I think most people have this misconception that SciFi is all about robots and aliens etc however there are tons of sub genres! Take the kind of genre dystopia which is where the world is in a state of turmoil, you don't have to include robots or anything like that to make it SciFi- it just is!

Actually most stories set in the future can be classified as SciFi (depending on context) and this means that writing SciFi can encompass alot of ideas. You want to write about disease- that's SciFi. You want to write about body mutilation- that's SciFi.

There is really no guild line to what is and isn't SciFi although you do have to use some common sense, usually there is a theme in the book that is recognizable as relatively SciFi.

Also let's take apart the word Science Fiction. Fiction is not fact, so basically any made up story. Then there's science, and as we all know there's lots of types of science. Biology, Physics, Chemistry and then there are sciences that stem from those like biochemistry. That's like SciFi, things stem from it which is why we have so many sub genres.

So don't think your story has to be this whole outer space, alien thing. It could be quite a lot of things really (within reason)

- E