Tom Clancy Memorial Thread

[RagingKrikkit]

As the title said, Tom Clancy is dead (http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Red-October-novelist-Tom-Clancy-dies-at-66-4862538.php). Anyone else have feelings about this, or do I have to deliver the eulogy by myself?

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/617/762/7c7.jpg

[BWR]

My first reaction was "but he's been dead for years".
The picture clued me in that it was the wrong Tom Clancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy_%28singer%29).

I've never actually read any of his books, but the movie "The Hunt for Red October" was pretty good.

[The Glyphstone]

Man, I had no idea until now.:smalleek::smallfrown:

I can't say I liked all his books, but a ton of his earlier material - Cardinal of the Kremlin, HFRO, the entire Jack Ryan saga - were a bedrock mainstay of my childhood reading material growing up.

[Saph]

I loved his books as a kid. Sad to hear the news. :smallfrown:

[Ravens_cry]

Eh, now at least when they come out with a ghostwritten book with his name on it, they will have to admit he didn't write it.
That being said, I would be lying if I said I have not enjoyed several of his books.

[Palanan]

Amazingly enough, I just finished a fifteen-minute rant to my family about Tom Clancy's fanciful alternate universe, and his simultaneous disdain for and lack of understanding of my particular field, despite his vaunted research skills in other areas.

But if this is the Tom Clancy appreciation thread, I'll just say that I did enjoy a couple of his nonfiction books, and will let you guys get on with it.



*goes off to lower blood pressure*

[Gnoman]

Everything he wrote before 2001 (and Red Rabbit) was pretty good, although TBaD had some serious flaws. After that, the continuity broke apart (due to his change of focus after 9/11), and it became obvious that there were ghostwriters involved (although the last one I read was almost certainly his, as it had his style. It just sucked.)

[Soras Teva Gee]

I think I'm going to have to give Red Storm Rising and The Hunt for Red October another read in honor of him.

His later work certainly suffered... of course I'm not sure of any other author that had reality yank the rug out from under him so completely not once but twice... but yeah the 80s vintage stuff is still some great reading even now.

[The Glyphstone]

I have to agree that his stuff got steadily worse over time, and you could pretty clearly tell when the ghostwriters took over almost full-time. That just makes his older material even better than it already was by comparison, though.

[Hawriel]

Tom Clancy was one of the first serious authors I got into after branching out from Star Wars and D&D. I started with rainbow six then picked up Hunt for Red October and read up the order of publication.

Red Rabbit is when I grew past him. maybe it was because that is when the writing started to slacken. With Out Remorse and the first three of the series some of my favorite books. They were the first were I know I was reading a book written by some one intelligent, as well as entertaining.

That was a small push in letting me get into other authors later on. Makes me wonder, if I did not get into Tom Clancy when I did, would I have had the ability to read Kim Stanley Robinson, or Steven Erickson?

Tom Clancy was part of my growth as a reader.

[Brother Oni]

Everything he wrote before 2001 (and Red Rabbit) was pretty good, although TBaD had some serious flaws.

Please don't get me started on TBatD. :smallsigh:

Someone suggested that I may like his work, picked up Rainbow 6 and loved it. Then I picked up TBatD when it was released which completely turned me off his work.

[Lino]

Holy f... I loved the Red October movie so much as a kid! Sad loss indeed.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by The Glyphstone
I have to agree that his stuff got steadily worse over time....

Oddly, the several books I read showed a steady improvement in narrative skill, at least in terms of basic plot and pacing. From my perspective, this is because he had nowhere to go but up. His characters were rarely more than one-dimensional, and if there was a scrap of genuine moral struggle in any of his books I managed to completely miss it. And we won't talk about his embarrassing, insipid attempts to write intimate scenes.

Also, he evidently had editors who weren't really paying attention, because in at least one book several comments by Jack Ryan reappeared at various points throughout the storyline, pure verbatim repetition, as if Clancy couldn't decide where they would fit best and left them uncorrected. Poor writing, but worse editing.

I was doing a lot of international travel when I read the last couple of books, and I bought them specifically as airport books, to fill the hours between flights. That they did, but it only highlighted Clancy's lack of personal understanding of the world past his native shores. His characters may have traveled to and from hotspots all around the planet, but Clancy himself doesn't seem to have traveled nearly so much. Unfortunately it really shows, at least in the books I've read.

[Salbazier]

First, I'm sad to hear to the news. May he rest in peace.


Everything he wrote before 2001 (and Red Rabbit) was pretty good, although TBaD had some serious flaws. After that, the continuity broke apart (due to his change of focus after 9/11), and it became obvious that there were ghostwriters involved (although the last one I read was almost certainly his, as it had his style. It just sucked.)
Please don't get me started on TBatD. :smallsigh:

Someone suggested that I may like his work, picked up Rainbow 6 and loved it. Then I picked up TBatD when it was released which completely turned me off his work.

The Bear and The Dragon? I actually liked that... You guys can call me silly if you would explain why. The one I dislike is actually the one that have war with Japan [forgot the title]. Not because I'm a Japanophile but because I remember one of the early scenes is trying to 'villainize' the Japanese by describing among others, ahem, their porn. Now, that I am far less innocent about that kinds of stuff I can't help thinking how 'pot & kettle' that was. Now, that I thought about it TBatD also rather cartoonishly villain with the Chinese goverment as well.

Jack Ryan saga before that was good. Although, I think I like THoRO movie better than its novel. Rainbow Six was good too.

It's been a long time since I read any Clancy novels. In truth, I just read his books because my brother have quite a collection. Maybe it is a good thing, since I heard the ghostwritten books were bad. This way Tom Clancy's can remained as a personal 'classic' from my childhood and not tainted by association to later bad books. For any flaws they may have, they were a very entertaining read for the young me.

[UnicornBandit]

It is sad. I liked the sheer number of heroes in his books. He had some despicable characters, but in the books I liked, the protagonists and antagonists were both heroic people doing dangerous and difficult things they believed they had to do.

[Soras Teva Gee]

The Bear and The Dragon? I actually liked that... You guys can call me silly if you would explain why. The one I dislike is actually the one that have war with Japan [forgot the title]. Not because I'm a Japanophile but because I remember one of the early scenes is trying to 'villainize' the Japanese by describing among others, ahem, their porn. Now, that I am far less innocent about that kinds of stuff I can't help thinking how 'pot & kettle' that was. Now, that I thought about it TBatD also rather cartoonishly villain with the Chinese goverment as well.

Debt Of Honor was the title. Clancy's books have always been very much the product of their times. Or as much as publishing delays allow. And that Japan thing (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapanTakesOverTheWorld) was just kinda around until their economy tanked hard.

In general his 90s books deprived of the Reds are all busy looking for a new stock villain with varying success.

To quoth a certain Dame in her role as M: Christ, I miss the Cold War!

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Soras Teva Gee
In general his 90s books deprived of the Reds are all busy looking for a new stock villain with varying success.

Very much the product of the times, consciously trying to stay up-to-date and relevant.

Also, this book (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-War-Japan-George-Friedman/dp/0312076770/) may have influenced him, although I couldn't say for sure. The authors were former analysts of the Soviet Union who found themselves out of a discipline at the start of the 90s, and essentially cast around (consciously or otherwise) for another credible international counter to U.S. power.

And don't forget books like Rising Sun (http://www.amazon.com/Rising-Sun-Michael-Crichton/dp/0394589424/), which both contributed to and fed from those general attitudes as well.

[Gnoman]

Not because I'm a Japanophile but because I remember one of the early scenes is trying to 'villainize' the Japanese by describing among others, ahem, their porn. Now, that I am far less innocent about that kinds of stuff I can't help thinking how 'pot & kettle' that was.

Try rereading it again. The scene you are referring to (assuming you're talking about Nomuri on the train) was much more "What a strange and completely alien place this is", not a "I can't believe how horrible these people are."


As for TBatD, the main issues were all IT related (with the different political history in the Ryanverse, the geopolitical discrepancies can be handwaved). As a quick overview:

1. At least 2 major world governments (the US and the PRC) were using dial-up internet. Not only that, but each individual computer in the Chinese government had to call out using it's own internal modem. This reeks of 1995, not the early 2000s. (Home broadband access was already growing common in the US when the book was written.)

2. A file transfer of several hundred documents (written in Chinese) took over an hour to transfer, because the computer was storing the characters "Not as text, but as the pictures they were". By 2000, there were multiple Truetype fonts for CHinese that would not have had that problem.

3. The US government decided to stream high-quality recon drone footage and CNN news broadcasts as a propaganda measure. Not only were government employees able to watch these on a dial-up connection, but so were large numbers of students using cell-phones connected to laptops.

[Emmerask]

Well I liked his earlier works but his later stuff was pretty much full of very questionable world views (bordering on disgusting really).

[Soras Teva Gee]

1. At least 2 major world governments (the US and the PRC) were using dial-up internet. Not only that, but each individual computer in the Chinese government had to call out using it's own internal modem. This reeks of 1995, not the early 2000s. (Home broadband access was already growing common in the US when the book was written.)


Just gonna point out it was published in 2000, so not really the early 2000s at all. So it was written entirely in the late 90s and not something in Clancy's usual following of military hardware. Military tech now is still in some cases "upgrading" to 90s technology from stuff designed in the 70s and installed in the early 80s.

And for the quickly changing world of IT of the time... yeah I still personally totally buy the government (in general) using dial-up then. What do you mean all the computers have to be replaced, we just allocated that upgrade five years ago! It very much matches with some personal experiences of mine first hand. I wouldn't be suprised by an aversion nessecarily either and I have no clue what the factual state of things was, where, and when.

Also umm "common" is probably not everyone's experience. I was just a middle-school brat back then and not tech savvy but I know for a fact I was blissfully unaware of "broadband" existing at the time. Because I distinctly remember learning about it from a classmate's public speaking course presentation ("Cable vs DSL") after I'd entered high school. It was 5-6 more years before say my parents finally had it at home.

Those were still the days of AOHell there.

[Gnoman]

Most public school districts and libraries in the US already had broadband access when the book was written, and China's been pretty much on the leading edge of the internet. In an era where all their telecommunications were state-run, the idea that the government itself would have already-obsolete tech is laughable. This isn't something that I noticed retroactively. I called "BULL****" on it when I first read the book, the day it came out.

[Salbazier]

Try rereading it again. The scene you are referring to (assuming you're talking about Nomuri on the train) was much more "What a strange and completely alien place this is", not a "I can't believe how horrible these people are."
Maybe I should (If I can find the book). That was an afterthought that came long after I read it so maybe me misremembering things skewed my opinion.

As for TBatD, the main issues were all IT related (with the different political history in the Ryanverse, the geopolitical discrepancies can be handwaved). As a quick overview:


1. At least 2 major world governments (the US and the PRC) were using dial-up internet. Not only that, but each individual computer in the Chinese government had to call out using it's own internal modem. This reeks of 1995, not the early 2000s. (Home broadband access was already growing common in the US when the book was written.)

2. A file transfer of several hundred documents (written in Chinese) took over an hour to transfer, because the computer was storing the characters "Not as text, but as the pictures they were". By 2000, there were multiple Truetype fonts for CHinese that would not have had that problem.

3. The US government decided to stream high-quality recon drone footage and CNN news broadcasts as a propaganda measure. Not only were government employees able to watch these on a dial-up connection, but so were large numbers of students using cell-phones connected to laptops.


I see. I was hardly tech-savvy those days (I didn't even have home internet access) so I never noticed those things.

[Brother Oni]

3. The US government decided to stream high-quality recon drone footage and CNN news broadcasts as a propaganda measure. Not only were government employees able to watch these on a dial-up connection, but so were large numbers of students using cell-phones connected to laptops.


With regard to point 3:


As you've said all internet connections were state owned (and still are, I believe). While bypassing the Great Firewall is possible, it's tricky, not to mention the ISP provider of those cell-phones are going to be state owned as well.
As for stating the URL of the video feed, I can see the blocking software stopping that dead in its tracks.

I suspect that people forget how slow the internet and computing was in those days - the AMD K6-2 and Pentium 3 were released the year before, so you're capped at about 1.4 GHz.

Other gripes I have are to do with the ideology and motivations of the Chinese officials - they seems to waver between modern Chinese Communist ideology and state party rhetoric and archaic Imperial China thinking (which mostly got swept away in the Cultural Revolution).

[Mauve Shirt]

My sister went to school with Tom Clancy's son. Apparently he's been getting his undergrad for 12 years now. Wonder how he's doing.

[Gnoman]

With regard to point 3:


As you've said all internet connections were state owned (and still are, I believe). While bypassing the Great Firewall is possible, it's tricky, not to mention the ISP provider of those cell-phones are going to be state owned as well.
As for stating the URL of the video feed, I can see the blocking software stopping that dead in its tracks.


Precisely the sort of problem that I was referring to.




Other gripes I have are to do with the ideology and motivations of the Chinese officials - they seems to waver between modern Chinese Communist ideology and state party rhetoric and archaic Imperial China thinking (which mostly got swept away in the Cultural Revolution).

This is the sort of thing that I'm willing to simply handwave as part of the Ryanverse's different geopolitical history. After all, in the Ryanverse, only China still had ICBMs after Debt of Honor, due to the US and Russia making a huge bilateral push to eliminate the horrible things because of almost being manipulated into a nuclear war; the US had a short but nasty shooting war with Japan, and the Middle East was pretty well stabilized after the events of Sum of All Fears and the UIR war in Executive Orders. Expecting Chinese politics to be the same as in our world is a bit unlikely.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Gnoman
A file transfer of several hundred documents (written in Chinese) took over an hour to transfer, because the computer was storing the characters "Not as text, but as the pictures they were". By 2000, there were multiple Truetype fonts for CHinese that would not have had that problem.

This to me exemplifies both Clancy's lack of serious research effort (outside of the narrow field of military hardware and operations) and his more general lack of interest in understanding other cultures, or even recognizing they were worth understanding.

I was in Beijing right around that time, and it's clear Tom Clancy wasn't. I saw those Chinese fonts in action, simply while sending email from the hotel's business center. I also had the opportunity to interact with people in Beijing, which again I doubt if Clancy ever did.

At some point, if you want to write convincingly about the moil of peoples and cultures all around the world, you actually have to get out there and explore, and in the process shed some preconceptions. I see no evidence of that in the books of his I've read.



Further Thoughts:

For me, the best contrast is with Patrick O'Brian, also a twentieth-century novelist who, like Clancy, wrote primarily about intensely patriotic military men and the actions they fought. But there's a world of difference, first and foremost because Patrick O'Brian didn't just read magazine articles and talk to sailors; he understood a ship-rigged vessel inside and out, knew the subtlest tricks of canvas and cord, wind and wave, and that lifelong understanding shows a soft, mellow light through every page.

And Patrick O'Brian served during the great war of his generation, in a capacity he chose not to talk about, but which informs the plots and maneuverings of governments, departments and men throughout his long series of novels. Again, personal experience as a man who served, rather than someone simply reading about it secondhand, or having comfortable conversations with other people who were actually there.

And for me the final and most telling contrast: Patrick O'Brian wrote every word of every novel himself. He had editors, certainly, but not coauthors and never, never ghostwriters. When he died, his last book remained unfinished, the characters still sailing towards the next leg of their final voyage. Such was the respect from his publishers and his readers that the book was published in its unfinished state, simply titled "21," and literally cuts off mid-sentence.

No one was selected to finish it. The publishers understood that no one ever could.
.