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 involve humanity or alien threats to earth. No one travels through time, it’s not based on a what-if premise and no mad scientists threaten to destroy the planet.

In fact, going by that list Star Wars has nothing to do with scifi but everything with fantasy.

So, maybe if scifi deals with external conflicts between man and the outside world, fantasy deals with the internal struggle of a fantastic society in turmoil.

Then, if scifi is based on the “scientification” of known (or imagined) technology, then fantasy features the magic and esoterism of a force (the Force?) beyond that of human rationale.

And finally, if scifi is about humanity trying to fight off non-human interference, fantasy is about non-human worlds seeking unification within their own systems of variant societies.

Think of it: a lot of scifi ends in a conflict that sees humanity overcome an unnatural “alien” invasion and destroy its opponents. Fantasy – for what I know – seems the kinder counterpart, often ending with an acceptance of each other’s natural differences.

Perhaps, we simply have no idea what space travel or a close encounter or actual contact would be like. Or what it would do to us.

Perhaps, we need the “Overview Effect” to take over first, then see how scientific scifi is, how fantastic fantasy has to be…