Mari Ness
Tor.com
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Past articles by Mari:
Forbidden Desire and Locked Doors: The Origins of “Rapunzel”
Stories of maidens locked into towers or behind walls litter European folklore, appearing in fairy tales, saints’ lives, and dubious histories and chronicles. In part, these tales echoed the … → Read More
A Weighty Sequel: Rewatching Pixar’s Toy Story 2
For decades, Disney executives never bothered with sequels, apart from the occasional follow-up to an unusual project (The Three Caballeros, which if not exactly a sequel, was meant to follow up Sa… → Read More
An Animated Experiment: Rewatching Pixar’s Toy Story
Pixar did not start out intending to make films. The company was founded back in the late 1970s as part of Lucasfilm, as a division called The Graphics Group, dedicated to exploring just how the st… → Read More
Strange Horizons - Gretel's Bones By Mari Ness
small bones / holding flecks of ash / rigid in her hands. → Read More
A Fairy Tale of Dubious Origin: “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp”
In Western literature, the best known story of the Arabic The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, also known to English readers as The Arabian Nights, is arguably “Aladdin and the Wonderful … → Read More
Putting the Science Back into Fantasy, One Hint at a Time: Dragonflight, Part Three
Back in the late 1950s, editor John Campbell of Analog was looking for a fantasy piece that could compete with the increasingly popular subgenre of fantasy—a subgenre represented, in Campbell’… → Read More
The Fantasy Roots of Pern: Dragonflight, Part One
In later interviews with press and fans, Anne McCaffrey would bristle at any attempt to classify her Dragonriders of Pern series as fantasy. Her dragons, she pointed out, were genetically engineere… → Read More
A Fairy Tale with the Worst of Husbands: “The Swan Maidens”
Many tales of animal brides and grooms are tales of high romance and love. Others are tales of arranged marriages, carefully crafted to reassure audiences that yes, happiness and even love could be… → Read More
Not Quite Up to the Original: The Incredibles 2
For both Pixar and Disney, the question was not if The Incredibles (2004) would have a sequel, but when The Incredibles would have a sequel. Pixar, after all, had already released one sequel, Toy S… → Read More
Why You Should Read The Chronicles of Narnia in Publication Order
As someone who has been known to start series smack in the middle—with both books and television shows—I tend to be a bit agnostic on the question of “what order should I read/watch these in?… → Read More
Passivity and Turbulence: Hans Christian Andersen’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Even the most magical early stories of Hans Christian Andersen had, like most fairy tales, focused on, well, people and other living creatures. That is, what fairy tales were supposed to be about, … → Read More
Revealing the UK Cover for Drew Williams’ A Chain Across the Dawn
It’s been three years since Esa left her backwater planet to join the ranks of the Justified. Together, she and fellow agent Jane Kamali have been traveling across the known universe, searching for… → Read More
Chicken Feet and Fiery Skulls: Tales of the Russian Witch Baba Yaga
Despite her appearances in numerous folktales, Baba-Yaga is one of the few creatures of fairy tale that I first encountered strictly through paintings and images, rather than through text or animat… → Read More
Read an Excerpt from M.T. Hill’s Sci-Fi Thriller Zero Bomb
We’re excited to share the cover and a preview excerpt from M.T. Hill’s Zero Bomb, a startling near-future sci-fi mystery focused on the real-world issues of increased automation, state… → Read More
Hans Christian Andersen’s Tales of Flight: “The Storks” and “The Marsh King’s Daughter”
Sure, The Ugly Duckling is better known. Sure, The Little Mermaid became a multi-million—probably edging towards a billion now—franchise property. Sure, Thumbelina and The Six Swans show up in more… → Read More
Mirage Author Somaiya Daud on Her Moroccan-Inspired Fantasy World
Somaiya Daud’s debut epic fantasy novel Mirage follows Amani, an eighteen-year-old dreamer living in a world controlled by the all powerful Vathek empire. All Amani wants is freedom: freedom … → Read More
Family Tradition and Destiny: Pixar’s Coco
When director Lee Unkrich first pitched the idea of an animated film focused on a Mexican protagonist, it was not a completely new idea for either Pixar or parent company Disney. Disney, after all,… → Read More
The Fairy Tale Trials of Younger Sons: “The Golden Goose”
Sometimes I’m astonished that so many youngest sons—especially third sons, or seventh sons—make it out of fairy tales alive, or don’t decide to just walk out of the fairy tale, deciding… → Read More
Victor Milán Talks Wild Cards
In August 2017, George R.R. Martin hosted a big Wild Cards event at his theatre in Santa Fe. As part of the festivities, Martin taped interviews with a dozen of the attending writers, including the… → Read More
Three Films and This World Still Makes No Sense: Pixar’s Cars 3
“Lesson one. You’re old. Accept that.” I don’t like the Cars franchise. Especially the film part of it. There, I said it. What started out as a vaguely creepy and not really… → Read More