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The 1970s: 1975's Jaws is widely considered the first summer blockbuster. The original Star Wars came out in May 1977 and grossed about $307 million domestically in its first run. The other big summer blockbusters of the late 1970s were Jaws 2, Animal House and Alien, according to this site.

The 1980s: Science fiction scored about one summer blockbuster per year, or maybe two in a good year. Except for the late 1980s, when science fiction had a bit of a slump. Here's the roundup, by year. (A year with an asterisk is one where no science fiction film hit the top 10 movies of the year, box-office-wise.)

1980: Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back ($209 million)
1981: Superman II ($108 million)
1982: E.T. ($359 million) and Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan ($79 million).
1983: Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi ($252 million), Superman III ($60 million) and War Games ($80 million)
1984: Ghostbusters ($260 million) and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock ($76 million)
1985: Cocoon ($76 million) and Back To The Future ($211 million)
1986: Short Circuit ($41 million) and Aliens ($85 million)
* 1987: Predator ($60 million) and Robocop ($53 million)
* 1988: None. (Although Big and Willow were big summer hits.)
1989: Batman ($251 million), Honey I Shrunk The Kids ($131 million)

The 1990s: The number of science fiction movies in the summer's biggest movies increased slightly, with some ups and downs. Some years, the biggest blockbusters included films with a lot of special effects and action-adventure themes, but no overt science fictional elements.

1990: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ($135 million), Total Recall ($119 million), Back To The Future Part III ($88 million), Flatliners ($61 million).
1991: Terminator 2 ($205 million)
1992: Batman Returns ($163 million)
1993: Jurassic Park ($357 million)
* 1994: None. (Although True Lies, Speed and The Mask were in the top 10, and non-summer films Stargate and Star Trek: Generations were in the top 20.)
1995: Batman Forever ($184 million), Apollo 13 ($172 million), Waterworld ($88 million)
1996: Independence Day ($306 million), Phenomenon ($105 million)
1997: Men In Black ($251 million), The Lost World: Jurassic Park ($229 million), Face/Off ($112 million), Batman And Robin ($107 million)
1998: Armageddon ($202 million), Deep Impact ($140 million), Godzilla ($136 million), The Truman Show ($126 million)
1999: Star Wars Episode 1 ($431 million), Wild Wild West ($114 million)

The 2000s: It's really just in the last five years that we've seen more than two or three big science fiction movies dominating the summer pretty much every year. A lot of these have been franchises, comic-book movies and sequels, or some combination of the three. The box-office take of the top 10 movies has increased dramatically, with every year's top 10 movies each grossing well over $100 million.

2000: X-Men ($157 million)
2001: Jurassic Park III ($181 million), Planet of The Apes ($180 million)
2002: Spider-Man ($404 million), Star Wars Episode II ($302 million), Signs (228 million), Men In Black II ($190 million)
2003: The Matrix Reloaded ($282 million), X2: X-Men United ($215 million), Terminator 3 ($150 million), Hulk ($132 million)
2004: Spider-Man 2 ($374 million), The Day After Tomorrow ($187 million), I, Robot ($145 million)
2005: Star Wars: Episode III ($380 million), War Of The Worlds ($234 million), Batman Begins ($205 million), Fantastic Four ($155 million)
2006: X-Men: The Last Stand ($234 million), Superman Returns ($200 million)
2007: Spider-Man 3 ($337 million), Transformers($319 million), The Simpsons Movie ($183 million), Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer ($132 million)

Note: Data is from BoxofficeMojo.com. Dollar figures aren't adjusted for inflation. I left out movies like the original Indiana Jones trilogy, which is clearly fantasy. (Unlike the new Indiana Jones movie, if all reports are to be believed.) I also left out spy movies that might have a few science-fiction touches aren't really about a science-fictional premise. Feel free to bitch at me in the comments.

While he'll long be remembered for his role as Captain Bridger on SeaQuest DSV (which he actually asked to be let out of after season two), he had his first starring spot with dolphins in 2010: The Year We Make Contact, a film that was much easier to digest than Kubrick's original. Find out all the little details you've been dying to know about this scifi blasphemy after the jump.

2010 may not have used the gorgeous scenes of space flight that Kubrick's classic had, but it also didn't suffer from some of the colossal wankage like the technicolor spacetrip that goes on for far too long near the end of the film as Bowman enters the monolith. Sure it bent the laws of physics and would make scientists go mental, but it had a plot that was simpler to digest, paid a proper amount of attention to the previous film (even if you did want to punch Lithgow's character in the back of the head), and it even had Helen Mirren in it as a Russian cosmonaut. While it's sure to raise the ire of Kubrick lovers around the world, I simply enjoyed 2010 more than 2001. The scene where Scheider describes how the ships will link up using a pen in zero gravity will stay with me, long after Sheriff Brody fades away.

More random trivia about 2010:

• Kubrick didn't want a sequel to be made (and neither did Arthur C. Clarke... at first) so he had all of the sets and models from 2001 destroyed. Everything had to be recreated from scratch. What a grump.
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• At one point early in the film, Scheider's character Heywood Floyd is shown computing details about the trip on an Apple IIc, while working on the beach.
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• The dolphin set was built in Culver City, California at the MGM studios (it ain't there today, folks) and the two dolphins were named Captain Crunch and Lelani.
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• HAL's inventor Dr. Chandra (in the book, full name Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampillai, imagine filling out applications with that moniker) is finally seen in this film and is played by the wonderfully nebbishy Bob Balaban. He's someone who you could believe would only have computers for friends.
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• HAL's female counterpart SAL is voiced by Candice Bergen, although her name is given as Olga Mallsnerd, which was an amalgam of Louis Malle (her husband at the time) and Mortimer Snerd (one of her dad Edgar Bergin's ventriloquist characters).
  
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• The phrase "My god, it's full of stars!" was extremely important to the sequel, but it was never said in 2001 the movie. Only in the book. Yet it's presented as a quote from Dave Bowman.
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• Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick both appear in this film. Clarke as the U.S. president, and Kubrick as the Soviet Premier on the cover of TIME magazine.
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• Clarke also appears as a man on a bench outside the White House. Although presumably he's not just the president here, idly passing time by feeding the pigeons during a national crisis.
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• A book was published when the film came out called The Odyssey File: The Making of 2010. It contained emails between Arthur C. Clarke and director Peter Hyams, but they end in preproduction, before Clarke had read the script, and only Roy Scheider had been cast, in order to give the publishers sufficient lead time. I'm not sure how long it took to publish a book in 1984, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't from preproduction until the release date of a feature film.
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• Tony Banks, the keyboard player for Genesis, composed the score for the film. However it was later tossed out and completely redone by David Shore. Genesis aficionados around the world would deliver the eyes of Phil Collins for a copy of the mystery score.
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• Clarke put a character named Tanya Kirbuk in the novel as an homage to Stanley Kubrick, who may or may not have loved having Russian characters endowed with a butchered version of his last name.