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According to the Publishers Weekly Twitter account, American author Tom Clancy died Wednesday in a Baltimore hospital at age 66.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, and originally an insurance salesman, Tom Clancy went on write technically detailed espionage and military science books.
He is responsible for best-selling books such as "The Hunt for Red October," "Patriot Games," "Clear and Present Danger," and "The Sum of All Fears" — all of which were adapted into major Hollywood films.
In 1996, Clancy co-founded the video game developer Red Storm Entertainment and has had his name on several of Red Storm's most successful games.
Red Storm was later bought by publisher Ubisoft Entertainment for an undisclosed sum.
http://www.businessinsider.com/tom-clancy-dead-celebrated-thriller-author-dies-at-age-66-2013-10
RIP :(
RIP :(
Maybe now some other Baltimoran can rise to author superstardom? :)
Gave us some good books, and some good videogames. RIP.
R.I.P. :(
I still have well thumbed copies of his earlier books.
[As for his later books and "collaborations", perhaps the less said the better.]
:o
So young! RIP, Mr. Clancy. :weep:
R.I.P. :(
Quote from: Agelastus on October 02, 2013, 09:49:37 AM
R.I.P. :(
I still have well thumbed copies of his earlier books.
[As for his later books and "collaborations", perhaps the less said the better.]
My feelings as well. His early stuff had some Bobby Inman input, and that helped out a lot. His later stuff was...
:(
Not sure I'd want to re-read them, but I enjoyed the early books back in the day.
I think I read up to the proto-9/11 book, whatever it was called.
He was good in parts. That's more than most authors can say. R.I.P
Quote from: grumbler on October 02, 2013, 10:01:20 AM
Quote from: Agelastus on October 02, 2013, 09:49:37 AM
R.I.P. :(
I still have well thumbed copies of his earlier books.
[As for his later books and "collaborations", perhaps the less said the better.]
My feelings as well. His early stuff had some Bobby Inman input, and that helped out a lot. His later stuff was...
I gave up on him after the third Op Center book.
RIP :(
Red Storm Rising was awesome.
Too bad, the Republicans are well on their way to establishing an IRL version of his right-wing masturbatory fantasy. :(
Quote from: jimmy olsen on October 02, 2013, 10:53:07 AM
RIP :(
Red Storm Rising was awesome.
The video game was better than the book. :sleep:
Quote from: Caliga on October 02, 2013, 11:59:05 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on October 02, 2013, 10:53:07 AM
RIP :(
Red Storm Rising was awesome.
The video game was better than the book. :sleep:
It was better than most video games before or since. Don't know about being better than the book.
I read Red Storm Rising in 8 hours in transit from Toukyo to Singapore (with a stop over at Chiang Kai Shek). I felt giddy about the Iceland bit, but was a bit confused since the place the soviet marines landed looks like this
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.panoramio.com%2Fphotos%2Flarge%2F45762022.jpg&hash=8e05f6fa034d7ae16254bbb7cccfcf97bcecac8f)
and there are some quite much nicer places to land, like the undefended port facilities just up the coast a bit
plus, I went to summer camp where the heroes are hiding out in the wilderness
Quote from: Caliga on October 02, 2013, 11:59:05 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on October 02, 2013, 10:53:07 AM
RIP :(
Red Storm Rising was awesome.
The video game was better than the book. :sleep:
Wasn't it pretty much just a sub simulator? I never played it.
I enjoyed his early books. That is really too young to die. RIP :(
Quote from: Maximus on October 02, 2013, 12:55:50 PM
Quote from: Caliga on October 02, 2013, 11:59:05 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on October 02, 2013, 10:53:07 AM
RIP :(
Red Storm Rising was awesome.
The video game was better than the book. :sleep:
Wasn't it pretty much just a sub simulator? I never played it.
Yes, pretty much. But it did a great job of narrating the ground & air war and showing how your actions impacted it.
I wouldn't necessarily put the game over the book (both were awesome), but the game was fun as hell to play. One of the best games published by Microprose.
Someone other than Microprose did a Hunt for Red October game, and it was complete shit IMO. Confusing controls and it gave no clue as to what your objectives were.
Quote from: derspiess on October 02, 2013, 01:34:46 PM
Yes, pretty much. But it did a great job of narrating the ground & air war and showing how your actions impacted it.
I wouldn't necessarily put the game over the book (both were awesome), but the game was fun as hell to play. One of the best games published by Microprose.
Someone other than Microprose did a Hunt for Red October game, and it was complete shit IMO. Confusing controls and it gave no clue as to what your objectives were.
I agree with everything spiess said. :)
Obamacare?
The Hunt for Red October game was absolute shit. They should have been ashamed to make it. Clancy should have had Rainbow Six go Gitmo on their asses.
Quote from: crazy canuck on October 02, 2013, 01:17:31 PM
I enjoyed his early books.
:yes:
Almost a shame the Cold War didn't go on longer.
:(
I saw his bibliography in an obituary and will be honest and say that I had no idea he had written so many books after the last book of his I tried to read, The Cardinal of the Kremlin. Many of them were apparently best-sellers, so I must have seen them advertised, but I guess I just kinda lumped them together in my mind. Clancy was certainly prolific: eighteen novels in thirty years is a lot.
I may have told this story here before, but it probably is worth repeating:
Back in the early 1980s, I worked on the US Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare Requirements Study, which looked at the state of ASW in the near future (+1 years), mid-term future (+10 years) and far-term future (+20 years), all based on the Navy's procurement plans, ASW strategy, CIA projections of Soviet force levels, and CIA projections of Soviet submarine employment strategies. We'd brief this stuff up through the Navy chain of command, and then the ASW sub-panel (no pun intended) of the Defense Science Board. Admiral bobby Inman sat on that board, and every year he asked why the Soviets were using so few of their subs offensively, against our carriers and convoys. The answer always was that the CIA projections had the Soviets using most of their SSNs to protect their SSBNs. It was a weird question for him to be asking, we thought, because he was the deputy Director of the CIA, and we had already told him we had gotten our data through him.
He pressed, every year, for the answer to the question "what if the estimate is wrong? What is the Soviets use their submarines aggressively? How does that change the results?" Every year, we had to admit that we hadn't looked at that, since that was not an approved scenario and we couldn't spend time/money on unapproved scenarios.
So, after a coupla years of this, out comes this book about a hypothetical war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with a big naval component, and which has the Soviets using the "bastion' strategy that Adm Inman had proposed they might use, freeing up the SSNs to attack western carriers and shipping. Sure enough, even though it isn't an "approved scenario," our Navy sponsors tell us to run the analysis in all three time frames using the "bastion" strategy (which everyone calls the "Red Storm Rising scenario"). The results, of course, are not nearly so rosy for the USN as the old scenarios, and this leads to the "ASW New Initiatives" program, which was where Inman had been pushing his DSB colleagues all along.
The publication of RSR also doomed the Spruance class. None of the "New Initiatives" for the Spruance worked out, and without major improvements the Spruances were not worth keeping against the RSR threat.
And if it weren't for Clancy I wouldn't have understood any of that :)
Never actually managed to read one of his books. The only ones I tried got bogged down in hundred page chunks of lovingly described hardware. He was to military machinery what Tolstoy was to history.
But I know a lot of people enjoyed him a lot - and I liked some of the games. Also 66 is shockingly young :(
Quote from: Sheilbh on October 03, 2013, 07:14:24 AM
Never actually managed to read one of his books. The only ones I tried got bogged down in hundred page chunks of lovingly described hardware.
:lol:
That's my Clancy.
Sometimes I fantasize about the results had Clancy written Lord Of The Rings.
Quote from: Kleves on October 02, 2013, 09:48:40 AM
Gave us some good books, and some good videogames. RIP.
And lots of movies spun off of his books.
Quote from: KRonn on October 03, 2013, 08:17:26 AM
Quote from: Kleves on October 02, 2013, 09:48:40 AM
Gave us some good books, and some good videogames. RIP.
And lots of movies spun off of his books.
I see you left out the "good" qualifier... :hmm:
I've read a few of Clancy's books, not too many. They usually had the US doing so well vs the adversary, in one book the adversary was a resurgent Japan under a group of leaders who usurped the government, or gained power in some way. Others about Irish terrorism back when that was going strong.
Some of the movies/books were good thrillers IMO, and Affleck and Harrison Ford made good John Ryan characters.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on October 03, 2013, 08:19:19 AM
Quote from: KRonn on October 03, 2013, 08:17:26 AM
Quote from: Kleves on October 02, 2013, 09:48:40 AM
Gave us some good books, and some good videogames. RIP.
And lots of movies spun off of his books.
I see you left out the "good" qualifier... :hmm:
Yeah, I liked all of the movies spun off the books. :)
Quote from: KRonn on October 03, 2013, 09:15:33 AM
Yeah, I liked all of the movies spun off the books. :)
I thought that, with the possible exception of
The Hunt for the Red October, all of the movies were better than the books they were based on. I think Clancy's characters work better with the more limited exposure they have in movies.
My biggest disappointment with the Hunt for Red October movie was that they left out the part with Jack Ryan flying (as a passenger) in a Sea Harrier.
One Ping only.
I thought almost all of his early stuff was excellent.
His later stuff just freaking fell off a cliff though. He went from outstanding to terrible in a astoundingly short span.
The Hunt for Red October (1984) - Excellent
Red Storm Rising (1986) - Excellent
Patriot Games (1987) - Very good
The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988) - Excellent
Clear and Present Danger (1989) - Good
The Sum of All Fears (1991) - OK
Without Remorse (1993) -Very good/Excellent
Debt of Honor (1994) - Poor
Everything after this ranges from Poor to utter crap, with the weight being towards utter crap.
Quote from: Berkut on October 04, 2013, 08:59:11 AM
I thought almost all of his early stuff was excellent.
His later stuff just freaking fell off a cliff though. He went from outstanding to terrible in a astoundingly short span.
I think he started outsourcing it to Ghost writers and such. They were beyond awful.
I guess due to dumb luck, I trailed off on reading his books right when they took a turn for the worse.
Actually, I remember reading the back cover for whatever book it was where Jack Ryan became president and Congress gets all blowed up, and thinking it was a silly premise that didn't interest me.
After that I read Rainbow Six and I think that was about it. Rainbow Six was pretty decent.
Quote from: derspiess on October 04, 2013, 10:24:51 AM
I guess due to dumb luck, I trailed off on reading his books right when they took a turn for the worse.
Actually, I remember reading the back cover for whatever book it was where Jack Ryan became president and Congress gets all blowed up, and thinking it was a silly premise that didn't interest me.
After that I read Rainbow Six and I think that was about it. Rainbow Six was pretty decent.
Executive Orders. I read the entire Jack Ryan series,
Red Storm Rising, and the first three Op Center books. Op Center killed it for me.
Quote from: Berkut on October 04, 2013, 09:02:52 AM
The Hunt for Red October (1984) - Excellent
Red Storm Rising (1986) - Excellent
Patriot Games (1987) - Very good
The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988) - Excellent
Clear and Present Danger (1989) - Good
The Sum of All Fears (1991) - OK
Without Remorse (1993) -Very good/Excellent
Debt of Honor (1994) - Poor
Everything after this ranges from Poor to utter crap, with the weight being towards utter crap.
One of my favorites.
Quote from: Berkut on October 04, 2013, 09:02:52 AM
The Hunt for Red October (1984) - Excellent
Red Storm Rising (1986) - Excellent
Patriot Games (1987) - Very good
Clear and Present Danger (1989) - Good
I agree with you on all of the above except Patriot Games might also be 'Excellent'. I haven't read any of the others.
Ugh, the end of Patriot Games sucked. Talk about wrapping up a plot in a fucking hurry.
Personally, I loved Clear and Present Danger.
Quote from: Caliga on October 04, 2013, 11:56:35 AM
Quote from: Berkut on October 04, 2013, 09:02:52 AM
The Hunt for Red October (1984) - Excellent
Red Storm Rising (1986) - Excellent
Patriot Games (1987) - Very good
Clear and Present Danger (1989) - Good
I agree with you on all of the above except Patriot Games might also be 'Excellent'. I haven't read any of the others.
I thought patriot Games was only good (the movie was much better). I couldn't finish
Cardinal of the Kremlin.
I just found the Jack Ryan character boring as hell. The wife character had some moments, but Jack was just a vehicle for the action (which is why I thought the character worked for the movies even when it didn't for the books: in almost every movie like this, the main character just serves as a vehicle for the action).
Just reading about the one where Japan attacks the US to reclaim Guam was enough to turn my stomach. I'd rather study Timmay's alt-hist than Clancy's.
You guys ready for the new film? Not based on a existing story.
Staring Captain Kirk as Jack Ryan, Kiera Knightly as his wife, Kevin Costner as CIA mentor and directed by Kenneth Branagah who also plays the heavy.
Personally I'd rate "The Sum of all Fears" as the best of his Ryan books, and probably the tipping point at which the decline began. "Hunt for Red October" being its possible rival.
After this point he had to start scrambling around for enemies for his "RyanSA" to fight with the end of the Cold War and his (and real-life's) Russia stabilising. Japan as an enemy ("Debt of Honor") was fairly ridiculous, but the book itself was saved a little by the ending; after that it was steadily downhill, unfortunately.
I never really liked the books that focussed on John Kelly/Clarke either; perhaps I was too used to thinking of him as a member of the supporting cast rather than as a protagonist.
Quote from: katmai on October 04, 2013, 01:10:22 PM
You guys ready for the new film? Not based on a existing story.
Staring Captain Kirk as Jack Ryan, Kiera Knightly as his wife, Kevin Costner as CIA mentor and directed by Kenneth Branagah who also plays the heavy.
Worth it to see Costner in blackface.