Tom Clancy has died

[JunkDNA]

If you've never read it, this is as good a time as any to pick up a copy of The Hunt for Red October. I had never actually read it until three or four years ago (though I had seen the movie as a teen). It has held up remarkably well.

[manojlds]

The Hunt for Red October is THE book that comes to my mind when I think of Tom Clancy. It was the only book I was thinking when I saw this link and came here. Glad to see it mentioned in the top comment.

On the games front, I am a huge fan of Splinter Cell series. Both the gamer, and the voracious reader in me would miss him.

[jedberg]

I actually read the book before I saw the movie and it was great! I think partly it holds up because he wrote it before anyone was making any media out of his books.

All the other books clearly are written with (movie/video game) in the back of his mind, but that one was just straight prose.

Can't agree with you more, folks should definitely read it if they haven't. Then watch the movie again with a much greater appreciation for the story.

[brudgers]

Red Storm Rising was what turned me on to Clancy. Then again, in the 1980's the idea World War III was a bit closer to home.

[spindritf]

I devoured his books as a kid and I credit that with having a somewhat realistic view of politics and military. Most of it came from meticulously investigated details but even plots that seemed fantastic (a plane crushing into the Capitol) almost happened later.

[colomon]

I remember people after 9/11 saying "Who would ever have thought a plane could be used as a weapon?" and thinking that it had been a key plot point in a bestselling Tom Clancy book...

[xradionut]

I credit my realistic view of politics and military to my military background and life experience coupled along with a metric-shit-ton of non-fiction reading.

There were other books before his that used commandeered airplanes as weapons. Clancy was just a much more adept and educated thriller writer than most in the field.

[protomyth]

If you can get the audio, he was actually interviewed about that on 9/12. It is the most bizarre interview with him sounding both scared and mad.

[theg2]

I also grew up reading both Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton and it greatly shaped the way I look at the world. It's sad to see them go and I've yet to find someone who writes in a style either of these men that can compare lately.

[3am]

Let's also remember the fantastically silly geopolitical predictions that he made in that book. How's our big rivalry with a nuclear armed Japan looking?

[lloeki]

> even plots that seemed fantastic (a plane crushing into the Capitol) almost happened later

I'm surprised actual terrorist plots similar to Rainbow Six have not happened yet. I was drawn to the book by the game, and while the latter is a landmark in tactical shooters, it's a mess in terms of delivering the actual story.

[protomyth]

Dammit

The first book by Clancy I read was "Red Storm Rising", I picked it up at 6pm and read until 3am. Some of the titles of chapters would have made great band names such as "Frisbees in Dreamland".

I wish they had actually made a movie of one of his books instead of just using the title.

[larrydag]

One of my all time favorite books. I'm not sure if the newer generations would appreciate the nature of this book as it basically takes place in the Cold War. Yet as a story it is one of the most comprehensive and riveting.

[thrownaway2424]

"Red Storm Rising" was Clancy's best, probably because of the co-authorship by Larry Bond. The book is engrossing due to its depth of detail and realistic timeline.

Clancy also credited Bond's warfare sim, "Harpoon", for helping in the writing of "The Hunt for Red October". I still have the original Harpoon for DOS and Harpoon II for Windows. Both are amazing games.

[sybhn]

My all time militaristic fiction novel too!

[tomjen3]

Damn, that was unexpected. I must say that his books were pretty awesome.

I especially liked his "Red dawn rising" which is one of the only WWIII books that doesn't go to a nuclear holocaust right away - if you a like to watch politics and have a military interest I recommend you check it out.

[ianstallings]

It's Red Storm Rising, and there was a board game. I dug out mine just the other day: http://imgur.com/KEh3Y95

I really loved the whole scenario. It's the only time I've read a book with a ton of characters, outside of LOTR, that I wasn't incredibly confused.

[josephlord]

Wasn't it "Red Storm Rising"? I liked that a lot as a teenager, don't seem to have it now though.

[jedberg]

In my high school you had to do a senior English thesis by reading three books of one author and then writing a thesis tying together the themes and characters.

I chose Tom Clancy. My English teacher said I was crazy and "would never find anything in those books writing about".

Somehow I pulled it off and got an A on that project.

So basically, I got to read Clancy books for school. :)

[United857]

Thanks for all the memories, TC. My first shipped game title was Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and throughout high school, I read all his Jack Ryan novels.

Even though his later novels devolved into ghost-written, right-wing political soapboxes, still sad to see him go.

[ghc]

I'm terribly sad to hear this. Tom Clancy's "Into the Storm: A Study in Command" was one of the first books outside of the fantasy genre to inspire me as a child. It led to years of creating RTS total conversions based on his work; activity that laid the foundation for the broad range of programming and design skills I have today.

[acheron]

He would have liked to have seen Montana.

(RIP)

[enraged_camel]

:(

[Tloewald]

I was never a big fan of his writing or politics, but the original Harpoon computer game (based on the tabletop game he was partially responsible for) stands as one of the best computer wargames I've ever played.

[fredsanford]

IIRC, it wasn't Clancy that had anything to do with the creation of Harpoon.

It was Larry Bond, who was an uncredited (I think) co-author on the early Clancy books. Bond and Clancy used Harpoon to help visualize the naval battles in the first few books.

A side note... I was chosen as the developer to port Harpoon to OS/2 in the early '90s but the company I worked for backed out. It pissed me off enough that I changed jobs. Anyway, I still have a few unopened boxes of the Harpoon software floating around here, which were handed to me by Gordon Walton himself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpoon_(series)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bond

[rplacd]

"Red Rabbit" woke up the inner foreign policy wonk in me, despite how transparent Clancy's imperatives were - it's a pity he could never end up working his same genuine interest with China; I all recall is supposed Chinese naivety being dredged up - corporate espionage ("Chinese secretary has sex with supposed Japanese computer salesman in the name of her company"); "China: We Kill Priests and Babies".

They'd nevertheless invoked a great deal of meaningful machinery, though - certainly compared to the sheer suppository of machismatic agency that was Chavez-verse (credit probably required yet again, though: he was probably first to tread within the grounds of "contemporary tacticool".)

[ChuckMcM]

I will miss his books, "Red Storm Rising" and "Clear and Present Danger" are both in my library. Some of his later books [1] suffered from too much detail, where I would have appreciated an editor with the guts to say "Tom, its great that this character has a full life history and several motivating events in their past, but we don't actually need all of that in the book to tell this story ...".

It's also sad to see a talented writer die at such a young age. Goodbye Tom, thanks for the great books.

[1] I am specifically referring to "The Bear and the Dragon" in this example.

[stephenhuey]

A friend's dad loaned me The Sum of All Fears when I was 11, and that was the first Clancy novel I read (Having seen the movie of The Hunt for Red October, I figured I'd enjoy it). Those 914 pages took me a couple weeks to read while relaxing in a recliner, especially since I was kind of OCD at that age about looking up every word I didn't understand in a massive dictionary that sat on my lap. After hearing about nukes throughout the 80s, the story felt to my young mind like it could happen any moment in real life.

[chiph]

Sorry to hear this. I enjoyed his novels, and wished Hollywood could have produced better movies from them.

[chadwickthebold]

I thought the Harrison Ford films were pretty good, and The Hunt for the Red October is absolutely a classic.

[chris11]

Well, we still have one movie left. Tom Clancy was a writer on the new Jack Ryan movie. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1205537/ is in post-production and will be released on Christmas.

[thehodge]

I'm a big fan of the Ryanverse and I am really sad to hear about his passing.. I've read and listened to the books countless times and it makes me sad to think that there is now an end once the next book comes out.

(I know that he has had ghostwriters for the last x books but the characters and stories are now finite)

[contextual]

Perhaps Tom Clancy books will continue to be written and published by a cadre of ghostwriters, much like VC Andrews.

[mathiasben]

66 seems young.

[null_ptr]

66 is young.

[ZanderEarth32]

I never read any of his books but I spent many hours playing the original Rainbow 6 on PC as a kid.

[hawkharris]

At the exact moment I read this headline, I was cropping a picture of Sam Fisher, one of Clancy's characters, for a fan website. (I'm a nerd, I know.) Terrible news. I'll definitely miss his knack for portraying action and suspense.

[nutate]

New 'Tom Clancy' brand books will be released for the next 100 years.

[eCa]

Sad. I really liked the earlier Ryan-verse books (I've not read anything by him after Bear and the Dragon).

My favourite remains Without Remorse. I miss a film adaption; Jim Caviezel would be perfect as Kelly.

[Tycho]

I especially remember the first chapter of Red Storm Rising being absolutely gripping. Wonder if they'll ever make a film from that one (the plot is basically WW3 in the late 80s).