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His Dark Materials is a trilogy of novels by the fantasy fiction author Philip Pullman.
Although ostensibly for children, the appeal of the novels is equally compelling for adults. Pullman's universe -- or rather multiverse -- like those of many other contemporary fantasy writers such as Michael Moorcock and Clive Barker, is multilayered and multifaceted, with possibilities for characters to slip between them.
Although the story begins in Northern Lights seeming like an average fantasy novel, it quickly introduces highly intriguing ideas, ones which have implications in many areas, particularly metaphysics and religion. By the third book, The Amber Spyglass, nearly every page is full of quantum physics and philosophy.
Because of the book's deep meaning and purpose, told through the medium of an original fantasy novel, the books appeal to all ages, and may indeed be, as they have been often called, 'life-changing', due to the profound implications of the story that the reader is forced to realise.
It should be noted that whilst the books are called 'fantasy novels', this is no more than a clever trick by Pullman. It was always his intent for the novels to contain a good deal of realistic substance (hence the "heady brew of quantum physics" [Julia Eccleshare, Guardian]); in one universe, things seem a little more fantastical, and in another, things are more banal; Pullman begins the trilogy as fantasy, and, via his multiverse, draws the genre from place to place until in The Amber Spyglass it is a scientific (much use of physics for metaphors, eg "and felt the atoms of the metal linking", "and so those photons wove the two together in a silent web." ), theoretical, philosophical, "metaphysical speculation," and exploration, whilst still remaining as compelling and gripping a story as ever there could be.
(Sources of quotes: The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman, 2001 publication, first publication 2000)
Awards
The Amber Spyglass won the 2002 Whitbread Book of the Year award, a prestigious British literature 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 (US:The Golden Compass) won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in the UK in 1995
The trilogy came third in the 2003 BBC's Big Read, a poll of viewers' favourite books.
Influences and reaction
The novels draw heavily on gnostic ideas. The three major literary influences acknowledged by Pullman himself are the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist and the works of William Blake. But the source that he gives for the basic idea is the war in heaven and hell of John Milton's Paradise Lost (from which the title of the trilogy is taken). His stated intention was to invert the story.
His Dark Materials has been at the heart of controversy, especially with certain Christian groups. Pullman has, however, also found support from more liberal groups, and most notably Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. These say that Pullman's attacks are focused on the constraints of dogmatism and the use of religion to oppress, not Christianity itself.
The books
- In Northern Lights (published in the USA as The Golden Compass), the heroine Lyra Belacqua, a young girl brought up in the cloistered world of Jordan College, Oxford, and her dæmon - an animal-shaped manifestation of her soul - journey to the icy wastelands of the far North to save their best friend Roger, and other kidnapped children from experimentation by evil scientists and a revisionist church in an alternate universe. This world is much like our own, but with many differences.
- In The Subtle Knife, Lyra journeys to another world, to a city called Cittàgazze (the "city of magpies"), where she meets Will Parry, an eleven-year-old boy from our own world who has recently killed a man to protect his ailing mother. Together they travel from world to world and discover the Subtle Knife of the novel's title -- so called because it can cut through the barriers between the worlds -- and begin to uncover the truth of their own destiny.
- In The Amber Spyglass, the series concludes with Will and Lyra visiting the Land of the Dead and releasing the dead souls from their captivity, the overthrow of The Authority, the destruction of the Subtle Knife, and the sealing of the passageways between the worlds by the angels.
The trilogy has also been published as a single-volume omnibus in the UK.
On radio
His Dark Materials has been made into a radio drama on BBC Radio Four 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 RTE (Irish public radio).
Theatre
A theatrical version of the books has been produced by Nicholas Hytner as a two-part, 6 hour performance for London's Royal National Theatre in Q1 of 2004. All 126 performances at the 1110-seat Olivier Theatre sold out before the opening day. The play returned for a second run in November of 2004.
On film
A film adaptation, titled His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, is slated for release in 2006 by New Line Cinema. The original director, Chris Weitz announced his resignation on December 15, 2004. Prior to resigning he rejected a script by Tom Stoppard and controversially indicated that the film would make no direct mention of religion due to the viewpoint the books suggest.
Related books
In the autumn of 2003, Pullman published Lyra's Oxford, which consists of a short story called "Lyra and the Birds," focusing on Lyra at sixteen years old, and a collection of materials from all over the HDM universes, including a map of the Oxford of Lyra's world. Lyra's Oxford is a precursor to the forthcoming The Book of Dust, which will focus on the trilogy's secondary characters.
External links
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