Philip Pullman started His Dark Materials trilogy in 1993. They are international best sellers in the young adult market with a ready made audience for the movie. Pullman is an avowed atheist who wrote the trilogy because he was upset by the Christian evangelism in C.S. Lewis,’ The Chronicles of Narnia. The plot of 'The Golden Compass' revolves around spiritism, magical thinking, mysterious visions, and parallel worlds. The golden compass of the title is a tool of divination. In the books, Pullman represents God as a decrepit and perverse angel who captures the dead in a “prison camp” afterlife.

The story centers on Lyra, a young girl living at Jordan College in the Oxford of an alternate world where everyone is accompanied by a daemon, a physical representation of their soul in animal form. One morning, Lyra's school Master calls her urgently into his office and gives her a strange instrument called an Alethiometer (the “golden compass” pictured above). He tells her that it is capable of telling the truth but that it is up to her to read it. He also pleads with her to keep the Alethiometer to herself. Lyra then finds herself in a world where she must fight against evil, and here lies the controversy. Lyra is the "chosen child" who must do battle with evil. But in this story, the things that are good are evil (the church is the Magisterium, the bad group trying to gain control of all) and evil is good (daemons and witches are allies.)