Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "His Dark Materials" in English language version.
The reveal kickstarts the BBC's year-long celebration of literature.
He explains how the title came about: "The notion of dark matter struck me as an intensely poetic idea, that the vast bulk of the universe is made up of stuff we can't see at all and have no idea what it is. It's intoxicatingly exciting. Then, when I was looking in Paradise Lost for the title of the trilogy, I came across this marvellous phrase, 'His dark materials', which fits in so well with dark matter. So I hoped and prayed that no one would discover what this stuff is before I finished the books. And, thank goodness, they didn't."