Free Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon

very different relation from that of Ada’s Terra and Antiterra, which reflect and comment only upon each other, locked in a transdimensional self-regard which in turn mirrors that of the vain Van Veen. Instead, Pullman has consciously and overtly founded the structure of his fictional universe on the widely if not universally accepted “many-worlds hypothesis,” derived from quantum physics—in His Dark Materials there will eventually turn out to be (rather conservatively) “millions” of such worlds, though in the end Pullman has only guided us through half a dozen of them. * Lyra’s and ours are only two among the infinite number of possible Oxfords, all of which, according to the hypothesis at its most extreme, exist.
    Pullman’s use of such avant-garde scientific notions as the multiverse and dark matter (more on that later) might incline one to slap the label of “science fiction” onto his work along with “epic fantasy,” “YA,” and “alternate-world fiction”; but the quantum physics in His Dark Materials is mostly employed as a rationale for the standard world-hopping that heroes and heroines of fantasy have been engaging in from Gilgamesh onward. More interesting is Pullman’s understanding of the metaphoric power of the many-worlds theory. An endlessly ramifying series of possibility-worlds, diverging and diverging again with each alteration in state, each tiny choice made, each selection of B over A: this may or may not be physics, but it is indisputably storytelling. And Pullman, as it turns out, is an unabashed concocter of stories, with a deep, pulpy fondness for plot. He is also, in the great tradition of unabashed concocters of stories, a highly self-conscious storyteller. By the end of The Amber Spyglass, one has come to see Pullman’s world-calving imagination, to see Imagination itself, as the ordering principle, if not of the universe itself, then of our ability to comprehend, to wander, and above all to love it.
    * Pullman avoids use of the term “multiverse,” arguably coined by the greatest writer of post-Tolkien British fantasy, Michael Moorcock, to whose work Pullman’s is clearly indebted.
    3.
    However far the narrative may wander, the action of His Dark Materials centers tightly, even obsessively, on the interrelation of two of Pullman’s many felicitous inventions: daemons and Dust.
    The goddess of writers was smiling upon Philip Pullman on the day he came up with the idea for daemons. These are, in Lyra’s world, the inseparable life companions of every human being. Daemons take the shapes of animals, but they have reason and the power of speech. Lyra’s is named Pantalaimon—she calls him Pan—and at first we take him to be her animal-familiar, butwe soon learn that he is in fact the equivalent of what is known in our world as the soul. The bond between human and daemon is fundamental, essential, empathic, and at times telepathic. When a daemon’s human being dies, its own life ends; the daemon winks out of existence, snuffed out like a candle flame. Pan, like all children’s daemons, has not yet “settled”—that is, he can take on, at will, the shape of any animal he wishes, a power he will retain until Lyra reaches puberty. When Pan is frightened or anxious to conceal himself, he is a moth, or a mouse; when he wishes to intimidate or to repel attack, he becomes a snarling wildcat; when Lyra is feeling lonely or cold, he becomes a soft, warm ermine and drapes himself tenderly around her neck.
    As the story unfolds, new wrinkles and refinements in the relationship between human and daemon keep occurring to Pullman, and he reports them to us at once with the palpable storyteller’s excitement that animates (and at times undermines) the entire series: while people generally have daemons of the opposite gender to their own, some rare oddballs have a same-sex daemon; people tend to get the daemons they deserve (schemers have snake daemons, servants have dog