn't SF.
In the romance field there is an entire subgenre dedicated to stories set in SF (and fantasy) settings; future cities, spaceships, lost colonies, whatever. The stories are correctly flagged as paranormal romance because the story is about the relationships, not the SF elements.
The same applies to mysteries in SF settings.
Crossovers can happen but they are rare. And hard to really pull off.