Is there an underlying message for atheism in your book or did you simply want to write a fantasy story, like Tolkien?
—Kim Mapstead, Friday Harbor, Wash.

Hello, Kim: What I was mainly doing, I hope, was telling a story, but not a story like Tolkien’s. (To be honest I don’t much care for “The Lord of the Rings.”) As for the atheism, it doesn’t matter to me whether people believe in God or not, so I’m not promoting anything of that sort. What I do care about is whether people are cruel or whether they’re kind, whether they act for democracy or for tyranny, whether they believe in open-minded enquiry or in shutting the freedom of thought and expression. Good things have been done in the name of religion, and so have bad things; and both good things and bad things have been done with no religion at all. What I care about is the good, wherever it comes from.
—Philip Pullman, author of the books The Golden Compass is based on.

Now being boycotted by a fearful idiot near you. I just wish my boys were old enough to see it.

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