Sunday Reading: The Allure of Science Fiction

In the mid-seventies, when the screenwriter and director George Lucas was attempting to sell movie studios an idea he had about a space odyssey, even his friends thought the concept was a bit far-fetched. “What’s this thing called a Wookiee?” a fellow-screenwriter recalled Lucas’s friends wondering. “What’s a Jedi, George? You want to make a space opera?” In 1997, John Seabrook visited Lucas at Skywalker Ranch, in California, and spoke with him about his original vision for the now iconic films and his thoughts on the future of the franchise. With “Star Wars,” Seabrook observes, science fiction took a leap into the commercial mainstream, and the public’s perception of the genre was forever changed….