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July 16, 2008 | 12:09 pm

As I wrote Monday in my post about Fox's new flop, "Meet Dave," the studio wrongly tried to pretend that the Eddie Murphy movie wasn't a sci-fi comedy, even ditching its original title, "Starship Dave." One reason why: Fox's Tom Rothman believes that sci-fi comedies are box-office poison. To prove his point, when we were at lunch not long ago, Rothman stumped me when he challenged me to come up with a sci-fi comedy that had been a bona fide hit.

I guess I should bring a few of our readers along to our next lunch, that is, if Tom is still speaking to me. Either our readers are considerably smarter than me or had a little more time to do some research. Or perhaps both. Either way, they've been filling up our comments box, doing a pretty good job of demolishing Rothman's case--or at least expanding the notion of what constitutes a sci-fi comedy. So the next time you hear someone write off the genre as commercially untenable, here are a few savvy comebacks (and a chance to see a wonderfully funny scene from the sci-fi comedy classic, "Galaxy Quest"):

When it comes to sci-fi comedy moneymakers, Alan Dean Foster volunteered the old Mel Brooks gag-filled comedy "Spaceballs" as well as more recent Pixar hits, "Wall-E" and "The Incredibles."

Anne Huard offers up "Galaxy Quest," which hasn't lost a step nearly a decade after its original release. P. Carumba nominates "Ghostbusters," the Bill Murray-starring comedy that certainly supplied a lot of fun ghost gags and special effects. Julia named most of the above films, adding a few others, including "Short Circuit," "Weird Science," "Dark Star" and (!) "Repo Man," which is definitely more of a cult classic than a hit, since it made about $49.95 when it came out in 1984. OK, actually $3.5 million, though you still have to love any movie that features both Harry Dean Stanton and the Circle Jerks.

But no one could top the dry sci-fi wit of Cy, who wrote in: "I think we've all proved that Tom Rothman is just a Conehead whose brain has been Zapped! because his Stepmother is an Alien. I'll bet he thinks that Earth Girls are Easy too."

"Galaxy Quest" photo from DreamWorks Pictures / ILM

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