Born in Norwich in 1946, Philip Pullman attended Exeter College at Oxford. He was a teacher for 12 years (and a teacher of teachers for an additional six!), and to this day he retains an avid interest in education.
Pullman wrote two adult novels in the 1970s before turning to juvenilia. The first of his children's books, Count Karlstein, is a funny-scary, gothic-tinged fairy tale published in 1982. The second was The Ruby in the Smoke (1986), a rip-roaring adventure story featuring a young Victorian girl named Sally Lockhart. Sally went on to star in a quartet of historical thrillers that helped forge Pullman's reputation.
Without question, Pullman's magnum opus is His Dark Materials, an ambitious, world-spanning trio of fantasy/adventures that offers a startling perspective on childhood, innocence, and evil. Published between 1995 and 2000, the multi-award-winning trilogy includes Northern Lights, published in the U.S. as The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; and The Amber Spyglass.
His Dark Materials incorporates iconoclastic ideas from the worlds of science, theology, and philosophy; but it is Pullman's religious views that have been placed under the most intense scrutiny. He has been accused of actively promoting an anti-Christian agenda in his books, and some critics have gone so far as to say His Dark Materials is a direct rebuttal to C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Here is what Pullman has to say on the subject:
"The religious impulse -- which includes the sense of awe and mystery we feel when we look at the universe, the urge to find a meaning and a purpose in our lives, a sense of moral kinship with other human beings ¿ is part of being human, and I value it. I'd be a damn fool not to. But organized religion is quite another thing. The trouble is that all too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people's lives in the name of some invisible god (and they're all invisible, because they don't exist) and done terrible damage."
Although he is often asked about the messages behind his sometimes inscrutable stories, Pullman refuses to elucidate. "I'm not in the message business," he has said. "I'm in the 'Once upon a time' business." For millions of enthralled readers, young and old alike, that's more than sufficient.
