I’ve written about Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy here before. I liked the ideas, but the books didn’t grab my imagination by the scruff of the neck. The film version of the first book comes out this week: The Golden Compass. Hopefully the books will translate in to good movies. If they expose more people to the ideas then that will be a good thing™. Mark Morford has written a nice column on the flap the film is causing amongst the “faithful”. Well worth a read.