News Summary

• Philip Pullman’s young-adult fantasy classic The Golden Compass was published in 1995.
• Pullman is an atheist, and he expresses that in His Dark Materials by killing God.
• The books take place in a world not so unlike our own, except that it's a bit more magic and steampunk.
• At issue is the nature of a mysterious energetic particle, a kind of magical Higgs boson called Dust.
• For Pullman, the adventure doesn’t end with puberty.
• There is magic in innocence, but also in experience.