According to a fine profile of children's author Philip Pullman in last week's New Yorker, the Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials is being made into three films by New Line Cinemas, makers of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Pullman's epic fantasy will be very difficult to film; I hope they do the books justice. His Dark Materials had the dual misfortune of being labeled "children's" fantasy--even though its themes are more complex and mature than most adult novels--and of coming out at almost exactly the same time as fellow Brit J. K. Rowlings' first Harry Potter novels. Pullman was the one who deserved to become a global phenomenon. His books are no standard magick and wizardry fare; set on a succession of interlocking worlds, they're wildly imaginative (but cohesive), far more exhilarating and have more compelling heroes than Harry, and offer (among many other things) a much more devastating critique of Christian orthodoxy than the use of the word "witch." (Although the first novel does have witches...)

Christians are going to hate His Dark Materials on both political and theological grounds, which is reason enough to look forward to the films. But check out the novels. They're the best fantasy I've ever read, children's or adult. I just hope the filmmakers don't screw it up. --Geov Parrish

The Seattle Weekly's Nov. 16 crowning of Jonathan Raban as "Seattle's Best Writer" may have smacked of brash hype to some, but if there is indeed a better writer than Raban in Seattle at this moment, I'd sure like to know.

Raban's latest, My Holy War: Dispatches From The Home Front, brilliantly examines the post-9/11 American political climate from the perspective of ultra-liberal Seattle, as seen through the eyes of Raban, a British-born expat and amateur--though far from mediocre--scholar of the Arab world. A collection of essays published between February 2002 and August 2005 in The New York Review of Books and elsewhere, My Holy War gains great explanatory force through Raban's early, informed discussion of the intellectual roots of radical Islamism, focusing especially on the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb's influential 1964 book Milestones. Raban also touches on the uncanny parallels between Islamist fundamentalism and its Bush Country counterpart, as well as the parallels between the British colonization of Mesopotamia in 1921 and the United States' own grandly botched modern designs on Iraq--not to mention the scary proximity of Seattle's potentially terror-bearing shipping docks to our downtown core.

Raban's myriad knowledge and sublime insights about pre- and post-9/11 America are grandly capped off with the pudding that proves the Weekly probably got it right: Raban's prose is to die for. My Holy War casts a great explanatory light on these dark imperial times, and it's a delightfully easy read as well; a great starting place for the Raban neophyte. --Jeff Stevens

Another culture note: The University of Washington's Burke Museum (17th Ave. & 45th St. NE, on the north edge of campus) recently held a fine exhibit of (South Asia) Indian photographer Subhankar Banarjee's stunning wildlife portraits of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The photos are an elegant and irrefutable rebuttal to those idiots in Congress who support ANWR oil drilling because there's "nothing" there. Though the Burke exhibit closed Dec. 31, Banarjee's ANWR work is collected in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, a wonderful coffee-table book published by Seattle-based Mountaineers Books in 2003. Highly recommended. --G.P.