Tolkien is for Fantasy? I notice that if you ever bring up the words Sci-Fi, the first thing that comes up to the average person's mind is Star Wars. In fact no other work of fiction is praised as much for impacting Science Fiction as it is today as Star Wars and Star Trek. And while Star Trek is easily the most famous Sci Fi after Star Wars, as far as popularity contest goes Star Wars wins the battle.

Star Wars goes as far as being the MOST LUCRATIVE Sci Fi franchise ever made and the Star Wars books are listed as among the Bestselling book of all time on Wikipedia . Star Wars consistently is on the list of highest grossing films of all time-actually at least two of the recent Prequel movies made it on the list of highest grossing films of to date. The Star Wars movie series as a whole are listed as the 4th highest grossing movie franchise and the original Star Wars is even the 3rd HIGHEST GROSSING movie of all time with inflation taken into account!

So commercially alone Star Wars is already a monster in its impact. I have heard of its other cultural impact.

However I am curious however how it specifically impacted Sci Fi. The stuff I read implies Star Wars impacted Sci-Fi in a much similar manner to how Tolkien impacted Fantasy-Tolkien may not have created Fantasy but his Middle Earth universe is the basis for all modern Fantasy fictions across all mediums and its hard-pressed to find a modern fantasy story that is not indirectly influenced by Tolkien's lore. In addition The Lord of the Rings is the MOST MAINSTREAM Fantasy series to the point its the second best-selling book of all time and even people who hate fantasy at least read The Lord of the Rings or watched its even more popular movie adaptations by Peter Jackson.

So basically Star Wars is much like Tolkien is for modern Sci Fi. Its not the first nor did it create all the Sci Fi things today but almost every Sci Fi story created after the release of the first SW film has taken things from it and expanded on it. Epic battles in space, laser blades using energy that can pierce through anything, and so many more things I can list. These things were already featured in earlier Science Fiction but not on the same flashy scale Star Wars did and you can tell every modern Sci Fi story to date that features such cliches have copied the manner they were portrayed in Star Wars that Star Wars's influence cannot be ignored.


Of course that is my speculation. Its been years since I got into Star Wars and I'm not into Sci Fi as much as I am into Fantasy. I know Star Trek is an easy contender for being the basis of modern Sci Fi against Star Wars but I speculated Star Wars because it is by far the more mainstream work of Science Fiction and I seen more things inspired by Star Wars than Star Trek (though I will openly state I also see Star Trek's influence in modern Sci Fi).

Can anyone helped me here?Am I correct when I state Star Wars is the LOTR of Sci Fi in terms of its influence?I already am pretty sure Star Wars is for Sci Fi what LOTR is for fantasy!