http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tom-c...-141800682.html;_ylt=A2KJ3CQVLExSLHAAslHQtDMD Nuts. Only 66. Wrote many of my favorite books...
And just yesterday I was hoping one of his stories would come true...specifically the end of Debt of Honor.
His later works became rather formulaic and I felt like the "heart" just wasn't there anymore. From The Bear and The Dragon on, his books were a caricature of his early work. But, his early work was absolutely fantastic and I must admit that I'll buy his book, already completed and printing now, that will be released in December.
I always wished Red Storm Rising had been made into a movie. Someone made a fan trailer for it on YouTube that I enjoy watching from time to time. Along with a trailer for Sir John Hackett's "The Third World War".
Agree. Clancy lost it around The Bear and the Dragon and IIRC turned over most of the writing to a ghost. That's when I lost interest. Still, sucks that he's passed away.
One thing is that Tom Clancy himself admitted he hated writing and that once he had written enough to make him wealthy and famous he simply did not have the drive to do it anymore.
I have the edition of Hunt For Red October published by the Naval Institute Press, one of the earlier editions, hardcover. I don't read a lot of fiction but I'm not parting with this book. Cardinal of the Kremlin is also a favorite of mine. Plus he was part owner of the Baltimore Orioles.
I think "Red Storm Rising" was a motivation for the Harpoon naval wargame, that was produced back in the late 80s or early 90s. I have a copy of Harpoon but it's quite complex and I never really could figure it out.
The non-computer version of Harpoon predates Red Storm Rising by several years. In fact, Clancy used it to wargame the sea battles in RSR when he and Harpoon's developer/author, Larry Bond, were writing Red Storm Rising.
Hunt for Red October was the classic, and probably the best story overall, but I liked the entire Ryanverse. Even when he started getting long-winded, I didn't really mind because he consistently had me running to Wikipedia to look up interesting things. I never could get into the stuff by other authors based on him, though.
I read everything of his through The Bear and the Dragon, possibly one more. Enjoyed most all of them immensely. I have an autographed hardcover copy of Patriot Games. Way back in the much earlier days of teh Intarwebz, I hung out at the newsgroup alt.books.tomclancy, and he actually posted there one in a while, and responded to posts on occasion as well. One time someone had posted a thread entitled "Top Ten Things You'll Never Hear from the Jack Ryan White House". My contribution was "I'd like to introduce your new Vice President...DingChavez!" Clancy responded with "Ding's not old enough--he's only 31." Another time, there was a thread about favorite minor characters in the books. I posted, wondering what ever happened to FBI Agent Hazel Loomis, who was in one of his very early books, but hadn't ever reappeared. She then reappeared in a later book (Debt of Honor?). Only to be killed off. :S
I think the Ryanverse got way overdone after a while. A common problem where most writers seem to run a character and their situations into the ground after awhile. David Weber did the same thing with Honor Harrington in his Honorverse novels. Peter David with the Star Trek New Frontiers crew.
Eh. Speaking as someone who has a couple Tom Clancy books on the shelf, he was kind of a one-hit-wonder. And I'll admit I saw "Red October" before reading any Clancy...and it was decades before I finally got around to reading it. And while the book is almost certainly more accurate, I prefer the movie. Better dialog. Better pacing.
THFRO was the best movie of the bunch, but it had its problems, too. They screwed up Cathy Ryan (repeatedly described as a petite blonde in the novels, but played by redheads in the films) and, as much as I love James Earl Jones as an actor, he was the wrong guy for his role as well. Greer's backstory is that he was a naval aviator during WWII, an impossibility for a black man during that time frame.
I loved Clear and Present Danger the most...until Without Remorse came along. That's my hands-down favorite Clancy novel.
Loved The Hunt for Red October (the movie and the book) and, though they're not usually listed among Clancy's best novels, I really liked The Sum of All Fears and The Bear and the Dragon. The film version of TSOAF was decent, though Hollywood political correctness (can't have ARAB terrorists, nosiree) made it considerably different from the novel.
Thinking about it some more, I believe that Clear and Present Danger is my favorite Clancy novel. The book is SO MUCH BETTER than the hack job screenplay/rewrite they had to do to make it into a movie. Why did they have to change the plot so much to make the movie? Because of Harrison Ford. Realistically, to have a bankable movie, you need a true lead actor as the protagonist, unless it's an ensemble cast type of film. Problem being, Jack Ryan isn't really the main character of the book. It's rather more divided in thirds, with John Clark and Ding Chavez being the other two protagonists. But with Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan, you're not going to be seeing him sharing top billing with two other actors. This isn't Ocean's 11, with Clooney/Pitt/Damon having their names above the title. So yeah, my top five "Jack Ryan-verse" novels would be: 1) Clear and Present Danger 2) Debt of Honor 3) Hunt for Red October 4) Without Remorse 5) The Bear and the Dragon
