It’s impossible to know exactly when stories of Herakles (Greek)/Hercules (Latin) began to be told. If we are to believe the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, and we probably shouldn’t, Hera...
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 re...
https://reactormag.com/forbidden-desire-and-locked-doors-the-origins-of-rapunzel/
So I’ve just finished reading The Moment of Tenderness, a collection of mostly unpublished stories by the late Madeleine L’Engle, and I’m not sure what to do, or what to tell you. Let’s s...
https://reactormag.com/book-reviews-madeleine-lengle-the-moment-of-tenderness/
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 ...
https://reactormag.com/a-weighty-sequel-rewatching-pixars-toy-story-2/
In its initial release, A Bug’s Life had the dubious fortune of getting released in a year with not one, but two computer animated films about bugs, a deliberately created rivalry that did neit...
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 ...
https://reactormag.com/an-animated-experiment-rewatching-pixars-toy-story/
Most of The White Dragon is about, well, a very special white dragon, and his incredibly privileged and almost as incredibly whiny rider, Lord Jaxom of Ruatha Hold. Heavy on adventures and illnes...
https://reactormag.com/needs-more-dragon-astronauts-the-white-dragon-part-four/
As I reread these Pern books, I keep asking myself, how does this all work? I’m not just talking about the dragons, although many of the questions often left unexplored by the series are associ...
https://reactormag.com/where-are-all-perns-medical-folks-the-white-dragon-part-three/
For the most part, Anne McCaffrey’s first few Pern books had focused on humans, not dragons. Indeed, the Harper Hall Trilogy (the side trilogy written for a young adult audience) had barely inc...
By her own admission, Anne McCaffrey had found Dragonquest (1971) very difficult to write, to the point where she more or less burned down the first draft and started again. Which understandably ...
https://reactormag.com/a-decidedly-privileged-hero-the-white-dragon-part-one/
On its surface, Dragonquest is mostly a novel about social change (and dragons) and resisting social change (and dragons) and exploring some not-entirely-thought-out elements of its predecessor, ...
https://reactormag.com/a-return-to-environmentalism-dragonquest-part-four/
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 La...
https://reactormag.com/a-fairy-tale-of-dubious-origin-aladdin-and-the-wonderful-lamp/
Sure, Impressing a dragon and becoming one of the dragonriders of Pern might seem like the ultimate wish fulfillment. I mean, a dragon! A dragon that can take you anywhere and anywhen! A dragon t...
https://reactormag.com/defending-kylara-dragonquest-part-three/
It’s the next day and I’m still quivering. Spoilers follow for the series finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones. A wheelchair user won the game of thrones. I’m totally unused to this. Totally. ...
https://reactormag.com/a-rare-win-for-wheelchairs-in-game-of-thrones-final-episode/
Anne McCaffrey later admitted that she found writing Dragonquest (1971) very difficult. Vestiges of these difficulties can be found in the middle sections of the novel, which contain several min...
https://reactormag.com/introducing-fire-lizards-dragonquest-part-two/
The first Pern book, Dragonflight, had ended on a hopeful but somewhat tense note, what with the return of the hungry, desperate-to-eat-anything alien Thread; lingering political questions of lan...
https://reactormag.com/queer-relationships-in-pern-dragonquest/
No matter what the method, all works featuring time travel use two premises: Time—whether past, present or future—can be changed. Yeah, no, it can’t. Sorry for the bummer. And sorry for see...
https://reactormag.com/the-constraints-of-time-travel-dragonflight-part-four/
In 1939-40—as work progressed on the fabulously beautiful, fabulously labor intensive and fabulously expensive Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi—Roy Disney (always the practical member of the Di...
https://reactormag.com/disneys-animated-classic-dumbo-was-small-on-story-but-big-on-heart/
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�...
So here’s a question: You live in a hollowed-out volcano with a group of generally amiable, telepathic dragons who can be ridden by humans. But, riding dragons can also be incredibly dangerous,...
https://reactormag.com/education-in-the-weyrs-and-beyond-dragonflight-part-two/
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 enginee...
https://reactormag.com/the-fantasy-roots-of-pern-dragonflight-part-one/
“Either become a woman, or make me a cat.” The image of a beast hiding deep within an enchanted forest in an enchanted castle, waiting to be transformed through love, is generally associated ...
https://reactormag.com/a-transformed-woman-madame-daulnoys-the-white-cat/
Read any collection of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales—any—and one thing becomes immediately apparent: Dude had a really strange, unhealthy obsession with feet. Especially the feet of...
https://reactormag.com/hans-christian-andersens-somewhat-disturbing-obsession-with-feet/
One of the most profound influences on my understanding of fairy tales was The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors (1995), edited by Terri Windling, an anthology I discover...
https://reactormag.com/fairy-tales-for-survivors-the-armless-maiden/
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 ...
https://reactormag.com/a-fairy-tale-with-the-worst-of-husbands-the-swan-maidens/
For all of his use of Christian imagery, to the point of occasionally writing virtual Christian morality tales, Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen tended to avoid mentioning specific Christian...
https://reactormag.com/a-meditation-on-forests-life-and-art-hans-christian-andersens-the-fir-tree/
It’s one of the undeniable, inescapable rites of the season: listening to “Frosty the Snowman.” Short of barring yourself inside the walls of your own home and never venturing out for the e...
https://reactormag.com/a-thin-but-frosty-modern-fairy-tale-frosty-the-snowman/
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...
https://reactormag.com/not-quite-up-to-the-original-the-incredibles-2/
It can be tough—more than tough—to be the youngest sibling in a fairy tale family. All too often your older siblings are mean to you. That is, when they aren’t directly plotting against you...
https://reactormag.com/saving-the-day-with-sewing-and-flowers-the-six-swans/
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 i...
https://reactormag.com/why-you-should-read-the-chronicles-of-narnia-in-publication-order/