Fiction

Lit fic has it's tropes just as sci-fi has it's tropes. And it doesn't sell as well! Of course neither sci-fi or lit fic sell near mysteries, let alone romance...
I like seeing literary authors play with sci-fi for several reasons, mainly because they don't know the rules they don't know they are breaking them. At the same time, I don't appreciate when they look down on sci-fi, like Margaret Atwood tends to. And Ishiguro made some statements that sounded pretty condescending about spec fic when he was promoting Buried Giant, but he later clarified that he was talking more about critical attitudes than the actual works.
But the best of spec fic can stand next to the best lit fic - no one can say that Ursula LeGuin was less of an author because she wrote about aliens and magicians.