Science Fiction - Pure Fantasy?

As a lover of Science Fiction I often find myself standing in frustration in the middle of bookstores, hands on my hips wondering where in the hell the Sci-Fi novels are kept.  One thing is for certain: they are not in the Sci-Fi section.  As I am sure many of you would have noticed the wonderful and unique category of Sci-Fi is being overwhelmed by popular Fantasy novels. If the book stores were to be believed Science Fiction and Fantasy are synonymous and interchangeable. 

For some reason this idea both confuses and infuriates me.  It may be due to the fact that true Science Fiction is slowly being pushed out and replaced with books I simply have no fancy for.  In many cases I find it quite difficult to even find the classic Sci-Fi authors such as Asimov and Philip K. Dick amongst the sea of Hobbits and dragons.  I attended a trivia night last year that had a round claiming that ten pictures depicted aliens and we were to name where they were from.  Maybe it is just me but I don't consider Teen Wolf to be any kind of alien.

Perhaps I am just a perfectionist with little tolerance for deviation from what I believe are true Science Fiction novels and movies.  To me Sci-Fi is time and space travel to strange and distant lands, alien invasion and contact, alterations in the fabric of our universe and the laws that govern them, robots and androids and all they stand for, dystopic and utopic worlds.  What I believe it are not under this umbrella includes magic, fairies and dragons with no scientific basis.  I will admit there is bound to be some kind of overlap in the two genres but never will a novel such as I Robot be fantasy as Lord of the Rings will never be Science Fiction.  One has absolute logic and science and the other controlled by magic and whimsy.

I am not saying that I don't wish to see any Fantasy novels grace our shelves, I am wishing that bookstores and the like would make my life easier and separate the two, or at the very least have some Science Fiction in the Sci-Fi section. .  Nothing is more disheartening than walking into a bookstore and finding a huge Sci-Fi section filled with Fantasy. I think I will go and read my books now instead of getting all grumpy and telling kids to get off my damn lawn...