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| Questions, comments or suggestions? Email me here. |
| The mulefa: I remember a day with my younger son, who was then 15, when we were on holiday in Slovenia, and we were speculating about the business of why no animals had wheels. What would be necessary, biologically, physiologically, for that to be possible? We were walking around Lake Bled, which is a very pretty lake all surrounded by trees, and in two or three hours we had invented the mulefa. At least, we'd got the creatures and the trees and the seed-pods and the wheels. But on their own they would have meant little and added nothing to the story; so then the connection had to be made with Dust and the basic theme of the story, which of course is the difference between innocence and experience. The alethiometer comes about because of my fascination with symbolic images of the Renaissance and earlier. I thought it would be interesting to invent a little machine to come up with symbolic answers. There are precedents: there's a kind of lottery-by-spinner for consulting an emblem-book that I saw in the Bodleian Library. You ask your question, spin the doodad, and it tells you which page to look on for the emblem that fits your situation. But the alethiometer is nice and golden and shiny. The golden monkey doesn't have a name because every time I tried to think of one, he snarled and frightened me. What's more he hardly speaks either. Kirjava- well done. Yes, I was looking for a Finnish word that meant something like multi-coloured or mottled or that sort of thing. Not having a Finnish adviser on hand, I had to rely on what I could find in a dictionary. The witches's prophecies, and how they know future things: I don't know everything about the world I made up. A lot of it is still mysterious to me. Maybe I'll find out when I write the Book of Dust. The world of the dead: yes, I did read Gilgamesh many years ago, but I haven't read Ursula Le Guin. When I was beginning this story I thought I ought to avoid her in case I found that she'd done something similar to what I wanted to do, and then I'd find myself avoiding what I wanted because it might seem that I'd borrowed from her, or doing it differently just in order to be different - or whatever. So I didn't read her. But I shall now. I look forward to visiting her world of the dead. Mine comes largely from classical mythology, as you can probably tel, together with some very personal things about the harpies that come out of my own mythology, going back to when I was 16. Eight years after that (30 years ago now) I saw Blake's illustrations to Dante, and felt a jolt of shocked recognition. The Oxford setting- laziness. It's all around me; I know how the colleges work; it's easy to make up weird old Oxford rituals, and so on. I am too lazy and too fond of comfort to do anything adventurous like actually go to the Arctic; I'd rather go the library and read about it. When I've absorbed enough, I'm free to make up whatever I need, knowing it'll sort of fit and seem real. The Eagle and the Child - odd you should mention that - I'm going there next week to meet my publisher and talk about the B of D. I'll mention this discussion, and drink to your health. |
| Phillip Pullman's Answers to Questions About The Creation of the characters, creatures, settings and more. On the Readerville forum These are just some related excerpts, for the complete text of Phillip Pullman's responses please email me. |
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