The Day After Tomorrow novelisation by Whitley Strieber from a screenplay by Roland Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff
01/07/2004 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 

pub:Gollancz. 249 page paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-575-07603-8.

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Novelisations are invariably written while the film is still in production, often off an early version of the script or certainly before the final edit that tweaks it for general release. As such, it’s always hard to attribute blame for where faults lie in a story between scriptwriter and noveliser and what’s seen on the screen.

Essentially, this is a disaster movie brought into words. As I haven’t seen the film, my comments are solely based on the written page. Paleoclimatologist expert and maverick Jack Hall’s prediction on rapid global change happens just in time for the reality to sink in and take place.

Early indications when the gulf stream vanishes and the northern hemisphere enters a new ice age with blizzards and all that ‘fun stuff’ of the end of the world as we know it. Into this mix, we see what happens to a sampling of people as either survivors or victims. Jack Hall’s son could be either as he and his friends are trapped in New York and after briefing the President, Hall and a couple members of his team go off to rescue them.

Scientifically, some of the things here can happen from global warming, although this reviewer wonders if they’d be quite so fast or wide-spread. We only see the effects across the US and a little touches in places like the UK, even if it's centred on rescuing royalty. Maybe they figure Russia will survive cos they’re used to such weather changes or won’t be seeing the film there?

I find it odd that temperatures are noted in Fahrenheit when Centigrade is the measure of choice in the scientific community. Consider this as well: Over thirty foot of snow has fallen over New York and yet ships are floating in this and don’t appear to have said amount of snow on their decks and hidden in the snowy depths. Such mistakes for the sake of making a film look good, not to mention the optimistic ending that mankind would survive a real sub-zero temperature drop is ludicrous.

If films about global warming are going to be turfed out by Hollywood then one can only hope that others will be closer to what would really happen and avoid such ‘humanisations’ or tacking on conventional story to make you feel for characters. The film went for visuals and the novelisation doesn’t have a film stills insert to make you appreciate the effort if even that end of the film.

From the noveliser’s perspective, maybe it’s me, but I failed to get a decent visual of just how old Jack’s son was or even of a tramp being what he was. Whether this was Strieber’s fault or the script is debatable. You’re carried along with the events in the story but when you analyse it afterwards, the use of the idea is overall shallow when a lot more effort could have been done to make a much stronger film to remind people that humans are only caretakers of this planet and we’re making a damn mess of doing it.

GF Willmetts

Correction (via Stephen): It's been pointed out by a kindly Nest reader that this book is the novel the film was actually based upon, rather than a piece of work-for-hire based on the movie screenplay. E.g. the book came first, not the film. I suspect Geoff would have been even more faint in his praise if he had realised this fact.