Dark Matters: An Unofficial And Unauthorised Guide To Philip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy

by Lance Parkin, Mark Jones

Philip Pullman's books – The Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, making up the trilogy known as His Dark Materials, have been a massive success with children and adults alike.

This unofficial guide gives a brief biography of Pullman himself, an explanation of the trilogy's set-up and synopses of the three books and the follow-up novella Lyra's Oxford. This is followed by a gazetteer, an A-Z guide to the people, places and items in these great books. Including notes on the publication history and availability of the books and their foreign editions, Dark Matters then concludes with information on the talking books, the radio plays, the National Theatre production and the current status of the films, making it the indispensable guide to Lyra's and Will’s worlds.

277 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2005

About the author

Lance Parkin is an author who has written professional Doctor Who fiction since the 1990s. He is one of the few authors to write for both the 1963 and 2005 version of the programme — though much of his fiction has actually been based on the 1996 iteration. Indeed, he was notably the first author to write original prose for the Eighth Doctor in The Dying Days. He was also the author chosen to deliver the nominal 35th anniversary story, The Infinity Doctors, and the final volume in the Eighth Doctor Adventures range, The Gallifrey Chronicles. More recently, he has written for the Tenth Doctor in The Eyeless.

He is further notable for his work with Big Finish Productions, where he is arguably most known for writing the Sixth Doctor adventure, Davros.

Outside of Doctor Who, he has written things like Warlords of Utopia and (with Mark Jones) Dark Matter, a guide to the author Philip Pullman.