Every Version of The Midnight Sky: a cross-media guide

A quiet novel that became a Netflix epic

Lily Brooks-Dalton published Good Morning, Midnight in 2016, a debut novel so stripped down it barely qualifies as science fiction. Two stories run in parallel: Augustine Lofthouse, an aging astrophysicist who refuses to evacuate the Arctic observatory where he has chosen to spend whatever time remains after an unnamed global catastrophe, and Sully, an astronaut aboard a spacecraft returning from a survey of Jupiter's moon, unaware that the world she left behind has been destroyed. The novel takes its name from a Billie Holiday song. Its mode is grief and regret, not spectacle.

George Clooney acquired the rights, hired screenwriter Mark L. Smith to adapt it, and directed the 2020 Netflix film under the retitled name The Midnight Sky. The film amplifies the visual scale considerably, adds an action set piece in space, and tips the balance of the story toward the emotional revelation at its centre. It retains the novel's fundamental structure: two people separated by unimaginable distance, both circling a secret neither can quite face.

That is the full cross-media history. There is no television series, no stage adaptation, no graphic novel. This is a two-chapter story: the book and the film.

The story so far

2016Novel published by Random House Good morning, midnight
2016Audiobook narrated by Hillary Huber and John H. Mayer Good morning, midnight
2020Netflix film directed by and starring George Clooney The Midnight Sky

The novel is the definitive version

Brooks-Dalton's prose holds Augustine and Sully at the same emotional distance from the reader, so the structural revelation at the end lands with quiet devastation rather than a sentimental punch. The restraint is the point. The film is handsomely made and Clooney's performance is genuinely moving, but it keeps nudging you toward feeling things in the approved ways. The novel trusts you to sit in the silence.

Good morning, midnight

The film is underrated as a mood piece

Critics were hard on The Midnight Sky for being too slow, but that slowness is the film being faithful to its source. The Arctic photography is extraordinary, and Alexandre Desplat's score (including a remarkable diegetic cover of 'Sweet Caroline') gives the film an emotional texture the mixed reviews mostly ignored. It is not a thriller. If you go in knowing that, it rewards the patience.

The Midnight Sky

Read the novel before you watch the film

The novel's power lives in the white space between sentences, the things Brooks-Dalton declines to explain. The film fills in that silence with score and cinematography, which is not the same as explanation but does change the experience of the revelation. Going in cold to the novel gives the ending its full weight. If you have already seen the film, the book will still reward you, but you will be reading toward a destination you already know.

Good morning, midnight

The Midnight Sky