"Buck Rogers is a science fiction (and later, particularly space opera) character created by Philip Francis Nowlan in the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., subseque

"Buck Rogers is a science fiction (and later, particularly space opera) character created by Philip Francis Nowlan in the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., subsequently appearing in multiple media". Star Wars is basically that, as a movie, tuned and optimized. It's a complicated question, but I think it's quite possible Star Wars would not and could not exist in the absence of the original, pre-Star-Wars, novella. Which became all sorts of things such as comic strips… but started as a book.