widescreen baroque n.

These pure science fiction novels may be categorized as Widescreen Baroque. They like a wide screen, with space and possibly time travel as props, and at least the whole solar system as their setting.

The latter novel [sc. Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination] in particular is a definitive statement in Wide Screen Baroque—a kind of free-wheeling interplanetary adventure, full of brilliant scenery, dramatic scenes, and a joyous taking for granted of the unlikely. Bester writes with natty panache. [Ibid. xi. 314] [Kurt Vonnegut’s] Sirens of Titan, in particular, is a cascade of absurd invention, its hither-thither technique a sophisticated pinch from the Wide Screen Baroque school.

But for those who have already made The Culture’s acquaintance, it bulges with pleasures both great and small. Prominent among the former is the widescreen baroque delight, which only grand-scale space-opera can provide, of a tale played out on the biggest stage the human mind can conceive. Among the latter are the lip-smacking glee with which Banks depicts the roaringly hideous species known simply as The Affront; and another clutch of the wonderful names he gives his Culture spacecraft, including Honest Mistake, Serious Callers Only, Meatfucker and Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival.

I’m trying to summon up an image of the first expertly crafted book of wild cosmic adventure you encountered that opened up your eyes to what a widescreen baroque canvas the galaxy represented. Mixing pathos and beauty with huggermugger and derring-do in various proportions, these novels are frequently bildungsromans, sending youthful protagonists out to learn just that they and the universe are made of.

Children of Dune…was a shamelessly deadweight misadventure, trashing the messianic appeal of Frank Herbert’s enduring legacy, and replacing David Lynch’s widescreen baroque of dreamscape horrors with feeble CGI.

I love doing the space opera; I love widescreen, baroque space opera, to quote the admirable Mr Aldiss. I’ve always loved that phrase. I would like to do it a bit more. There is still Culture stuff to come. There're still areas I haven't explored. I'd like to make it more widescreen baroque. Not for me the kitchen-sink drama, Micky Boy, no-no!

When empires are most robust the peripheries communicate and exchange goods directly with the core…. Then comes the inevitable senescence—the center cannot hold, peripheries revolt, factionalism and fanaticism erupt, infrastructure decays, external enemies penetrate, peripheral customs become more interesting than central ones. This is history on a blockbuster scale—widescreen baroque melodrama.