Magic Regencies: How Fantasy Forms a Hybrid

Author
Publication year
1994
Journal
Popular Culture Review
Volume
5.1
Pages
85-93
Comment

This essay examines recent fantasy works by Patricia Wrede and Teresa Edgerton and space opera by Walter Jon Williams as examples not only of the combining of Regency and fantasy frameworks, but also how successful hybrids are made. A contrasting example, a Regency mystery by Kate Ross, illustrates the pitfalls of creating hybrids. In general, I offer the theory that popular hybrids can form between any two compatible frameworks—fantasy and Regency are one such pair—or hybrids may form when one strong framework is allowed to dominate another, as fantasy does in several works by the three authors cited above. In a dominant hybrid, the chief elements of each framework are retained, while the more flexible one adapts, from plot to detail, the less elastic or less clearly defined one. (85)