George Lucas escreveu como um tipo de combinação de gêneros - incluindo ficção científica, contra algumas das ficções científicas "mais difíceis" com as quais ele cresceu.
De uma entrevista incluída como parte da introdução da novela Star Wars: A New Hope:
"As a kid, I read a lot of science fiction. But instead of reading technical, hard-science writers like Isaac Asimov, I was interested in Harry Harrison and a fantastic, surreal approach to the genre. I grew up on it. Star Wars is a sort of compilation of this stuff, but it's never been put in one story before, never put down on film. There is a lot taken from Westerns, mythology, and samurai movies. It's all the things that are great put together. It's not like one kind of ice cream but rather a very big sundae."
No entanto, nos roteiros anotados, ele reconhece que o que ele criou nunca foi realmente "ficção científica", por si só.
I knew from the beginning that I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale. I really thought I needed to establish from the start that this was a completely made up world so that I could do anything I wanted."