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.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
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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.
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; John Milton's Paradise Lost (from which the title of the trilogy is taken) and the works of William Blake.
His Dark Materials has been at the heart of controversy, especially with certain fundamentalist Christian groups. However, Pullman has also found support from more liberal groups, and most notably Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. These point out that Pullman's attacks are focused on the constraints of dogmatism and the use of religion to oppress, not Christianity itself.
The trilogy has also been published as a single-volume omnibus in the UK.
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). Archive of RTE adaptation (http://www.rte.ie/radio1/archive/childrensdrama/northernlights.html).
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 is scheduled to return for a second run in November 2004.
A film adaptation, screenwritten by Tom Stoppard and titled His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass is slated for release in 2005 by New Line Cinema. As of June 2004, Chris Weitz, is in negotiations to direct.
In the autumn of 2003, Pullman published Lyra's Oxford, which consists of a short story called "Lyra and the Birds," focussing 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.