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His Dark Materials
Northern Lights The Subtle Knife The Amber Spyglass
Author	Philip Pullman
Language	English
Genre	Fantasy
Publisher	Scholastic
Published	1995–2000
Media type	Print

The trilogy (North American versions)

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman comprising Northern Lights (1995, published as The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming-of-age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes against a backdrop of epic events. The three novels have won various awards, most notably The Amber Spyglass, the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year prize, while the trilogy as a whole took third place in the BBC's Big Read poll in 2003.^[1]

The story involves fantasy elements such as witches and armoured polar bears, and alludes to a broad range of ideas from fields such as physics, philosophy, theology and spirituality. The trilogy functions in part as a retelling and inversion of John Milton's epic, Paradise Lost; with Pullman commending humanity for what Milton saw as its most tragic failing.^[2] The series has drawn criticism from some religious individuals and groups due to its alleged negative portrayal of organized religion.

Pullman's publishers have primarily marketed the series to young adults, but Pullman also intended to speak to adults.^[3] North American printings of The Amber Spyglass have censored passages describing Lyra's incipient sexuality.^[4][5]

Pullman has published two short stories related to His Dark Materials: "Lyra and the Birds", which appears with accompanying illustrations in the small hardcover book Lyra's Oxford (2003), and "Once Upon a Time in the North" (2008). He has been working on another, larger companion book to the series, The Book of Dust, for several years.

The London Royal National Theatre staged a major, two-part adaptation of the series in 2003–2004, and New Line Cinema released a film based on Northern Lights, titled The Golden Compass, in 2007.

Series titles

Satan struggles through hell in a Gustave Doré illustration of Paradise Lost.

The title of the series, His Dark Materials, comes from seventeenth century poet John Milton's Paradise Lost, Book 2:

Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross.

— Book 2, lines 910–920

Pullman earlier proposed to name the series The Golden Compasses.^[6]

This term also appears in the poem Paradise Lost, where it poetically refers to the "compasses" with which God shaped the world, an idea depicted in William Blake's painting The Ancient of Days. Due to confusion with the other common meaning of compass (the navigational instrument) this phrase in the singular became the title of the American edition of Northern Lights (the book prominently features a device that one might label a "golden compass").

Settings

The trilogy takes place across a multiverse, moving between many parallel worlds (See Worlds in His Dark Materials). In Northern Lights, the story takes place in a world with some similarities to our own; dress-style resembles that of our Victorian era, and technology has not evolved to include automobiles or fixed-wing aircraft, while zeppelins feature as a notable mode of transport. It appears that in this world the Protestant Reformation never took place — the text refers to John Calvin as a Pope — or possibly that Reformation succeeded only in that it overthrew the Catholic Church and installed a Protestant clerical hierarchy. The Church as portrayed by Pullman (often referred to as the "Magisterium") exerts a strong control over this world. In The Subtle Knife, the story moves between the world of the first novel, our own world, and in another world, a city called Cittàgazze. In The Amber Spyglass it crosses through an array of diverse worlds.

One distinctive aspect of Pullman's story comes from his concept of "dæmons". In the birth-universe of the story's protagonist Lyra Belacqua, a human individual's soul manifests itself throughout life as an animal-shaped "dæmon" that always stays near its human counterpart. Witches and some humans have entered areas where dæmons cannot physically enter; after suffering horrific separation-trauma, their dæmons can then move as far away from their humans as desired.^[7]

Dæmons usually only talk to their own associated humans, but they can communicate with other humans and with other dæmons autonomously. During the childhood of its associated human, a dæmon can change its shape at will, but with the onset of adolescence it settles into a single form. The final form reveals the person's true nature and personality, implying that these stabilize after adolescence. Pullmanian society considers it "the grossest breach of etiquette imaginable"^[8] for one person to touch another's dæmon — this would violate the most strict of taboos. "A human being with no dæmon is like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out: something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of night-ghasts, not the waking world of sense."^[9]

In some worlds, Spectres prey upon the dæmons of adults, consuming them and rendering said dæmons' humans essentially catatonic; they lose all thought and eventually fade away and die. Dæmons and their humans can also become separated through intercision, a process involving cutting the dæmon away from the human. This process can take place in a medical setting, as with the titanium and manganese guillotine used at Bolvangar, or as a form of torture used by the Skraelings. This separation entails a high mortality rate and changes both human and dæmon into a zombie-like state. Severing the link using the silver guillotine method releases tremendous amounts of unnamed energy, convertible to anbaric (electric) power.

At first glance, the universe of Northern Lights appears considerably behind that of our own world (it could be seen as resembling an industrial society between the late C19th and the outbreak of the First World War), but in many fields it equals or surpasses ours. For instance, it emerges that Lyra's world has the same knowledge of particle physics, referred to as "experimental theology", that we do. In The Amber Spyglass, discussion takes place about an advanced inter-dimensional weapon which, when aimed using a sample of the target's DNA, can track the target to any universe and disrupt the very fabric of space-time to form a bottomless abyss into nothing, forcing the target to suffer a fate far worse than normal death. Other advanced devices include the Intention Craft, which carries (amongst other things) an extremely potent energy-weapon, though this craft, first seen and used outside Lyra's universe, may originate in the work of engineers from other universes.

Series

Northern Lights (The Golden Compass)

In Northern Lights (published in some countries as The Golden Compass), the heroine, Lyra Belacqua, a young girl brought up in the cloistered world of Jordan College, Oxford, and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, learn of the existence of Dust, a strange elementary particle believed by the Magisterium to provide evidence for Original Sin. Dust appears less attracted to the innocence of children, and this gives rise to grisly experiments carried out on kidnapped children and their dæmons in the distant North by scientists of the Magisterium. Lyra, initially excited at being placed in the care of the elegant and mysterious Mrs. Coulter, discovers to her horror that the latter works as a member of the secretive General Oblation Board (known among children as the "Gobblers") which kidnaps the children and runs the experiments; a horror compounded later when Lyra identifies Marisa Coulter as her own mother. She also learns that Lord Asriel, ostensibly her uncle, is her father. Lyra runs away from Coulter, whereupon the Gyptians (a gypsy-like culture based on riverboats) find her and mount an expedition to rescue the missing children. Lyra and Pantalaimon accompany them, also hoping to save their best friend Roger Parslow. With the aid of the exiled panserbjørne ("armoured bear") Iorek Byrnison who becomes Lyra's protector, John Faa and Farder Coram, the leaders of the Gyptian people, the aeronaut Lee Scoresby, and the witch Serafina Pekkala, they save the children from the experiments and destroy the research station, then continue on to Svalbard, the home of the armoured bears, where Lyra aids Iorek in winning back his kingdom by killing his rival. Lyra continues on to find Lord Asriel, exiled to Svalbard at Mrs. Coulter's request. Lord Asriel had been researching how to open a bridge to another world. This requires a vast amount of energy, acquired by severing Roger from his dæmon, killing Roger in the process. Lord Asriel, followed by Lyra and Pantalaimon, journey through the gate separately in search of the source of Dust. Coulter wishes to destroy Dust and thus Original Sin, while Asriel wished to kill "The Authority" (God) and bring an end to the Magisterium.

The Subtle Knife

In The Subtle Knife, Lyra journeys through the Aurora to Cittàgazze, an otherworldly city whose denizens have discovered a clean path between worlds at a far earlier point in time than others in the storyline. Cittàgazze's reckless use of the technology has released soul-eating Specters, rendering much of the world incapable of transit by adults. Here Lyra meets Will Parry, a twelve-year-old boy from our world. Will, who recently killed a man to protect his ailing mother, has stumbled into Cittàgazze in an effort to locate his long-lost father. Will becomes the bearer of the eponymous Subtle Knife, a tool forged 300 years ago by Cittàgazze's scientists from the same materials used to make Bolvangar's silver guillotine. One edge of the knife can create portals between worlds and the other edge easily cuts through any form of matter. After meeting with witches from Lyra's world, they journey on. Will finds his father, who had gone missing in Lyra's world under the assumed name of Stanislaus Grumman, only to watch him murdered almost immediately by a witch who loved him but was turned down, and Lyra is kidnapped.

The Amber Spyglass

The Amber Spyglass tells of Lyra's kidnapping by her mother, Mrs. Coulter, an agent of the Magisterium who has learned of the prophecy identifying Lyra as the next Eve. A pair of angels, Balthamos and Baruch, inform Will that he must travel with them to give the Subtle Knife to Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, as a weapon against The Authority. Will ignores the angels; with the help of a local girl named Ama, the Bear King Iorek Byrnison, and Lord Asriel's Gallivespian spies, the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia, he rescues Lyra from the cave where her mother has hidden her from the Magisterium, which has become determined to kill her before she yields to temptation and sin like the original Eve.

Will, Lyra, Tialys, and Salmakia journey to the Land of the Dead, temporarily parting with their dæmons to release the ghosts from their captivity imposed by the oppressive Authority. Mary Malone, a scientist originating from Will's home world, interested in Dust (or Dark Matter/Shadows, as she knows them), travels to a land populated by strange sentient creatures called Mulefa. There she learns of the true nature of Dust, which is defined as panpsychic particles of self-awareness. Dust is both created by and nourishes life which has become self-aware. Lord Asriel and the reformed Mrs. Coulter work to destroy the Authority's Regent Metatron. They succeed, but themselves suffer annihilation in the process. The Authority himself dies of his own frailty when Will and Lyra free him from the crystal prison wherein Metatron had trapped him, able to do so because an attack by cliff-ghasts kills or drives away the prison's protectors. When Will and Lyra emerge from the land of the dead, they find their dæmons. The book ends with Will and Lyra falling in love but realising they cannot live together in the same world, because all windows must be closed to prevent the loss of Dust, and because each of them can only live full lives in their native worlds. During the return, Mary learns how to see her own dæmon, who takes the form of a black Alpine chough. Lyra loses her ability to intuitively read the alethiometer and determines to learn how to use her conscious mind to achieve the same effect.

Related works by Philip Pullman

Lyra's Oxford

The first of two short novels, Lyra's Oxford takes place two years after the timeline of The Amber Spyglass. A witch who seeks revenge for her son's death in the war against the Authority draws Lyra, now 15, into a trap. Birds mysteriously rescue her and Pan, and she makes the acquaintance of an alchemist, formerly the witch's lover.

Once Upon a Time in the North

This short novel serves as a prequel to His Dark Materials and focuses on the 24-year-old Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby. After winning his hot-air balloon, Scoresby heads to the North, landing on the Arctic island Novy Odense, where he finds himself pulled into a dangerous conflict between the oil-tycoon Larsen Manganese, the corrupt mayoral candidate Ivan Poliakov, and his longtime enemy of the Dakota Country, Pierre McConville. The story tells of Lee and Iorek's first meeting, and of how they overcame these enemies.

The Book of Dust

The in-the-works companion to the trilogy, The Book of Dust will not continue the story, but will offer several short stories with the same characters, world, etc. The book will touch on research into Dust as well as on the portrayal of religion in His Dark Materials. Pullman has not yet finished writing this work.

Future books

Pullman has also told of his hope to publish a small green book about Will:

Lyra's Oxford was a dark red book. Once Upon a Time in the North will be a dark blue book. There still remains a green book. And that will be Will's book. Eventually...

—Philip Pullman

Pullman confirmed this in an interview with two Israeli fans in August 2007.^[10]

Characters

• Lyra Belacqua, a wild, tomboyish 11-year-old girl, has grown up in the fictional Jordan College, Oxford. She is described as skinny with dark blonde hair and blue eyes. She prides herself on her capacity for mischief, especially her ability to lie with "bare-faced conviction". Because of her ability, Iorek Byrnison gives her the byname "Silvertongue". Her dæmon Pantalaimon, a shapeshifting incarnation of a part of her soul that all characters from her world have, attends her constantly.

• Will Parry, a sensible, morally conscious, highly assertive 12-year-old boy from our world, serves as the bearer of the Subtle Knife. He is very independent and responsible for his age, having looked after his mentally unstable mother for many years. He is strong for his age, and knows how to remain inconspicuous. At the end of his adventures he discovers the name and form of his dæmon: Kirjava, a cat.

• Lord Asriel, ostensibly Lyra's uncle, later emerges as her father. He opens a rift between the worlds in his pursuit of Dust. His dream of establishing a Republic of Heaven to rival The Authority's Kingdom leads him to use his considerable power and force of will to raise a grand army from across the multiverse to rise up in rebellion. His dæmon is Stelmaria, a snow leopard.

• Marisa Coulter, the coldly beautiful, highly manipulative mother of Lyra and former lover of Lord Asriel, serves the Church in kidnapping children for research into the nature of Dust. She has black hair, a thin build, and looks younger than she is. She later captures Lyra and hides her away, seeking to protect her; a change of heart in the last book. Later in the story, Mrs. Coulter switches sides regularly between the Authority and Lord Asriel's Republic. Her maternal instincts finally win out in the end, as she uses her duplicitous core to deceive the Regent Metatron, working together with Lord Asriel to pull him down into the abyss. Her dæmon, a golden monkey (named Ozymandias in the BBC Radio adaptations, but never named in the books), has a cruel, abusive streak.

• Mary Malone, a physicist and former nun from the same world as Will, finds her studies of Dust (referred to as Shadows, shadow particles or dark matter in her world) draw her into Lyra's adventures. She lives for a time amongst the mulefa, and constructs the Amber Spyglass in an effort to discern why Dust appears to be leaving the universe. Mary relates a story of a lost love to Will and Lyra, playing the serpent to the children's Adam and Eve and serving as the catalyst for their coming-of-age and the halting of Dust's exodus. With effort, Mary discovers that she too has a dæmon, which takes the shape of an Alpine chough.

• Metatron, a human being of biblical times, Enoch, transfigured into an angel. After the rebellion of the "fallen angels" he took the regency of the throne of the Authority, implanting the monotheistic religions across the universes and so affirming his power and rule. Though an angel, he still feels human feelings, and so becomes vulnerable to the temptation of Marisa Coulter.

• Iorek Byrnison, a massive armoured bear, regains his armour, his dignity, and his kingship over the Panserbjørne with Lyra's help. In gratitude, and impressed by her cunning, he dubs her "Lyra Silvertongue". A powerful warrior and armoursmith, Iorek repairs the Subtle Knife when it shatters and goes to war against The Authority when it threatens Lyra and Will. As a bear (as opposed to a human), he has no dæmon; instead, his armour, which he himself shapes, constitutes his soul.

• John Faa (king of the Western gyptians) and Farder Coram lead the community of river gyptians. When the Church kidnaps the gyptians' children to serve in experiments in the frozen outpost of Bolvangar, John Faa and Farder Coram mount a rescue-expedition, bringing Lyra along. Outside the stories, several historical Gypsies have borne the name "John Faa", and a "John Faa" also appears as a romantic hero in a ballad about Gypsies.

• Lee Scoresby, a rangy Texan aeronaut, (in the series, Texas' annexation by the United States either never happened or was fought off, making Texas a separate country from the USA) pilots a balloon for Lyra and the gyptians in their expedition North; he is also a friend of Iorek Byrnison, having served, and comes to aid Lyra in a number of her battles. His loyal dæmon Hester takes the form of a hare. He dies while fending off soldiers of the Muscovy Empire in an effort to save Stanislaus Grumman.

• Stanislaus Grumman (true name John Parry, or Jopari [Tartar pronunciation]), Will Parry's explorer father, once served as an officer in the Royal Marines. As an expedition-guide he leaves his/Will's world by accident during a blizzard in the Brooks Range, Alaska^[11]. He traverses by one of the many trans-dimensional windows which leads to Lyra's World. Arriving there, he uses the name Stanislaus Grumman, earns a doctorate, and explores the northern lands, unsuccessfully trying to find the entry/exit window he came through. The indigenous Tartars, believing him a shaman, initiate him into their tribe. During the initiation he receives a small ceremonial hole in the top of his skull. His inherited dæmon, is a female osprey named Sayan Kötör, which visibly manifested when he entered Lyra's world. Lee Scoresby gives his life to save Grumman, and eventually Grumman meets up with his son, but a vengeful witch whose love he once spurned shoots him down, and he eventually returns as a ghost to help Lyra and Will in the War. (Grumman's pseudonym may allude to Stanislaw Ulam, the renowned nuclear physicist.)

• Serafina Pekkala reigns as the beautiful queen of a clan of Northern witches. Her snow-goose dæmon Kaisa, like all witches' dæmons, can travel much farther apart from her than the dæmons of humans. Serafina Pekkala comes to the aid of Lyra and her friends on a number of occasions. Though several hundred years old when Lyra encounters her, she appears youthful and may live for centuries more, as with all witches, in the books.

• Roger Parslow, a young boy, becomes Lyra's best friend and loyal compatriot at Jordan College. His death at the hands of Lord Asriel, and Lyra herself, for unknowingly betraying him, tears open a bridge between the worlds, through which Lyra and Asriel travel in a search for the origins of Dust. Guilt-stricken over Roger's death, Lyra determines to travel through the Land of Dead to apologize and release him; in doing so, she and Will succeed in liberating the lost souls of the dead, allowing their essence to merge with the particles of Dust that permeate the universe. His dæmon was Salcilia, who frequently took the form of a terrier.

• The Authority, the first angel to have emerged from Dust, though not God the Creator (a figure completely absent from the trilogy, given that all the angels come about by chance as a casual aggregation of cosmic dust), poses as such to subsequently-formed angels. At the time of the trilogy, the Authority appears quite weak, having given most of his power to his regent, Metatron, and having spent most of his existence in retirement to "comprehend deeper mysteries". Pullman portrays him as extremely aged, fragile, kind, and naїve, unlike his bitter, thoroughly malicious underling. He eventually dies on exposure to a gust of wind, his weak form unable to resist it, but appears to find death a relief.

Awards and recognition

The Amber Spyglass won the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year award, a prestigious British literary award. This is the first time that such an award has been bestowed on a book from their "children's literature" category.

The first volume, Northern Lights, won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in the UK in 1995.^[12] In 2007 the judges of the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children's literature selected it as one of the ten most important children's novels of the previous 70 years. In June 2007 it was voted, in an online poll, as the best Carnegie Medal winner in the seventy-year history of the award, the Carnegie of Carnegies^[13][14].

The Observer cites Northern Lights as one of the 100 best novels.^[15]

On 19 May 2005, Pullman attended the British Library in London to receive formal congratulations for his work from culture secretary Tessa Jowell "on behalf of the government".

On 25 May 2005 Pullman received the Swedish government's Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children's and youth literature (sharing it with Japanese illustrator Ryōji Arai).^[16] Swedes regard this prize as second only to the Nobel Prize in Literature; it has a value of 5 million Swedish Kronor or approximately £385,000.

The trilogy came third in the 2003 BBC's Big Read, a national poll of viewers' favourite books, after The Lord of the Rings and Pride and Prejudice. At the time, only His Dark Materials and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire amongst the top five works lacked a screen-adaptation (the film version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which came fifth, went into release in 2005).

Leonardo da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine" (1489–90), along with two portraits by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Hans Holbein the Younger, helped inspire Pullman's "dæmon" concept.^[2]

Influences

Pullman has identified three major literary influences on His Dark Materials: the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist (online at southerncrossreview.org), the works of William Blake, and, most important, John Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the trilogy derives its title.^[17]

Pullman had the stated intention of inverting Milton's story of a war between heaven and hell, such that the devil would appear as the hero.^[18] In his introduction, he adapts a famous description of Milton by Blake to quip that he (Pullman) "is of the Devil's party and does know it." Pullman also referred to gnostic ideas in his description of the novels' underlying mythic structure.^[19].

The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of books by C. S. Lewis, appears to have had a negative influence on Pullman's trilogy. Pullman has characterised C. S. Lewis's series as "blatantly racist", "monumentally disparaging of women", "immoral", and "evil".^[20][21] However, some critics have compared the trilogy with such fantasy books as Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle as well as the Narnia series.^[22][23]

Controversies

His Dark Materials has occasioned some controversy, primarily amongst some Christian groups.^[24][25]

Pullman has expressed surprise over what he perceives as a low level of criticism for His Dark Materials on religious grounds, saying "I've been surprised by how little criticism I've got. Harry Potter's been taking all the flak... Meanwhile, I've been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God".^[26]

Some of the characters criticize institutional religion. Ruta Skadi, a witch and friend of Lyra's calling for war against the Magisterium in Lyra's world, says that "For all of [the Church's] history... it's tried to suppress and control every natural impulse. And when it can't control them, it cuts them out" (see intercision). Skadi later extends her criticism to all organized religion: "That's what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling". By this part of the book, the witches have made reference to how they are treated criminally by the church in their worlds. Mary Malone, one of Pullman's main characters, states that "the Christian religion... is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all". Formerly a Catholic nun, she gave up her vows when the experience of falling in love caused her to doubt her faith. Pullman has warned, however, against equating these views with his own, saying of Malone: "Mary is a character in a book. Mary's not me. It's a story, not a treatise, not a sermon or a work of philosophy"^[27].

Pullman portrays life after death very differently from the Christian concept of heaven: In the third book, the afterlife plays out in a bleak underworld, similar to the Greek vision of the afterlife, wherein harpies torment people until Lyra and Will descend into the land of the dead. At their intercession, the harpies agree to stop tormenting the dead souls, and instead receive the true stories of the dead in exchange for leading them again to the upper world. When the dead souls emerge, they dissolve into atoms and merge with the environment.

A traditional depiction of the Fall of Man Doctrine by Thomas Cole (Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1828). His Dark Materials presents the Fall as a positive act of maturation.

Pullman's "Authority", though worshipped on Lyra's earth as God, emerges as the first creature to evolve. Pullman makes it explicit that the Authority did not create worlds, and his trilogy does not speculate on who or what might have done so. Members of the Church are typically displayed as zealots^[28][29].

Cynthia Grenier, in the Catholic Culture, has said: "In the world of Pullman, God Himself (the Authority) is a merciless tyrant".^[30] His Church is an instrument of oppression, and true heroism consists of overthrowing both."^[31] William A. Donohue of the Catholic League has described Pullman's trilogy as "atheism for kids".^[32] Pullman has said of Donohue's call for a boycott, "Why don't we trust readers? [...] Oh, it causes me to shake my head with sorrow that such nitwits could be loose in the world".^[33]

Pullman has, however, found support from some other Christians, most notably from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (spiritual head of the Anglican church), who argues that Pullman's attacks focus on the constraints and dangers of dogmatism and the use of religion to oppress, not on Christianity itself.^[34] Williams has also recommended the His Dark Materials series of books for inclusion and discussion in Religious Education classes, and stated that "To see large school-parties in the audience of the Pullman plays at the National Theatre is vastly encouraging".^[35]

Pullman has singled out certain elements of Christianity for criticism, as in the following: "I suppose technically, you'd have to put me down as an agnostic. But if there is a God, and He is as the Christians describe Him, then He deserves to be put down and rebelled against".^[36] However, Pullman has also said in interviews and appearances that his argument can extend to all religions.^[37][38]

Adaptations

His Dark Materials has appeared in adaptation on radio, in theatre and on film.

Radio

The BBC made His Dark Materials into a radio drama on BBC Radio 4 starring Terence Stamp as Lord Asriel and Lulu Popplewell as Lyra. The play was broadcast in 2003 and is now published by the BBC on CD and cassette. In the same year, a radio drama of Northern Lights was made by RTÉ (Irish public radio).

The BBC Radio 4 version of His Dark Materials was repeated on BBC Radio 7 between 7 December 2008 to 11 January 2009. With 3 episodes in total, each episode was 2.5 hours long.

Theatre

Nicholas Hytner directed a theatrical version of the books as a two-part, six-hour performance for London's Royal National Theatre in December 2003, running until March 2004. It starred Anna Maxwell-Martin as Lyra, Dominic Cooper as Will, Timothy Dalton as Lord Asriel and Patricia Hodge as Mrs Coulter with dæmon puppets designed by Michael Curry. The play was enormously successful and was revived (with a different cast and a revised script) for a second run between November 2004 and April 2005. It has since been staged by several less known theatres in the UK, notably at the Playbox Theatre in Warwick (a major youth theatre company in the West Midlands)and the Theatre Royal Bath by the Young People's Theatre, which went on to receive the Bath play of the year. The play had its Irish Premiere at the O'Reilly Theatre in Dublin when it was staged by the dramatic society of Belvedere College.

A major new production was staged at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in March and April 2009, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh and Sarah Esdaile and starring Amy McAllister as Lyra. This version toured the UK and included a performance in Philip Pullman's hometown of Oxford. Philip Pullman made a cameo appearance much to the delight of the audience and Oxford media. The production finished up at West Yorkshire Playhouse in June 2009.

Film

New Line Cinema released a film adaptation, titled The Golden Compass, on 7 December 2007. Directed by Chris Weitz, the production had a mixed reception, and though worldwide sales were strong, its United States take underwhelmed the studio's hopes.^[39]

The filmmakers obscured the books' explicitly Biblical character of the Authority so as to avoid offending some viewers, though Weitz declared that he would not do the same for the hoped-for sequels. "Whereas The Golden Compass had to be introduced to the public carefully", he said, "the religious themes in the second and third books can't be minimized without destroying the spirit of these books. ...I will not be involved with any 'watering down' of books two and three, since what I have been working towards the whole time in the first film is to be able to deliver on the second and third"^[40]. In May 2006, Pullman said of a version of the script that "all the important scenes are there and will have their full value"^[41]; in March 2008, he said of the finished film that “a lot of things about it were good.... Nothing can bring out all that's in the book. There are always compromises”.^[42]

The Golden Compass film stars Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra, Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter, and Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel. Eva Green plays Serafina Pekkala, Ian McKellen voices Iorek Byrnison, and Freddie Highmore voices Pantalaimon.

No sequels are planned. Church opposition has widely been blamed for forcing their cancellation, but "disappointment" with the first film may have been the studio's true reason.^[43]

Terminology

Further reading

• Frost, Laurie et al. (2006). The Elements of His Dark Materials: A Guide to Phillip Pullman's trilogy. Buffalo Grove, IL: Fell Press. ISBN 0-9759430-1-4. OCLC 73312820. 
• Gribbin, John and Mary (2005). The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Knopf Books for Young Readers. ISBN 0-375-83144-4. 
• Lenz, Millicent and Carole Scott (2005). His Dark Materials Illuminated: Critical Essays on Phillip Pullman's Trilogy. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-3207-2. 
• Raymond-Pickard, Hugh (2004). The Devil's Account: Philip Pullman and Christianity. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. ISBN 978-0232525632. 
• Squires, Claire (2003). Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy: A Reader's Guide. New York, N.Y.: Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-1479-6. 
• Squires, Claire (2006). Philip Pullman, Master Storyteller: A Guide to the Worlds of His Dark Materials. New York, N.Y.: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-1716-9. OCLC 70158423. 
• Tucker, Nicholas (2003). Darkness Visible: Inside the World of Philip Pullman. Cambridge: Wizard Books. ISBN 978-1840464825. OCLC 52876221. 
• Wheat, Leonard F. (2008). Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials: A Multiple Allegory: Attacking Religious Superstition in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Paradise Lost. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1591025894. OCLC 152580912. 
• Yeffeth, Glenn (2005). Navigating the Golden Compass: Religion, Science and Daemonology in His Dark Materials. Dallas: Benbella Books. ISBN 1-932100-52-0. 

References

External links

• Philip Pullman, author's website
• HisDarkMaterials.org, the world's largest His Dark Materials community
• BridgetotheStars.net, a His Dark Materials fansite
• HisDarkMaterials.com, publisher Random House's His Dark Materials website
• Cittagazze.com, the His Dark Materials, a French fansite
• Scholastic: His Dark Materials, the UK publisher's website
• Randomhouse: His Dark Materials, the U.S. publisher's website
• The BBC's His Dark Materials pages
• The Archbishop of Canterbury and Philip Pullman in conversation, from "The Daily Telegraph"

From Wikiquote

I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

Philip Pullman CBE (born October 19, 1946) is an English writer. He is the best-selling author of His Dark Materials, a trilogy of fantasy novels, and a number of other books.

Sourced

We are all stupid, and we are all intelligent. The line dividing the stupid from the intelligent goes right down the middle of our heads.

• I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact that it is realistic, in psychological terms. I deal with matters that might normally be encountered in works of realism, such as adolescence, sexuality, and so on; and they are the main subject matter of the story — the fantasy (which, of course, is there: no-one but a fool would think I meant there is no fantasy in the books at all) is there to support and embody them, not for its own sake.
  • Interview at Achuka Children's Books

Others may find their readership on the stupid side: I don't. I pay my readers the compliment of assuming that they are intellectually adventurous.

• I'm trying to write a book about what it means to be human, to grow up, to suffer and learn. My quarrel with much (not all) fantasy is it has this marvellous toolbox and does nothing with it except construct shoot-em-up games. Why shouldn't a work of fantasy be as truthful and profound about becoming an adult human being as the work of George Eliot or Jane Austen? Well, there are a few fantasies that are. One of them is Paradise Lost.
  • Interview at Achuka Children's Books

• I knew I was telling a story that would be gripping enough to take readers with it, and I have a high enough opinion of my readers to expect them to take a little difficulty in their stride. My readers are intelligent: I don't write for stupid people. Now mark this carefully, because otherwise I shall be misquoted and vilified again — we are all stupid, and we are all intelligent. The line dividing the stupid from the intelligent goes right down the middle of our heads. Others may find their readership on the stupid side: I don't. I pay my readers the compliment of assuming that they are intellectually adventurous.
  • Interview at Achuka Children's Books

• On an unseasonably, uncomfortably, unnaturally warm day in mid-October I sit here trying not to think about global warming. But it's difficult. Is this fear going to pass away like the other fears I remember — nuclear war, overpopulation leading to mass starvation, the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain? Well, those problems haven't gone away exactly. The new one just seems bigger than all the rest.
  • Entry at Philip-Pullman.com (October 2006)

His Dark Materials

All these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds... ~ John Milton

The title of this trilogy is derived from lines in Paradise Lost by John Milton, which are used in the front piece of Northern Lights:

Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage...

Northern Lights (1995)

Titled: The Golden Compass for North American release

It isn't light. It's Dust

Lyra has a part to play in all this, and a major one. The irony is that she must do it all without realizing what she's doing...

• Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.
  • First line, introducing Lyra Belacqua (also known as Lyra Silvertongue), in Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

• Her dæmon's name was Pantalaimon, and he was currently in the form of a moth, a dark brown one so as not to show up in the darkness of the hall.
  • Introducing Pantalaimon, also called Pan, in Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

• How can I just go and sit in the library or somewhere and twiddle my thumbs, knowing what's going to happen? I don't intend to do that, I promise you.
  • Lyra, in Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

• "That light," said the Chaplain, "is it going up or coming down?"
  "It's coming down," said Lord Asriel, "but it isn't light. It's Dust."
  Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasn't ordinary dust. The reaction of the Scholars confirmed her feeling, because Lord Asriel's words caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of incredulity.
  • Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

• As I understand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two worlds: the world of everything we can see and hear and touch, and another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and Stokes were two — how shall I put it — renegade theologians who postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one, neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there, close by, but invisible and unreachable.
  • The Master of Jordan College to the Librarian, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of North

• Lyra has a part to play in all this, and a major one. The irony is that she must do it all without realizing what she's doing. She can be helped, though, and if my plan with the Tokay had succeeded, she would have been safe for a little longer. I would have liked to spare her a journey to the North.
  • The Master to the Librarian, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of North

It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have to learn by yourself...

• "Lyra, I'm going to give you something, and you must promise to keep it private. Will you swear to that?"
  "Yes," Lyra said.
  He crossed to the desk and took from a drawer a small package wrapped in black velvet. When he unfolded the cloth, Lyra saw something like a large watch or a small clock: a thick disk of gold and crystal. It might have been a compass or something of the sort.
  "What is it?" she said.
  "It's an alethiometer. It's one of only six that were ever made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. It would be better if Mrs. Coulter didn't know about it. Your uncle — "
  "But what does it do?"
  "It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have to learn by yourself. Now go — it's getting lighter — hurry back to your room before anyone sees you."
  • The Master and Lyra, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer

• It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a beehive... Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn't even guess what they meant.
  • Lyra, investigating the alethiometer, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer

• "But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?"
  "Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of fold as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is."
  • Lyra and the seaman Jerry, in Ch. 10 : The Consul and the Bear

The Subtle Knife (1997)

They know that something is happening. And they suspect it has to do with other worlds...

• Do not lie to the Scholar.
  • The alethiometer to Lyra, in Ch. 4 : Trepanning

Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one knows what it is. There's more stuff out there in the universe than we can see, that's the point...

• She soon found the door the alethiometer had told her about. The sign on it said DARK MATTER RESEARCH UNIT, and under it someone had scribbled R.I.P. Another hand had added in pencil DIRECTOR: LAZARUS.
  Lyra made nothing of that. She knocked, and a woman's voice said, "Come in.
  • Ch. 4 : Trepanning

• Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.
  • Ch. 4 : Trepanning

I'm perfectly well aware that you've found a doorway somewhere...

• Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one knows what it is. There's more stuff out there in the universe than we can see, that's the point. We can see the stars and the galaxies and the things that shine, but for it all to hang together and not fly apart, there needs to be a lot more of it — to make gravity work, you see. But no one can detect it. So there are lots of different research projects trying to find out what it is, and this is one of them. ... We think it's some kind of elementary particle. Something quite different from anything discovered so far. But the particles are very hard to detect.
  • Dr. Mary Malone, in Ch. 4 : Trepanning

• It was all very well, the alethiometer telling her to be truthful, but she knew what would happen if she told the whole truth. She had to tread carefully and just avoid direct lies.
  • Ch. 4 : Trepanning

The man who made that doorway has got a knife. He's hiding in that other world right now, and he's extremely afraid. He has reason to be. If he's where I think he is, he's in an old stone tower with angels carved around the doorway...

• I'm perfectly well aware that you've found a doorway somewhere. I guess it's not too far from Summertown, where I dropped Lizzie, or Lyra, this morning. And that through the doorway is another world, one with no grownups in it. Right so far? Well, you see, the man who made that doorway has got a knife. He's hiding in that other world right now, and he's extremely afraid. He has reason to be. If he's where I think he is, he's in an old stone tower with angels carved around the doorway. The Torre degli Angeli.
  • Sir Charles to Lyra and Will, in Ch. 7 : The Rolls-Royce

• Who is this man who's got the knife?
  • Will, in Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

• I hold the subtle knife on behalf of the Guild.
  • Giacomo Paradisi in Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

• He'd learned that the object of a school fight was not to gain points for style but to force your enemy to give in, which meant hurting him more than he was hurting you. He knew that you had to be willing to hurt someone else, too, and he'd found out that not many people were, when it came to it; but he knew that he was.
  So this wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he hadn't fought against a nearly grown man armed with a knife before, and at all costs he must keep the man from picking it up now that he'd dropped it.
  • Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

• Will darted back to the gutter, and picked up the knife, and the fight was over. The young man, cut and battered, clambered up the step, and saw Will standing above him holding the knife; he stared with a sickly anger and then turned and fled.
  • Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

• "Now," said Giacomo Paradisi, "here you are, take the knife, it is yours."
  "I don't want it," said Will. "I don't want anything to do with it."
  "You haven't got the choice," said the old man. "You are the bearer now."
  "I thought you said you was," said Lyra.
  "My time is over," he said. "The knife knows when to leave one hand and settle in another, and I know how to tell..."
  • Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

What Asriel's done has shaken everything up, Mr. Scoresby, shaken it more profoundly than it's ever been shaken before. These doorways and windows that I spoke of — they open in unexpected places now.

• "This edge," said Giacomo Paradisi, touching the steel with the handle of a spoon, "will cut through any material in the world. Look."
  And he pressed the silver spoon against the blade. Will, holding the knife, felt only the slightest resistance as the tip of the spoon's handle fell to the table, cut clean off.
  "The other edge," the old man went on, "is more subtle still. With it you can cut an opening out of this world altogether. Try it now. Do as I say — you are the bearer. You have to know. No one can teach you but me, and I have not much time left. Stand up and listen."
  • Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

• The security services are alarmed. Every nation that does research into fundamental physics — what we call experimental theology — is turning to its scientists urgently to discover what's going on. Because they know that something is happening. And they suspect it has to do with other worlds.
  • Sir Charles to Mrs. Coulter in Ch. 9 : Theft

• The Master of Jordan College is a foolish old man. Why he gave it to her I can't imagine; you need several years of intensive study to make any sense of it at all.
  • Mrs. Coulter, on Lyra having the alethiometer, in Ch. 9 : Theft

• What Asriel's done has shaken everything up, Mr. Scoresby, shaken it more profoundly than it's ever been shaken before. These doorways and windows that I spoke of — they open in unexpected places now. It's hard to navigate, but this wind is a fair one.
  • Stanislaus Grumman, to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

• Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.
  • Stanislaus Grumman, to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

• Seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.
  • Lee Scoresby to Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

On, said the alethiometer. Farther, higher.
So on they climbed.

• "You have a strange way about you, Dr. Grumman. You ever spend any time among the witches?"
  "Yes," said Grumman. "And among academicians, and among spirits. I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we cling to it all the same."
  "And this journey we're on? Is that folly or wisdom?"
  "The greatest wisdom I know."
  "Tell me again what your purpose is. You're going to find the bearer of this subtle knife, and what then?"
  "Tell him what his task is."
  "And that's a task that includes protecting Lyra," the aeronaut reminded him.
  "It will protect all of us."
  • Lee Scoresby and Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo Gulch

• On, said the alethiometer. Farther, higher.
  So on they climbed.
  • Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

• Will moved on grimly, screwing up his eyes against the glare, ignoring the worsening pain from his hand, and finally reaching a state in which movement alone was good and stillness bad, so that he suffered more from resting than from toiling on. And since the failure of the witches' spell to stop his bleeding, he thought they were regarding him with fear, too, as if he was marked by some curse greater than their own powers.
  • Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

• If you're the bearer of the knife, you have a task that's greater than you can imagine. A child ... How could they let it happen? Well, so it must be. ... There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history. It's time we started again, but properly this time. ..."
  He stopped to take in several rattling breaths.
  "The knife," he went on after a minute. "They never knew what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter, and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the tyrant. The Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn't have anything like the knife; but now ..."
  "I didn't want it! I don't want it now!" Will cried. "If you want it, you can have it! I hate it, and I hate what it does — "
  "Too late. You haven't any choice: you're the bearer. It's picked you out. And, what's more, they know you've got it; and if you don't use it against them, they'll tear it from your hands and use it against the rest of us, forever and ever."
  • Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

• "You fought for the knife?"
  "Yes, but — "
  "Then you're a warrior. That's what you are. Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature."
  Will knew that the man was speaking the truth. But it wasn't a welcome truth. It was heavy and painful. The man seemed to know that, because he let Will bow his head before he spoke again.
  "There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit."
  "And now those two powers are lining up for battle. And each of them wants that knife of yours more than anything else. You have to choose, boy. We've been guided here, both of us — you with the knife, and me to tell you about it."
  • Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

• She felt a nausea of the soul, a hideous and sickening despair, a melancholy weariness so profound that she was going to die of it. Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.
  Thus she stood, bow in hand, indifferent, dead in life.
  • Dying thoughts of Lena Feldt as a Specter "eats the life out of her", Ch. 15 : Blood moss

The Amber Spyglass (2000)

We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.

• Your dæmon can only live its full life in the world it was born in. Elsewhere it will eventually sicken and die. We can travel, if there are openings into other worlds, but we can only live in our own. Lord Asriel’s great enterprise will fail in the end for the same reason: we have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.
  • Ch. 26 : The Abyss

• The first ghosts trembled with hope, and their excitement passed back like a ripple over the long line behind them, young children and aged parents alike looking up and ahead with delight and wonder as the first stars they had seen for centuries shone through into their poor starved eyes.
  • Ch. 26 : The Abyss

• One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close.
  Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
  "Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories."
  That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
  All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
  • Ch. 32 : Morning

We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll build…

• They lay back, well fed and comfortable in the flower-scented night, and listened to Mary tell her story.
  She began just before she first met Lyra, telling them about the work she was doing at the Dark Matter Research group, and the funding crisis. How much time she’d had to spend asking for money, and how little time there’d been left for research!
  But Lyra’s coming had changed everything, and so quickly: within a matter of days she’d left her world altogether.
  "I did as you told me," she said. "I made a program — that’s a set of instructions — to let the Shadows talk to me through the computer. They told me what to do. They said they were angels, and — well…"
  "If you were a scientist," said Will, "I don’t suppose that was a good thing for them to say. You might not have believed in angels."
  "Ah, but I knew about them. I used to be a nun, you see. I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all."
  • Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan

"And then what? ... build what?"
"The Republic of Heaven.

• "When you stopped believing in God, did you stop believing in good and evil?"
  "No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."
  • Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan

• "I remember. He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn’t live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place."
  "He said we had to build something…"
  "That’s why we needed our full life, Pan... we wouldn’t have been able to build it. No one could if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll build…"
  • Lyra to Pan in Ch. 38 : The Botanic Garden

• "And then what?" said her Dæmon sleepily "build what?"
  "The Republic of Heaven."
  • Lyra and Pan in Ch. 38 : The Botanic Garden

Surefish interview (2002)

"A dark agenda?" (November 2002)

Those people who claim that they do know that there is a God have found this claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving extremely badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result automatically in behaving very well.

This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all free and equal citizens, with — and this is the important thing — responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this place into a Republic of Heaven for everyone.

• I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'. I've got no evidence whatever for believing in a God. But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know. So maybe there is a God out there. All I know is that if there is, he hasn't shown himself on earth.
  But going further than that, I would say that those people who claim that they do know that there is a God have found this claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving extremely badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result automatically in behaving very well.

• When you look at organised religion of whatever sort — whether it's Christianity in all its variants, or whether it's Islam or some forms of extreme Hinduism — wherever you see organised religion and priesthoods and power, you see cruelty and tyranny and repression. It's almost a universal law.

• 'Magisterium' and 'oblation' are church terms, they are terms of church organisation. These are administrative things. These are bureaucratic things. How can an attack on those be construed as an attack on God? These are human things which human beings have constructed in order to wield power. That's not a contentious thing to say. That is simply true. These are forms of political organisation and no more than that.

• Now here are these children who have gone through great adventures and learned wonderful things and would therefore be in a position to do great things to help other people. But they're taken away. He doesn't let them. For the sake of taking them off to a perpetual school holiday or something, he kills them all in a train crash. I think that's ghastly. It's a horrible message.
  • On the The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

• A sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a real and important story, a sense of being connected to other people, to people who are not here any more, to those who have gone before us. And a sense of being connected to the universe itself.
  All those things were promised and summed up in the phrase, 'The Kingdom of Heaven'. But if the Kingdom is dead, we still need those things. We can't live without those things because it's too bleak, it's too bare and we don't need to. We can find a way of creating them for ourselves if we think in terms of a Republic of Heaven.
  This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all free and equal citizens, with — and this is the important thing — responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this place into a Republic of Heaven for everyone. Not to live in it in a state of perpetual self-indulgence, but to work hard to make this place as good as we possibly can.

Lyra's Oxford (2003)

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.

• This book contains a story and several other things. The other things might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that haven't appeared yet. It's not easy to tell.

• All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history and a meaning. A group of them together can seem like the traces left by an ionizing particle in a bubble chamber: they draw the line of a path taken by something too mysterious to see. That path is a story, of course. What scientists do when they look at the line of bubbles on the screen is work out the story of the particle that made them: what sort of particle it must have been, and what caused it to move in that way, and how long it was likely to continue.
  Dr. Mary Malone would have been familiar with that sort of story in the course of her search for dark matter. But it might not have occurred to her, for example, when she sent a postcard to an old friend shortly after arriving in Oxford for the first time, that that card itself would trace part of a story that hadn't yet happened when she wrote it. Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. There are many things we haven't yet learned how to read.
  The story in this book is partly about that very process.

• Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.

Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think (2006)

• Chapter: Every Indication of Inadvertant Solitude I think it's fair to guess that most of Richard Dawkins' many readers are not using The Self Geneand its successors as textbooks to help them pass science exams. That he is a highly distinguished scientist is not in question, but many scientists have achieved great distinction &ldash; and indeed written textbooks &ldash; without once writing a popular best-seller.

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Philip Pullman

• Philip-Pullman.com
• The Golden Compass movie website