8 ms·
Tom Clancy has died
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- chiph 13y agoSorry to hear this. I enjoyed his novels, and wished Hollywood could have produced better movies from them.
- chadwickthebold 13y agoI thought the Harrison Ford films were pretty good, and The Hunt for the Red October is absolutely a classic.
- erbo 13y agoI agree with you on Red October, which is one of my two favorite naval movies. The plot is fairly compressed and "amped up" compared to the book, but it still holds up pretty well. I suppose the only thing one could wish for is that Harrison Ford, rather than Alec Baldwin, had been playing Jack Ryan.
- chris11 13y agoWell, we still have one movie left. Tom Clancy was a writer on the new Jack Ryan movie. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1205537/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1205537/ is in post-production and will be released on Christmas.
- thehodge 13y agoI'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 13y agoPerhaps Tom Clancy books will continue to be written and published by a cadre of ghostwriters, much like VC Andrews.
- MartinCron 13y agoI can't honestly speak to the quality of the ghost-written VC Andrews books, but the whole idea makes me feel icky.
- VLM 13y agoThe problem with ghostwriters is as a wargamer (both cardboard and silicon) I always read his books as Very accurate realistic wargamer fanfic with lots of background material for those outside of the hobby. Oh and he tried to add a little color to his counters ... err I mean characters ... by making up little stories about this guy always wanted to visit the state of Montana after he defected or whatever. A real "Tom Clancy" style book would be take an exciting game of, say, Steel Wolves or Hornet Commander and remove all the dice rolling and turn it into fan fiction by adding a little imagination to the characters and tons of background for people outside .mil and outside the wargaming hobby. Unfortunately what we'll get is a ghostwriter who will probably steal the plot of an ancient WWII era submarine movie and make it Clancy-style by adding a dude who wants to defect to visit Montana and the main character would be named Ryan and the tech details and "wargaming" would be completely butchered into laugh ability by anyone actually in the .mil or into wargaming.
- acheron 13y agoHe would have liked to have seen Montana. (RIP)
- enraged_camel 13y ago:(
- fgwood 13y agoAmerica needs a real Jack Ryan!
- ceejayoz 13y agoGiven the frequency with which he attracts world-changing trouble... no, thank you!
- qoo 13y agoRest In Peace
- tomjen3 13y agoDamn, 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.
- josephlord 13y agoWasn't it "Red Storm Rising"? I liked that a lot as a teenager, don't seem to have it now though.
- mseebach 13y agoYes. I did too, but I re-read it a few years ago. It's very interesting as a case study, but as literature it's more than a little contrived.
- ianstallings 13y agoIt's Red Storm Rising, and there was a board game. I dug out mine just the other day: http://imgur.com/KEh3Y95 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.
- acheron 13y agoThere was also a (fantastic) computer game, designed by Sid Meier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising_%28video_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising_%28video_game%...
- josephlord 13y agoYes although you only played the (attack) submarine thread of the story your success or failure was reflected in the balance of the war shown on a world map if I remember correctly.
- ZanderEarth32 13y agoI never read any of his books but I spent many hours playing the original Rainbow 6 on PC as a kid.
- mathiasben 13y ago66 seems young.
- spindritf 13y agoI 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 13y agoI 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...
- VLM 13y agoA lot of rally around the flag was going on around that time. There was also a lot of talking up the amazing organizational skills of the hijackers. Meanwhile I'm thinking, um, let me get this straight... the amazing skill some stuffed suit is referring to is ... buying airline tickets? All part of the big lie security theater.
- mattzito 13y agoWell, (this is a phrase that has never popped out of my mouth) in fairness to the hijackers, they planned for over a year. They flew enough to be top-tier elite frequent flyers, planned out which flights would have the fewest people and the most fuel, arranged their seats such that they could properly control the most real estate, and so on. So, while I agree that security theater is everywhere, in the case of the hijackers, they actually planned and developed their process very carefully.
- ISL 13y agoTo say little of getting the training necessary to fly an airliner. It may not be the hardest thing in the world, but it's hardly easy.
- 13y ago
- ghc 13y agoI'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.
- barkingcat 13y agoSpent many hours with his books. Sad that he's left. A drink.
- JunkDNA 13y agoIf 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.
- jedberg 13y agoI 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.
- tnorthcutt 13y agoAll the other books clearly are written with (movie/video game) in the back of his mind, but that one was just straight prose. His next four books were written before The Hunt for Red October came out in film form.
- FireBeyond 13y agoMaybe so, but HFRO was optioned for feature film production within two months of its publication, and planning began near immediately, so film adaptation would have been pretty heavy on Clancy’s mind at the time.
- manojlds 13y agoThe 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.
- brudgers 13y agoRed 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.
- Tycho 13y agoI 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).
- protomyth 13y agoDammit 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 13y agoOne 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.
- VLM 13y ago"basically takes place in the Cold War." What has fundamentally changed WRT the situation on the ground and the plot in the book? Doesn't Russia and former USSR still burn oil? Doesn't the middle east still have oil? Wouldn't you need to distract the western powers somehow if they planned to sieze a country in the middle east, Imperial American style? The main plot hole I see is invading the west is not going to help much with natgas exports which is a good source of incoming money. So they'd have some interesting economic issues. Then again eventually you'll be exporting natgas to "someone" in the long run and you need oil now, so no problemo. Another plot issue would be it would be harder to frame the Germans precisely as described in the book. Well, adapt and overcome, something could be thought up pretty similar with the same outcome. It is true, politicans now make smiley faces at each other, but when the rubber meets the road, and they need oil, and someone else has oil, and they've got the power to take it and believe theres no alternative, you do the math... The other problem is the "newer generations" not appreciating something from the past, unless its a sequel of a sequel of a FPS WWII game, in which case they love it. I don't think its a problem.
- protomyth 13y agoWell, growing up with the NATO vs Warsaw Pact is a pretty big change along with Germany which you noted. Stealth was still black when it came out. I'm not sure how the plot would work given the ultimate goal of the USSR in the book was to capture a chunk of the Persian Gulf oil.
- Tloewald 13y agoI 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 13y agoIIRC, 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/Harpoon_(series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bond http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bond
- nutate 13y agoNew 'Tom Clancy' brand books will be released for the next 100 years.
- jpgvm 13y agoA very sad day. R.I.P ...
- theorique 13y agoIt's a shame. He was a smart detail man and he got the right balance of human interest and technical correctness in his novels.
- hawkharris 13y agoAt 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.
- jedberg 13y agoIn 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. :)
- zerooneinfinity 13y agoTango down :O(
- eCa 13y agoSad. 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ISL 13y ago"If you don't write it down, it never happened." Thanks, Tom.
- rplacd 13y ago"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".)
- United857 13y agoThanks 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.
- stephenhuey 13y agoA 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.
- tlear 13y agoReally sad to see him pass. Some of his books were absolutely superb: Rid Storm Rising, Hunt for the Red October, Patriot Games, Without remorse. RIP :(
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI 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.