Widescreen baroque, sometimes stylized as wide screen baroque, is a style of science fiction writing "characterized by larger-than-life characters, violence, intrigue, extravagant settings or actions, and fast-paced plotting".[1] It is closely aligned with, and an outgrowth of, space opera fiction. The term is most often applied by
According to the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, the term was first used in an introduction Brian Aldiss wrote for Charles L. Harness's 1964 book, The Paradox Men, in which he likened the book and others like it as being "a wide screen, with space and possibly time travel as props, and at least the whole solar system as their setting."[2] He compared the story to those of Alfred Bester or Kurt Vonnegut.[3] The term was brought to greater attention in 1973, when Aldiss references works by E.E. Smith and A.E. van Vogt as wide-screen baroque in his 1973 work The Billion Year Spree.
However, the term remained obscure until the 1990s. Starting then, the term was used in literary criticism by authors such as Paul Di Filippo, Tony Lee, and Iain Banks. It remains most commonly brought up in reference to the critical writings of Aldiss.[4] However, some authors, such as Banks and Mariko Ōhara, have applied the term to their own writing.[3]
Authors
Authors Aldiss associated with widescreen baroque include:
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
