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This morning office pools around the globe quieted in eager anticipation. Today the Academy Award nominations were announced. While comedies have warmed the hearts of the Academy voters over the years, most notably at the hand of one Mr. Woody Allen, the genre has certainly played second fiddle to war films, historical dramas and those movies where really beautiful actresses makes themselves really ugly. With comedy as the official underdog, that leaves the world of science fiction in a distant third in a galaxy far, far away or at least relegated to the more technical categories (a.k.a the ones left out of the Oscar pool).

Should we rise up (like the apes) in protest? Well, probably not. This year’s sci-fi nominees include:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II
•    Art Direction
•    Make-up
•    Visual Effects

Reel Steel
•    Visual Effects

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
•    Visual Effects

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
•    Sound Editing
•    Sound Mixing
•    Visual Effects

In these past nine decades, mind-bending sci-fi has even surfaced in the Best Picture category a number of times:

•    1977: Star Wars loses to Annie Hall back when it was just called Star Wars i.e the good old days
•    1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark loses to Chariots of Fire
•    1982: ET loses to Ghandi
•    1989: Field of Dreams loses to Driving Miss Daisy. Maybe it’s not sci-fi exactly but it’s about a bunch of ghosts, right?
•    1995: Apollo 13 loses to Braveheart. (Not so much sci-fi as sci-fact)
•    1999: The Sixth Sense loses to American Beauty
•    2009: Avatar and District 9 lose to The Hurt Locker but the fact that favored-to-win James Cameron cedes victory to his ex-wife definitely falls into the comedy category
•    2010: Inception loses to The King’s Speech

Now I have over looked one big win for the science fiction fanboys and that is Lord of the Rings: Return of the King which took home the big prize in 2003 after it’s two predecessors fell short for Best Picture the in the two preceding years. It also happened to win in all the other ten categories it was nominated making it the most successful film in the Academy’s history. So there you go. But will history every repeat itself and give the gold to the little alien that could? I just don’t think so.

This year the final chapter of the world’s most bankable franchise (that would be the aforementioned Potter film) earned three nominations. The most critically acclaimed in the series is the franchise’s last chance to see if The Boy Who Lived can be the boy who wins. Five of the previous seven films have been nominated for various technical achievements but have never been victorious. Much in the way that people said that Return of the King’s sweep was more for the franchise as a whole, perhaps the Academy will be saying “Accio Oscar!” for Harry and his friends in their saga-ender.

While art direction will probably be given to War Horse because it’s Steven Spielberg and I think they are legally obligated to vote for him because he made Schindler’s List, Harry might have a chance in visual effects against genre companions (and critical darlings) Real Steel and Transformers and as far as best make-up goes, I fail to see how making Meryl Streep look old or Glenn Close look like a man is really impressive at all.

Only time will tell the fate this year’s sci-fi entries. Maybe there exists a parallel universe where they have a category all their own. All I can say is if their system of categorizing genres is anywhere near as wacky as the Golden Globes division of comedy and drama, Bridesmaids is probably nominated as Best Sci-fi film on the grounds that no one has every actually done that into a sink.