This may be meaningless to you, but did you know that today was the 34th birthday of Star Wars?
I was nine. I saw it in an old theater with balconies. I went with my dad, his second wife, and her youngest daughter. My father and I loved it. My step-sister thought it was okay–but the guys were cute. And my step-mother hated it.
But who cares about that?
And maybe you don’t like it.
But that film influenced thousands. What if you ever wrote something that had that kind of impact? It’s a bit harder to get that with print, but JK Rowling managed it. Can you aspire to a story on that scale or does it happen with the writer not even realizing what is coming next?
My stories are certainly not epic. No maybe about that. But I have finished story 25! Really it’s a story drop in the world’s narrative bucket (or maybe that should be ocean).
“Stay on target!”
Marta Pelrine-Bacon 
I liked Star Wars too. I was eleven, going on twelve, and it was one of those iconic movies of my time. The other I can readily remember was Jaws. The three biggest celebrities in America at the time were two robots and a shark, Paul Newman ruminated on TV around that time. Ah, those were the days, weren’t they?
How about Anne McAffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series? or Dune? The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Didn’t those books around that time have that same sort of deep, resonant impact on thw world, or at least on their genres? Charlaine Harris’s Sooky Stackhouse books sparked True Blood, Anne Rice has entire forums dedicated to her vampire characters wherein very lonely and obsessive people do RPGs and “become” those characters… despite Ms. Rice’s vehement request that her intellectual property NOT be used in this way.
Closer to Star Wars came Star Trek. How could Lucas have done what he did without first having the path blazed by Roddenberry? Star Trek was a two-season run TV show with a now 50-plus year history of spin-offs, movies and even a “reboot” now. Someone born after the series ended has taken a new approach and tried to marry Wars and Trek (fail, IMO).
I believe there are, indeed, epics which rival Star Wars in their impact and grand-scale reach.
I didn’t like them all, but I did like Star Wars. Not so much it’s sequels or prequels, however. That’s only me, I’m sure.
Those were the days!
Some of those books definitely had a great impact on their genre. And some certainly spilled over. I think of Star Wars as a spill over. The Pern series as its impact more in its genre. Good luck to Ms. Rice on telling people how not to react to her characters. I don’t read her books, and she seems like a character from a book herself, but her books sure have permeated the culture. I know her work in spite of not reading it. Well, I tried to read her Sleeping Beauty series… I didn’t get very far.
I’m sure you’re not alone in your opinion of the Star Trek reboot. I loved it. But JJ Abrams played fast and loose with certain Trek elements. The thing is though—-here we are, all these years later, still wanting to tell Trek stories!
As for Star Wars the originals are the best. The later three…okay.
But you know the creators of these things couldn’t have imagined the impact they were going to have. Sure, they may have dreamed about it, but I wonder if it amazed them at the time (is Lucas still amazed or does he take its existence for granted now?).
I do love my classic sci-fi!