Anyway, since Dust and the puzzle of what it is and how we come to terms with it is such a large part of the theme, it was only sensible to see whether I could use my wheeled creatures to illuminate it. Like that, we’d be on the path, where we should be, and not in the wood, getting lost. How, then, could wheels and Dust come together?
Well, my creatures are conscious, self-conscious, as we are. Otherwise they wouldn’t be interesting. They are subject to Dust. They have an affinity to it, as we do. In religious or mythical terms, our affinity to Dust is due to the Temptation and Fall, and it’s something we have to be redeemed from by the intercession of a Saviour, who can cleanse us from the consequences of knowledge. In evolutionary terms, it is probably due to language, or to the increased capacity of our brains to reflect on their own experience.
My creatures’ affinity to Dust might have a mythical origin too. But in physical terms, suppose their affinity had a physical origin. Suppose that something happened when the creatures and the wheels came together: a moral and mental symbiosis as well as a physical one? But because I’m keen to get right away from mysticism and because I loathe the idea of a spirit-matter dualism, and because I want to ground everything firmly in the physical world, I thought not about good and evil and conscience and guilt but about axles and bearings and lubrication.
Because of course you can’t have a wheel turning on an axle without some kind of bearing. What helps a wheel turn smoothly is a ball-race, or a cage of needle-roller bearings, or something of that sort. If there’s a hole in the middle of the seed-pod, could there be something similar inside it? Could the seeds themselves act as ball bearings? That seemed a bit fiddly. I didn’t like it. What about a smooth surface, though? If the inside of the hub and the lower edge of the creature’s claw, the edge that took the weight as it rested inside the hub, fitted each other perfectly and were as smooth and hard as Teflon, we wouldn’t need ball bearings; and the seed-pod itself could contain a kind of oil, like lignum vitae wood, which would lubricate the surface to make it even smoother.
Aha! Couldn’t this oil be the vehicle for Dust? Couldn’t it combine with a similar oil expressed from the creatures’ claws and thus pass into their bloodstream and…Now I was getting somewhere. And now I saw why I wanted symbiosis, and what that other idea was: the creatures become fully conscious and grown-up and adult and responsible when they get their wheels. When they’re young, they’re too small: the wheels are too big for them. They are like human children, innocent. Free of Dust. Dust, or full grown-up consciousness, or the knowledge of good and evil, comes when they begin to interact with the world: it comes from them and the tree together. They need the seed-pods to become fully what they are. We too can’t be fully ourselves if we don’t engage with the world.
And I saw another thing: their trunks and what that meant for cooperation and interdependence. They have a technology based not on metal, but on wood. They are marvels at growing and breeding trees of every kind; they use vegetable products to make everything they need, including the ropes and nets they fish with. To make a net you need to tie knots; you can’t tie knots easily with one hand, or one trunk; you need two. So two of them would stand face-to-face, their trunks moving swiftly together, tying knots. Everything they do is based on cooperation.
When Mary Malone turns up, with a central spine and two free hands, and ties knots all by herself, they are both impressed and horrified by her self-sufficiency; just as Lyra is horrified when she first meets Will, the boy from our world, because unlike her he hasn’t got a dæmon, and seems to be less than human.
But dæmons are another part of the path, because I use them too to say something about Dust; but before I’ve finished with my wheeled creatures I’d like to read you a short passage that explains the meaning of the title, The Amber Spyglass.
To introduce it: Mary Malone has been researching a previously unknown kind of elementary particle, which she calls Shadows. They may or may not be what is known as dark matter, but they are linked in some way with human consciousness. She finds herself after many adventures in this pastoral world occupied by these creatures with wheels. Mary manages to communicate with them—it doesn’t matter how. One day she discovers that they know about Shadows, about these particles of Mary’s, about Dust. Her friend Atal is talking:
Atal surprised her by saying, Yes, we know what you mean—we call it…and then she used what sounded like their word for light.
Mary said, Light? And Atal said, Not light, but…like the light on water when it makes small ripples, at sunset, and the light comes off in bright flakes, we call it that, but it is a make-like.
Make-like was their term for metaphor.
…Atal said, All the mulefa have this. You have too. That is how we knew you were like us and not like the grazers, who don’t have it. Even though you look so bizarre and horrible, you are like us, because you have—and again came that word that Mary couldn’t hear quite clearly enough to say: something sraf.
Mary said to Atal: How long have there been mulefa?
And Atal said, Thirty-three thousand years…Ever since we have had the sraf, we have had memory and wakefulness. Before that, we knew nothing.
What happened to give you the sraf?
We discovered how to use the wheels. One day a creature with no name discovered a seed-pod and began to play, and as she played…she saw a snake coiling itself through the hole in a seed-pod, and the snake said—
The snake spoke to her?
No, no! It is a make-like…The snake said, What do you know? What do you remember? What do you see ahead? And she said, Nothing, nothing, nothing. So the snake said Put your foot through the hole in the seed-pod where I was playing, and you will become wise. So she put a foot where the snake had been, and the oil entered her foot and made her see more clearly than before, and the first thing she saw was the sraf. It was so strange and pleasant that she wanted to share it at once with all her kindred. So she and her mate took the first ones and they discovered that they knew who they were…They gave each other names. They named themselves mulefa. They named the seed-tree, and all the creatures and plants.
Because now they were different, said Mary.
Yes, they were. And so were their children…and being wise because of the sraf, they saw that they had to plant more seed-pod trees for the sake of the oil, their children and their children’s children, but the pods were so hard that they very seldom germinated. And the first mulefa saw what they must do to help the trees, which was to ride on the wheels and break them, so mulefa and seed-pod trees have always lived together, which was to do what we have done ever since, and ride on them.
(TAS, 222)
Well, that’s a familiar story to Mary, of course, for more than one reason. So she decides to try and see the sraf, the Shadows, the Dust. What Atal says about its appearance—like reflected light—makes her think it might be polarised, so she sets about making a kind of glass to see them through.
As I said earlier, the mulefa have got a technology based not on metal but on wood and cord, on bark and sap, on bone and horn. Using the materials to hand, Mary makes a glass to look through—a spyglass—of sap-lacquer. It is as flat as the finest mirror, and the most delicate brown-yellow like amber: the amber spyglass.
But when she looks through it, although she can see many different and surprising optical effects, she can’t see Shadows.
Atal, her friend, comes along to look, but she’s not really interested; what she really wants is for Mary to groom her claws. The mulefa do this every day, grooming each other’s claws, maintaining their wheels.
I read again:
Mary put down the two pieces of lacquer and ran her hands over the astonishing smoothness of Atal’s claws, that surface smoother and slicker than Teflon that rested on the lower rim of the central hole and served as a bearing when the wheel turned. The cont
ours of the claw and the wheel matched exactly, of course, and as Mary ran her hands around the inside of the wheel she could feel no difference in texture: it was as if the mulefa and the seed-pod really were one creature which by a miracle could disassemble itself and put itself together again.
She was happy to clean the wheel-holes of all the dust and grime that accumulated there, and smooth the fragrant oil gently over her friend’s claws while Atal’s trunk lifted and straightened Mary’s hair.
When Atal had had enough, she set herself on the wheels again and moved away to help with the evening meal. Mary turned back to her lacquer, and almost at once she made her discovery.
Something had happened. As she looked through, she saw a swarm of golden sparkles surrounding the form of Atal. They were only visible through one small part of the lacquer…at that point she had touched the surface of it with her oily fingers.
“Atal!” she called. “Quick! Come back!”
Atal turned and wheeled back.
“Let me take a little oil,” Mary said. “Just enough to put on the lacquer.”
Atal willingly let her run her fingers around the wheel-holes again, and watched curiously as Mary coated one of the pieces with a film of the clear sweet substance.
Then she pressed the plates together and moved them around to spread the oil evenly, and held them a hand-span apart once more.
And when she looked through, everything was changed. Everywhere she looked she could see gold, just as Atal had described it: sparkles of light, floating and drifting and sometimes moving with a current of purpose. Wherever she saw a conscious being, one of the mulefa, the light was thicker and more full of movement.
I didn’t know it was beautiful, Mary said to Atal.
Why, of course it is, her friend replied. It is strange to think that you couldn’t see it. Look at the little one…
She indicated one of the small children playing in the long grass, leaping clumsily after grasshoppers, suddenly stopping to examine a leaf, falling over, scrambling up again to rush and tell his mother something, being distracted again by a piece of stick, trying to pick it up, finding ants on his trunk and hooting with agitation…There was a golden haze around him as there was around the shelters, the fishing-nets, the evening fire…it was full of little swirling currents of intention, that eddied and broke off and drifted about, to disappear as new ones were born.
Around his mother, on the other hand, the golden sparkles were much stronger and the currents they moved in more settled and powerful. She was preparing food, spreading flour on a flat stone to make the thin bread like tortillas or chapattis, watching her child at the same time, and the Shadows or the sraf or the Dust that bathed her looked like the very image of responsibility and wise care.
So at last you can see, said Atal. Well, now you must come with me.
Mary looked at her friend in puzzlement. Atal’s tone was strange: it was as if she were saying Finally you’re ready; we’ve been waiting; now things must change.
And others were appearing, from over the brow of the hill, from out of their shelters, from along the river: members of the group, but strangers too, who looked curiously towards where she was standing. The sound of their wheels on the hard-packed earth was low and steady.
Where must I go? Mary said. Why are they all coming here?
Don’t worry, said Atal, come with me, we shall not hurt you.
(TAS, 229)
So that’s how Dr. Malone discovers how to see Dust, and that’s why the book is called The Amber Spyglass. And that is why the creatures with their wheels are part of the path, not just part of the wood: part of the story-line, not just part of the story-world. Apart from anything else, it’s just more interesting for me when that happens. Stories are not only a sequence of things that happen, they are also—or they can be—patterns as well. The shape of the story-line can weave in and out in a shape which is attractive in an abstract way, which is aesthetically pleasing no matter what it means.
And the fun of making patterns like that is one of the reasons why I write stories. There are many other reasons, such as making money, and becoming famous enough to be invited to Finland, and because I was never much good at doing anything else; but certainly one of the reasons for making art of any sort is the making of those patterns. Some story-patterns are very ancient and based on traditional folklore, such as having things happening in threes: three wishes, three brothers, three gifts and so on.
Others are basic to our understanding of the world at all, for example the fascinating work done on narrative and cognitive science by the American critic Mark Turner, who in his book The Literary Mind explains the function of what he calls “image schemas” in our processing of mental events. Not to go into too much detail, an image schema is a skeletal pattern of some simple perceptual structure such as motion along a path, or pouring something into a container, or emerging, or being underneath something.
What happens when we understand things is that we project our familiarity with these tiny little narratives on to the details and events of the world itself, on to the flux of sense impressions, so that instead of seeing chaos, we perceive bits of story that we can assimilate into larger ones.
But the whole business of image schemas is not only another path, it’s another wood. My point here is simply that patterns are pretty, and that you can have fun in weaving them. So, for instance, it gave me great pleasure when I saw how I could tie up the very end of this long story of mine with a thread that began at the very beginning, three books ago. But since to tell you what that was I would have to read to you all the 1,200 pages that come between.
So that’s what I mean by the path, and that’s what I mean by the wood. Thank you for listening.
THIS TALK WAS GIVEN AT FINNCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TURKU, IN AUGUST 1999.
Science fiction and fantasy conventions have been generous enough to invite me to speak, from time to time, and although they’ve always made me welcome I never feel quite at home at such gatherings. The fact is, I’m not a fan of anything in particular, though I like a good many things. The sheer knowledge on display at fantasy or science fiction conventions is awe-inspiring, though it’s occasionally made me wonder whether gathering it leaves much time for anything else. Another reason for my slight feeling of dissociation is that I seem to be regarded, while there, as a writer of fantasy, whereas I’ve always maintained that His Dark Materials is a work of stark realism. There: I was glad to have the chance to say that again.
Dreaming of Spires
OXFORDS, REAL AND IMAGINARY
On the unlikeliness of Oxford and its effects on the imagination, with particular reference to the colleges of Exeter and Jordan
A couple of years ago I finished the last in a trilogy of novels (The Amber Spyglass, part three of His Dark Materials) set partly in an alternative universe, which contains an imaginary Oxford. Perhaps a great deal of Oxford is imaginary anyway. In Oxford, likelihood evaporates. At about the time the book was published, the Fellows of All Souls announced that they had just spent an evening parading around their college following a wooden duck on a stick. That was obviously a very sensible thing to do, and I wish I had thought of it first.
However, it is better to ease your readers in without startling them too much, so the Fellows of Jordan College, in my imaginary Oxford, eat dinner in Hall and then retire elsewhere to drink coffee, almost as if it were real life; and that is the point at which the story begins.
Jordan College occupies the same physical space in Lyra’s Oxford (Lyra is the young heroine of my story) as Exeter College occupies in real life, though rather more of it. Exeter was where I was an undergraduate many years ago, and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t make my college the grandest of all. Jordan, where Lyra grows up, has developed in a haphazard, piecemeal way, and for all its wealth some part of
it is always about to fall down and is consequently covered in scaffolding; it has an air of jumbled and squalid grandeur. And furthermore:
What was above ground was only a small fraction of the whole. Like some enormous fungus whose root-system extended over acres, Jordan (finding itself jostling for space above ground with St. Michael’s College on one side, Gabriel College on the other, and the University Library behind) had begun, sometime in the Middle Age, to spread below the surface. Tunnels, shafts, vaults, cellars, staircases had so hollowed out the earth below Jordan and for several hundred yards around it that there was almost as much air below ground as above; Jordan College stood on a sort of froth of stone.
(TGC, 48)
I don’t know whether that is true of Exeter, but I can locate the origin of that bit of fantasy. When I was up (1965–68) I had a group of idle friends who occupied their time and mine betting on horses, getting drunk and sprawling about telling creepy tales. One of the stories we frightened ourselves with concerned the Bodleian Library, which, we assured one another, had been intended to be Hitler’s Chancellery when he had conquered Britain. Beneath the library, apparently, the stacks extended for untold miles in every direction, and each of the levels, named with letters of the alphabet, was more secret than the one above. The lowest, Level L, was profoundly sinister. It was occupied by a race of sub-human creatures, the secret of whose existence was only divulged to the vice-chancellor on his accession.
However, there were forgotten shafts and lost passages through every part of the ground between the Clarendon Building and Palmer’s Tower in Exeter College, and sometimes the creatures got out. You could hear them howling and scrabbling if you pressed your ear to the cellar wall under staircase 9. I did, and you can.
When she’s not exploring underground, Lyra spends a good deal of time on the college roof, spitting plum-stones on the heads of passing scholars or hooting like an owl outside a window where a tutorial is going on. That too is based on something I remember from Exeter. In my second year I occupied the rooms at the top of staircase 8, next to the lodge tower, and a friend, Jim Taylor, discovered that you could get out of the window and crawl along a very useful gutter behind the parapet. From there you could climb in through another window further along. I gave Lyra a better head for heights than I have, but I did the gutter crawl a number of times, usually when there was a party on the next staircase.
Daemon Voices Page 11