I was going by the fine article's own definition.

> His definition is about whether there are certain “special people” to whom the general laws of the universe don’t apply

His definition can get fuzzy at the edges - Understand and The Story of Your Life has very special narrators - does it matter why they're special? They could have been a seventh son of a seventh son, foretold by prophecy, gotten abilities from a magic potion, or a burst of gamma rays. It's just that the premise of the stories is science fiction-y. I've just realized the protagonists of "A Wizard of Earthsea" and "The Story of Your Life" have similar beats in their stories, despite belonging to different genres.

Charles Stross (hi!) retconned the Merchant Princes series from straight parallel-worlds fantasy into parallel-worlds SF on book 3 or 4 of the series (it might have been part of lightly rewriting 6 novellas into a trilogy). The transition was seamless, the distinction between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy is gossamer thin.