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His Dark Materials

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The three volumes (left to right) of the trilogy

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of novels by the fantasy fiction author Philip Pullman, comprising Northern Lights (released as The Golden Compass in the United States), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Although ostensibly for children, the novels were written to be equally compelling for adults, albeit on a different level. Pullman himself describes the target range as 'young adult', and some say that the books are too intellectual in content for most children. 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.

The story begins in Northern Lights, initially as a typical fantasy. However, Pullman introduces ideas throughout the trilogy which have implications in many areas, such as metaphysics, religion, and philosophy. The third book, The Amber Spyglass, relies heavily on quantum physics and philosophy.

Because of the trilogy's allegorical meaning and purpose, told through the medium of a fantasy novel, the books have appealed to readers of all ages, some of whom have termed the book as "life-changing".

Awards

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Pullman receiving the Whitbread award

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

On May 19, 2005, Pullman was beckoned to the British Library in London to be formally congratulated for his work by the culture secretary Tessa Jowell, "on behalf of the government"; he is to receive the Swedish government's Astrid Lindgren memorial award for children's and youth literature. The prize, second only to the Nobel prize for literature, is worth £385,000.

The trilogy came third in the 2003 BBC's Big Read, a national poll of viewers' favourite books. (1. Lord of the Rings; 2. Pride and Prejudice).

Influences and Reactions

The three major literary influences acknowledged by Pullman himself, are the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist, the works of William Blake, and most important (being the source of the basic ideas of the trilogy) is John Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the title 'His Dark Materials' derives. Pullman's stated intention was to invert Milton's story of a war between heaven and hell. In his introduction, he adapts Blake's line to quip that he (Pullman) "is of the Devil's party and does know it."

The novels draw heavily on gnostic ideas, and His Dark Materials has been at the heart of controversy, especially with certain Christian groups. Pullman has, however, also found support from more liberal Christians, 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.

Some have called His Dark Materials the anti-Narnia, referencing the seven book fantasy series by C.S. Lewis. This image has been reinforced by Pullman making public statements calling Lewis "blatantly racist" and "monumentally disparaging of women" in his novels (The Guardian, 03/06/02, John Ezard). Furthermore, the Narnia series distinctly favours faith and religion over any form of realism or science, whereas His Dark Materials seems to suggest the opposite. Many characters and events in His Dark Materials are derivative of the Narnia books.

The trilogy is sometimes compared with popular fantasy books such as the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane and even the Narnia books themselves.

The Books

The trilogy takes place across a multiverse. In other words, it goes between many alternate worlds. In Northern Lights the story takes place in a world much like our own, though with many differences. In The Subtle Knife, the story passes into our world (what we might define as a break into reality), and in The Amber Spyglass, it crosses through a large array of diverse worlds.

The trilogy has also been published as a single-volume omnibus in the UK, as simply His Dark Materials.

Plot Synopses

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  • In Northern Lights, the heroine Lyra Belacqua, a young girl brought up in the cloistered world of Jordan College, Oxford, and her dæmon Pantalaimon—an animal-shaped manifestation of her soul—learn of the existence of Dust—a strange elementary particle believed by the Church to be evidence for Original Sin—that is less attracted to the innocence of children, giving rise to gross experiments being carried out by Church-controlled scientists on kidnapped children in the icy wastelands of the far North. Lyra and her dæmon journey to save their best friend Roger, and other kidnapped children, from this peril. After success, and dealings with Armoured Bears and Witches, Roger is killed by Lyra's own father Lord Asriel in his own successful experiment to create a bridge into another world. He and Lyra journey on through it seperately, both in search of the source of Dust.
  • In The Subtle Knife, Lyra journeys to an otherworldly city called Cittàgazze that is bereft of adults due to soul-eating creatures called Spectres that target post-adolescents. Here, Lyra meets Will Parry, a twelve-year-old boy from our own world who has stumbled into this one after recently killing a man to protect his ailing mother, also on a quest to find his lost father. Will becomes the bearer of the eponymous Subtle Knife—so called because it can cut through the barriers between the worlds—and, meeting with Witches from Lyra's world, they journey on, only for Will to find his father, his father to be killed, and Lyra to be captured and taken away by her sinister mother Mrs Coulter. Will is then instructed by a pair of angels that he must travel with them to give the Subtle Knife to Lyra's father, Lord Asriel.
  • In The Amber Spyglass, Will ignores the angels and rescues Lyra and with the help of Lord Asriel's Gallivespian spies the Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia, and they journey to the Land of the Dead, there to release the dead souls from their captivity imposed by the oppressive God-figure, The Authority. Mary Malone, a scientist of our world interested in Dust, travels to a land populated by strange sentient creatures called Mulefa, and there learns of the true nature of Dust, existing as panpsychic particles of self-awareness. Lord Asriel and a reformed Mrs Coulter team up to destroy The Authority's Regent, Metatron, but are killed in the process, and The Authority himself dies of his own frailty amongst a massive battle between the rebels and his servents. Post-climactically, Will and Lyra fall in love, marking their loss of innocence, but are irrevocably separated; for greater good, the Subtle Knife is destroyed and the passageways between worlds are sealed forever.

For highly detailed synopses that cover nearly every aspect of the individual books, and other more specific information, see their individual pages at:

Esoteric Renaming

To enhance the feeling of being in a parallel universe, Pullman renames various common objects of our world with historic terms or new words of his own. The alternative names he chooses often follow alternate etymologies, but in most cases make it possible to guess what everyday object or person he is referring to.

The following are translations of some of the words he uses:

  • Anbaric: Electric. From amber, which the ancient Greeks in our world thought was the source of electricity.
  • Brytain, Corea, etc: Phonetically identical respellings of countries. (Britain, Korea).
  • Chocolatl: Generally chocolate; hot chocolate, or sometimes as "a bar of chocolatl," a chocolate bar. From the nahuatl (Aztec) word for chocolate.
  • Chthonic Railway Station: A Tube-station.
  • Coal-silk: Carbon-fibre (coal as in carbon, silk as in soft, like carbon-fibre coats). An artificial fibre similar to rayon, which was once known as art-silk in our world.
  • Electrum: Amber
  • Experimental Theologian: A Scientist.
  • Gyptians: Boat-dwelling "Gypsies."
  • Muscovite: A Russian, from Moscow.
  • Naphtha: Oil (as in oil-lamp, rather than naphtha-lamp).
  • Oratory: An individual Church.
  • Philosophical Instruments: Physicists' equipment. In our own world, Philosophy and Physics were once the same subject.
  • Skraeling: A person of Greenland, once named similarly by the Vikings of our world.

Pronunciations

The pronunciations given in italics below are, for the most part, drawn from BridgetotheStars.Net. However, some of the pronunciations have been corrected. The transcriptions surrounded by square brackets are in the International Phonetic Alphabet, as spoken in Received Pronunciation.

  • Alethiometer: al-ETH-ee-OM-et-er [əˌliːθɪˈɒmɪtə]
  • Æsahættr: EYE-sha-ter [ˈaɪshætə]
  • Aurora Borealis: uh-ROR-uh bor-ee-AH-lis [əˈɹɔːɹə ˌbɔːɹɪˈɑːlɪs]
  • Chthonic (see above): kuh-THON-ic [k(ə)ˈθɒnɪk]
  • Cittàgazze: chee-tuh-GAHT-s(z)ay (as Italian) [ˌtʃiːtəˈgætse]
  • Dæmon: DEE-mon [ˈdiːmən]
  • Iorek: YOR-ick [ˈjɔːɹɪk]
  • Iofur: YO-fur [ˈjəʊfʊə]
  • Kirjava: keer-YAH-vuh [ˌkiːrˈjɑːvə]
  • Lyra: LIE-ruh [ˈlaɪɹə]
  • Mulefa: m(y)ool-EFF-uh [ˌmuːˈlɛfə]
  • Panserbjørne: PAN-ser-buh-yorn-eh [ˈpænsəbjɜːnə]
  • Pantalaimon: pan-tuh-LIE-mon [ˌpæntəˈlaɪmən]
  • Quantum: KWON-tuhm [ˈkwɒntəm]
  • Salmakia: sal-MACK-ee-uh [ˌsælˈmækɪə]
  • Serafina Pekkala: SEH-ra-fee-nuh PEK-kah-luh [ˈsɛɹəfiːnə ˈpɛkələ]
  • Tialys: tee-AH-lis [tɪˈɑːlɪs]
  • Torre degli Angeli: TOR-ay DAI-(y)-lee A(H)N-juhl-ee (as Italian) [ˈtɔːre ˈdɛlɪ ˈændʒɛlɪ]
  • Xaphania: zaf-AY-nee-uh [zəˈfeɪnɪə]

Adaptations

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. The play returned for a second run between November 2004 and April 2005.

On Film

A film adaptation, titled His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, is slated for release in 2007 by New Line Cinema, the company behind the The Lord of the Rings movies. The latest information can be found on the Internet Movie Database, [1]. 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. This however may not still be the case. It is likely that the film will take the UK title of Northern Lights in the UK.

Lyra's Oxford

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 His Dark Materials universes, including a map of the Oxford of Lyra's world.

Lyra's Oxford is a precursor to Pullman's forthcoming The Book of Dust, which will explore the trilogy's secondary characters, for example, how the balloonist aeronaut Lee Scoresby (and his dæmon Hester) meet the armoured bear Iorek Byrnison.

Other authors have also written books based on the topic of His Dark Materials, such as Nicholas Tucker's Darkness Visible (which also looks at a range of Pullman's other works), Claire Squire's A Reader's Guide, Mary and John Gribbin's The Science of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Carole Scott's His Dark Materials Illuminated, and Glen Yeffeth's Navigating the Golden Compass.

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