Der Science Fiction Film is part of the Heyne Filmbibliothek, a Germans series of books on cinema published between 1979 and 2000. Like many before him, its author Christian Hellmann tries to define scifi. And that is never easy.

Hellmann doesn’t try to outline the genre though. Instead he offers a typology of themes. Those include:

• utopian and dystopian societies: ideal or horrific futures for mankind


• space opera: space travel, the final frontier


• monsters and mutations: made by man or caused by his scientific experiments


• invasion: attacks and threats from aliens


• robots and androids: benign or malevolent A.I.


• time travel: humans visiting the past or the future


• disasters: from meteors and dying suns to atomic threats and mad professors causing tsunamis


• alternative or parallel worlds: the what-if scenario

That list seems to make sense: I was able to think of several movies that fit at least one theme on there. But then I ran into what is often referred to as: The Problem - a.k.a. Star Wars.

Star Wars doesn’t really fit in. It’s not based on science, doesn’t invol