His Dark Materials

The trilogy takes place across a multiverse, moving between many parallel worlds. In Northern Lights, the story takes place in a world with some similarities to our own: dress-style resembles that of the UK's Edwardian era; the technology does not include cars or fixed-wing aircraft, but zeppelins feature as a mode of transport.

The dominant religion has parallels with Christianity.[6] The Church (governed by the "Magisterium", the same name as the authority of the Catholic Church) exerts a strong control over society and has some of the appearance and organisation of the Catholic Church, but one in which the centre of power had moved from Rome to Geneva, moved there by Pullman's fictional "Pope John Calvin" (Geneva was the home of the historical John Calvin).[7]

In The Subtle Knife, the story moves between the world of the first novel, our own world, and another world, the city of Cittàgazze. In The Amber Spyglass, all those and several other parallel worlds appear.

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

The title of the series comes from 17th-century poet John Milton's Paradise Lost:[8]

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.

— Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 910–920

Pullman chose this particular phrase from Milton because it echoed the dark matter of astrophysics.[9] In The Subtle Knife, the dark matter studied by physicists in a fictional version of "our world" is revealed to be the same thing as Dust, the mysterious substance central to the plot of the series.

Pullman earlier proposed to name the series The Golden Compasses, also a reference to Paradise Lost,[10] where they denote God's circle-drawing instrument used to establish and set the bounds of all creation:

God as architect, wielding the golden compasses, by William Blake (left) and Jesus as geometer in a 13th-century medieval illuminated manuscript.

Then staid the fervid wheels, and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things:
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure...

— Paradise Lost, Book 7, lines 224–229

Despite the confusion with the other common meaning of compass (the navigational instrument), The Golden Compass became the title of the American edition of Northern Lights (the book features an "alethiometer", a rare truth-telling device that one might describe as a "golden compass").

All humans in Lyra's world, including witches, have a dæmon. It is the physical manifestation of a person's 'inner being', soul or spirit. It takes the form of a creature (moth, bird, dog, monkey, snake, etc.) and is usually the opposite sex to its human counterpart. The dæmons of children have the ability to change form - from one creature to another - but towards the end of a child's puberty, their dæmon "settles" into a permanent form, which reflects the person's personality. When a person dies, the dæmon dies too. Armoured bears, cliff ghasts and other creatures do not have dæmons. An armoured bear's armour is his soul.

• Lyra Belacqua, a wild 12-year-old girl, has grown up in the fictional Jordan College, Oxford. She is skinny with dark blonde hair and blue eyes. She prides herself on her capacity for mischief, especially her ability to lie, earning her the epithet "Silvertongue" from Iorek Byrnison. Lyra has a natural ability to use the alethiometer, which is capable of answering any question when properly manipulated and read.
• Pantalaimon is Lyra's dæmon. Like all children's dæmons, he changes form from one creature to another frequently. When Lyra reaches puberty, he assumes the permanent form of a pine marten. Pantalaimon and Lyra follow her father, Lord Asriel, when he travels to the newly discovered world of Cittagazze, where Lyra meets Will.
• Will Parry, a sensible, morally conscious, assertive 12-year-old boy from our world. He becomes the bearer of the subtle knife. Will is independent and responsible for his age, having looked after his mentally ill mother for several years.
• Kirjava is Will's dæmon (named by Serafina Pekkala). She does not settle before the end of the story; but it is hinted that she will take the form of a cat.
• The Authority is the first angel to have emerged from Dust. He controls the Church, an oppressive religious institution. He told the later-arriving angels that he created them and the universe, but this is a lie. Although he is one of the two primary adversaries in the trilogy – Lord Asriel is his primary opponent – he remains in the background; he makes his only appearance late in The Amber Spyglass. The Authority has grown weak and transferred most of his powers to his regent, Metatron. He is extremely aged, fragile and naive.
• Lord Asriel, ostensibly Lyra's uncle, is later revealed to be 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 power to raise a grand army from across the multiverse to rise up in rebellion against the forces of the Church.
• Marisa Coulter is the coldly beautiful, manipulative mother of Lyra and former lover of Lord Asriel. She serves the Church by kidnapping children for research into the nature of Dust, in the course of which she separates them from their dæmons - a procedure known as intercision. She has black hair, a slim build, and looks younger than she is. Initially hostile to Lyra, she realises that she loves her daughter and seeks to protect her from agents of the Church, who want to kill Lyra. Her dæmon is a golden monkey with a cruel streak.
• Metatron, Asriel's principal adversary, was a human, Enoch, in biblical times, but was later transfigured into an angel. The Authority has displayed his declining health by appointing Metatron his Regent. As Regent, Metatron has implanted the monotheistic religions across the universes. He becomes vulnerable to the seductive advances of Marisa Coulter, who betrays him by luring him into the underworld to his death. He is the series' main antagonist.
• Lord Carlo Boreal, or Sir Charles Latrom, CBE as he is known as in Will Parry's world, serves as a minor character in Northern Lights, but is a main antagonist in The Subtle Knife. He is an old Englishman, appearing to be in his sixties. He normally wears pale suits and is described as smelling sweetly. He is ultimately poisoned by Mrs Coulter, to whom he has previously been a lover.
• Mary Malone, is a physicist and former nun from Will's world. She meets Lyra during Lyra's first visit to Will's world. Lyra provides Mary with insight into the nature of Dust. Agents of the Church force Mary to flee to the world of the Mulefa. There she constructs the amber spyglass, which enables her to see the otherwise invisible Dust. Her purpose is to learn why Dust, which mulefa civilization depends on, is flowing out of the universe. Mary relates a story of a lost love to Will and Lyra, and later packs for them a lunch containing "little red fruits", which her computer, "the Cave," had instructed her to do.
• Iorek Byrnison is a massive armoured bear. An armoured bear's armour is his soul. Iorek's armour is stolen, so he becomes despondent. With Lyra's help he regains his armour, his dignity, and his kingship over the armoured bears. 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. He later goes to war against The Authority and Metatron.
• Lee Scoresby, a rangy Texan, is a balloonist. He helps Lyra in an early quest to reach Asriel's residence in the North, and he later helps John Parry reunite with his son Will.
• Serafina Pekkala is 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, without feeling the pain of separation.
• The Master of Jordan heads Jordan College, part of Oxford University in Lyra's world. Helped by other Jordan College employees, he is raising the supposedly orphaned Lyra. Faced with difficult choices that only later become apparent, he tries unsuccessfully to poison Lord Asriel.
• Roger Parslow is the kitchen boy at Jordan College and Lyra's best friend.
• John Parry is Will's father. He is an explorer from our world who discovered a portal to Lyra's world and became the shaman known as Stanislaus Grumman or Jopari, a corruption of his original name.
• The Four Gallivespians—Lord Roke, Madame Oxentiel, Chevalier Tialys and Lady Salmakia—are tiny people (a hand-span tall) with poisonous heel spurs.
• Ma Costa: A Gyptian woman whose son, Billy Costa is abducted by the "Gobblers". She rescues Lyra from Mrs Coulter and takes her to John Faa. We later discover that Ma Costa nursed Lyra when she was a baby.
• John Faa: The King of all the Gyptians. He journeys with Lyra to the North with his companion Farder Coram. Faa and Costa rescue Lyra when she runs away from Mrs Coulter. Then they take her to Iorek Byrnison.
• Father Gomez is a priest sent by the Church to assassinate Lyra. The angel Balthamos kills Gomez before he can reach her.
• Fra Pavel Rašek is a representative and alethiometrist of the Consistorial Court of Discipline. He is said to be a sluggish reader of the device, his dæmon is a frog.
• Balthamos is a rebel angel who, with his lover Baruch, join in Will's journey to find the captured Lyra. Near the end of the story, he saves both Lyra's and Will's lives by killing Father Gomez. Upon ensuring their safety, Balthamos calls out Baruch's name and dies.
• Tony Makarios is a naive boy who is lured into captivity by Mrs Coulter.
• Mulefa are four-legged wheeled animals; they have one leg in front, one in back, and one on each side. The "wheels" are huge, round, hard seed-pods from seed-pod trees; an axle-like claw at the end of each leg grips a seed-pod. The Mulefa society is primitive.

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.[11]

One distinctive aspect of Pullman's story is the presence of "dæmons" (pronounced "demon"). In the birth-universe of the story's protagonist Lyra Belacqua, a human individual's inner-self[12] manifests itself throughout life as an animal-shaped "dæmon", that almost always stays near its human counterpart. During the childhood of its associated human, a dæmon can change its animal shape at will, but with the onset of adolescence it settles into a fixed, final animal form.

Pullman has identified three major literary influences on His Dark Materials: the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist,[13] the works of William Blake, and, most important, John Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the trilogy derives its title.[14] 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".

Critics have compared the trilogy with The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis. Pullman however has characterised the Narnia series as "blatantly racist", "monumentally disparaging of women", "immoral", and "evil".[15][16] The trilogy has also been compared with such fantasy books as Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.[17][18]

The first volume, Northern Lights, won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in the UK in 1995.[19] 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.[20][21] The Amber Spyglass won the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year award, the first time that such an award has been bestowed on a book from their "children's literature" category.[22]

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.[1] 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, was released in 2005).

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".[23] 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).[24] 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. In 2008, The Observer cites Northern Lights as one of the 100 best novels.[25] Time magazine in the US included Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time.[26] In November 2019, the BBC listed His Dark Materials on its list of the 100 most influential novels.[27]

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.

His Dark Materials has occasioned controversy, primarily amongst some Christian groups.[28][29][30]

Cynthia Grenier, in the Catholic Culture, said: "In the world of Pullman, God Himself (the Authority) is a merciless tyrant. 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 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]

In a November 2002 interview, Pullman was asked to respond to the Catholic Herald calling his books "the stuff of nightmares" and "worthy of the bonfire". He replied: "My response to that was to ask the publishers to print it in the next book, which they did! I think it's comical, it's just laughable".[34] The original remark in Catholic Herald (which was "there are numerous candidates that seem to me to be far more worthy of the bonfire than Harry Potter") was written in the context of parents in South Carolina pressing their Board of Education to ban the Harry Potter books.[35]

Pullman expressed surprise over what he considered to be a relatively 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".[36] Others support this interpretation, arguing that the series, while clearly anticlerical, is also anti-theological because the death of god is represented as a fundamentally unimportant question.[37]

Pullman found support from some other Christians, most notably from Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury (spiritual head of the Anglican Communion), who argued that Pullman's attacks focus on the constraints and dangers of dogmatism and the use of religion to oppress, not on Christianity itself.[38] Williams 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".[39] Pullman and Williams took part in a National Theatre platform debate a few days later to discuss myth, religious experience and its representation in the arts.[40]

Pullman renames various common objects or ideas of our world with archaic terms or new words of his own. Below are some of these renamings and new words.

• Aërodock: Airport. Airships are the dominant form of air travel in Lyra's world, which need to dock at a tower rather than on the land.
• Æsahættr: (literally "God-destroyer" in Old Norse) The formal name of the "Subtle Knife"; also deemed the "last knife of all".
• Alethiometer: A "truth teller", a rare device in Lyra's world which resembles a four-handed pocket watch, it can truthfully answer any possible question asked by a skilled user. From aletheia (Ancient Greek: ἀλήθεια), meaning 'Truth' and "métron" (Ancient Greek: μέτρον), meaning "measure".
• Anbaric, and the prefix anbaro-: Electric or electrical. From anbar, Arabic for amber; the English word "electric" is based on the Greek ήλεκτρον (élektron), meaning "amber". Both words derive from the electrostatic properties of amber.
• Atomcraft: Research into particle physics.
• Brantwijn: Brandywine.
• Byanroping or roping: in the Gyptian dialect, a formal meeting of all Gyptian families to discuss important matters.
• Cauchuc: Rubber and possibly also plastic, from the Quechuan word cauchuc or caoutchouc, meaning the sap of the rubber tree.
• Celestial geography: Celestial navigation.
• Chapel: A scientific laboratory. All scientific enquiry derives from the church and so the language that describes it has religious overtones (a chapel is ordinarily a place of religious worship).
• Chaplain: The head of a scientific laboratory.
• Chocolatl: Chocolate. Sometimes hot chocolate; other times "a bar of chocolatl" (a chocolate bar). From chocolatl, the Nahuatl word for chocolate.
• Chthonic Railway Station: An underground railway station. "Chthonic" is from Greek χθόνιος (chthonios), meaning pertaining to the earth; earthy.
• Cloud-pine: A type of wood used by witches for flying (akin to broomsticks in other literature).
• Coal-silk: A synthetic fibre made from coal, was invented as a substitute for natural silk, akin to Nylon.
• Coal spirit: Petroleum or other hydrocarbon fuels derived from it.
• Dæmon: The animal embodiment of a human's inner-life. It is pronounced 'demon'.
• Dust: Mysterious cosmic particles that are integral to the plot. Dust is invisible to the human eye, and, unlike ordinary particles, Dust is conscious.
• Experimental theology: Science, especially Physics.
• Electrum: An occasionally used Latin word for amber; see "anbaric" above.
• Fire-mine: A geothermal vent in which the panserbjorne work in metallurgy; supposedly impenetrable to humans and witches.
• Gyropter: A helicopter, both words could be translated as "rotating wing" (Greek gyros/helikos + pteron = circle/spiral + wing).
• Marchpane: Marzipan, "marchpane" is an archaic word for "marzipan".
• Naphtha: Oil or petroleum (as in oil-lamp, rather than naphtha-lamp). A petrochemical like kerosene.
• Night-ghast: restless spirits, they are reminiscent of the spirits which - in some mythologies - were thought to be the cause of nightmares.
• Oratory: A church building.
• Ordinator: A computer (from the same root as ordinateur (French) and ordenador (Spanish)).
• Philosophical: Having to do with the study of the physical laws of the universe (i.e. what we would call physics). In our own world, science and physics grew out of - and were, until the 19th century usually referred to as - natural philosophy.
• Photogram: A photograph; more primitive than those in our world but able to be developed in various ways.[41]
• Poppy: Opium. In Lyra's world opium use is quite legal and respectable. Oxford dons traditionally take it with wine after dinner.
• Projecting lantern: A magic lantern used for photograms. (Pullman noted in Northern Lights's Lantern Slides addendum that he based the projector in the book on one his grandfather owned.[42])
• Shadow (capitalised): The name, in our universe, of Dust.
• Smokeleaf: Tobacco
• (Experimental) Theologian: A physicist. From "Natural Theology" meaning "science".
• Tokay: A highly prized wine in Lyra's world, the name may be an archaic, Anglicised form of tokaji (a wine of the Tokaj-Hegyalja region in Hungary)[43]

Pullman also uses archaic or adapted names for otherwise familiar peoples, regions and places.

Unless stated otherwise, these words are all capitalised.

• Beringland: Northwest America, specifically Alaska and the Yukon Territories of Canada. Named after the explorer who first set out in the region, Vitus Bering.
• Brytain: A phonetically identical re-spelling of Britain. It has echoes of "Brython", a word for ancient British people and the lands they inhabited.
• byanplats (lowercase): in the Gyptian dialect, the prominent area of raised land in the Fens.
• Cathay: China, taken from the medieval European name for China.
• Corea: A phonetically identical respelling of the country Korea (used both in Cittàgazze and Lyra's world). This is an old spelling, used prior to the current one, with a "K".
• Eastern Anglia: East Anglia, the region where John Faa's gyptians live; in Lyra's Brytain it has remained fenland with the Dutch influence remaining strong.
• Eireland: Ireland, as referred to in the Cittàgazze universe. A mixture of the Irish (Éire) and English name.
• Fireland: Iceland, named in the Peril of the Pole game in Once Upon a Time in the North. This name refers to Iceland's volcanoes rather than to its glaciers.
• Gebraltarik: Gibraltar, from its Arabic name Jabal Tāriq.
• German Ocean: The North Sea
• Groenland: Greenland
• Gyptians: A boat-dwelling, transient social group in Lyra's world. They live according to their own customs and traditions, outside mainstream society. They are reminiscent of "Gypsies" (Roma). Our word "Gypsy" is derived from the (mistaken) belief that Gypsies were Egyptian in origin.
• Lake Enara: Lake Inari, a lake in Northern Finland. From Enare, the Swedish-language name for the lake.
• Lapland: The region corresponding in our world to Swedish Lapland and Northern Norway.
• Lascar: An East Indian. This is an archaic, English word for a sailor or militiaman from the Indian Subcontinent or thereabouts.
• Mejico: Mexico, from the Mexican pronunciation.
• Muscovy and Muscovites: A reference to the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Territory approximates to our Russia (see 'Russia' below).
• New Denmark: A region occupied by the United States of America, west of New France. Lee Scoresby is described as a 'New Dane', specifically from the 'country of Texas' (see 'Texas' below).
• New France: Includes the regions (in our world) of Quebec, much of eastern Canada, and the areas bought by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. In the 17th and 18th century, the area around the St-Lawrence River and much of the North American Interior was called New France. Lee Scoresby recalls the Battle of the Alamo, in his world, as being between French and Danish settlers.[44]
• Nippon and Nipponese: Japan and the Japanese language and/or people. From Nippon ("land of the rising sun"), a Japanese-language name for Japan.
• (Great) North Ocean: The North Atlantic Ocean combined with the European region of the Arctic Ocean.
• Norroway: Norway.[45]
• Nova Zembla: Novaya Zemlya, a Russian archipelago in the Arctic
• Panserbjørne (generally italicized and lowercase): Armoured bears (as a whole race or as individuals); a warrior clan of sapient, talking polar bears based on the islands of Svalbard, known for crafting powerful armour from meteoric iron. The word "panserbjørne" literally means "armour-bears" in Danish. The singular is panserbjørn.
• Peaceable Ocean: The Pacific Ocean, calqued from the Latin.
• Roman: The Latin language.
• Russia: Mentioned in shipping entries at the end of Once Upon a Time in the North, and includes Finnish territory of the Russian Empire.[46] As Muscovy is also mentioned on the same book page, 'Russia' might be separate from Muscovy.
• Skræling: An Inuit, particularly one from Greenland. Natives of Greenland were similarly named by the Viking settlers of our world.
• Tartar: A Tatar; Nomadic Turkic, warrior people of northern Asia, known for practicing unusual spiritual rituals, including trepanning.
• Texas: The homeland of Lee Scoresby and a sovereign nation within the region called New Denmark. The Republic of Texas was briefly an independent nation in our own world.

• Philip Pullman