Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in North America and some other countries) is a young-adult fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, published in 1995 by Scholastic UK.
Set in a parallel universe, it follows the journey of Lyra Belacqua to the Arctic in search of her missing friend, Roger Parslow, and her imprisoned uncle, Lord Asriel, who has been conducting experiments with a mysterious substance known as "Dust".
[1] Alfred A. Knopf published the first US edition April 1996, under the name The Golden Compass,[1][3] under which title it was adapted as a 2007 feature film and as a companion video game.
[4] For the 70th anniversary of the Medal, it was named one of the top ten winning works by a panel, composing the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite.
She warns Asriel, whom she believes is her uncle, not to drink the wine, then spies on his lecture about "Dust", mysterious elementary particles attracted to adults more than to children.
Lyra directs the witches to tow the balloon towards Asriel in Svalbard, but she falls out and is taken by the panserbjørne to the castle of their usurping king, Iofur Raknison.
He tells Lyra all he knows of Dust: that it has spawned parallel universes, it is somehow connected to death and misery, and that the Church believes it is the physical basis of sin.
Right: Jesus as geometer in a 13th-century medieval illuminated manuscript of unknown authorship.During pre-publication of the novel, the prospective trilogy was known in Britain as The Golden Compasses, an allusion to God's poetic delineation of the world.
The term is from a line in Milton's Paradise Lost,[6] where it denotes the drafting compass God used to establish and set a circular boundary of all creation: Then staid the fervid wheels, and in his hand He took the golden compasses, prepared In God's eternal store, to circumscribe This universe, and all created things: One foot he centred, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure
[8] Some critics have asserted that the trilogy and the movie portray organised churches and religion negatively,[9][10] while others – notably Dr Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury – have argued that Pullman's works should be included in religious-education courses.
[12] Literary critic Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College in Illinois suggested that Pullman had recast the Narnia series, replacing a theist world-view with a Rousseauist one.
The cast included Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Ian McKellen, Sam Elliott, Derek Jacobi, and Christopher Lee.
The cast includes: Joanna Wyatt as Lyra, Alison Dowling as Mrs Coulter, Seán Barrett as Lord Asriel and Iorek Byrnison, and Stephen Thorne as the Master and Farder Coram.
Sega released a video game of the movie adaptation of the book, titled The Golden Compass and developed by Shiny Entertainment, on 4 December 2007.
Players assume the role of Lyra as she travels through the frozen wastes of the North in an attempt to rescue her friend kidnapped by a mysterious organisation known as the Gobblers.
Cast members included Dafne Keen, James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ian Gelder, and Ruta Gedmintas.