There’s really no way for me to properly express my feelings on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. I read the three books, The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, years ago on a hiking trip in New Mexico. If you ever want to have a truly transcendental experience, read a good book on the top of a mountain where you can see all the stars. Pullman’s been teasing the sequel, The Book of Dust, for years. Now it looks like 2013 will be all Dust, all the time.
To get some kind of idea as to how this news makes me feel, please see the following video:
The news that Pullman will be focusing entirely on The Book of Dust comes straight from the man himself via Episode 76 of Wired’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Here’s the relevant quote:
I’m going to clear the whole of next year, and most of the year after, and I’m not going to accept any invitations to make speeches, go anywhere. From now on silence will descend, and I will be in my room with my pen and my paper, writing The Book of Dust.
You can listen to the entirety of Episode 76 here, and it’s certainly worth the time. It’s also nice to hear Pullman himself say these words. Considering the last bit of material to come out of the His Dark Materials universe was Lyra’s Oxford in 2003 Once Upon a Time in the North in 2008, the coming year marks a decade five years without any further updates. That’s just depressing.
(via Wired, image via Cayusa, h/t to Jasmine Alvarado for the correction on the last piece of fiction)
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