This is silly. Star Wars is classic pulp magazine SF,aka Space Opera, in concept, if lately clumsy in execution. Space Opera WAS SF, or most of it, in the 1930s-50s.
This stuff was aimed directly at geeky boys and still is.
Some of the boys never grow up of course.
And some of the Space Opera did approach actual literature, as with Dune. But SF never needed to be great literature to be authentic or appealing to its target audience.
Octavia Butlers stuff is come-lately chick-lit junk.
It's amazing to me how many people are arguing that cowboys- with-rayguns is not science fiction. Of course it is. At one time, it was just about all there was. It grew, it matured, it was more thoroughly explored as a genre, but that does not make the pulp stuff "not science fiction" any more than it makes a film series with FTL travel, galactic empires, and multiple alien species "similar to the Lord of the Rings."
It's escapist ψφ. It's not deep, but I would take it over Octavia Butler's dreck any day of the week.