RIP Tom Clancy

[VaticanAssassin]

One if a handle of authors I grew up on...

 

[trysail]

He did not suffer fools gladly.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/obituaries/bs-md-ob-tom-clancy-20131002,0,2435189.story

 

[Disgustipated]

One if a handle of authors I grew up on...

You need his editor.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Dazzle1]

One if a handle of authors I grew up on...

2 favorite Clancy Boooks:

Hunt for Red October and Cardinal of the Kremlin

 

[Wrong Element]

And just before the Nobel prizes are awarded too. Guess that dream is over...

 

[DaddyValin]

His early books were great reads. His style seemed to change with "Red Rabbit", though.

Still he brought much reading pleasure to millions of people, and started that Kyle Foundation. RIP.

 

[RobDownSouth]

His early books were great reads. His style seemed to change with "Red Rabbit", though.

Still he brought much reading pleasure to millions of people, and started that Kyle Foundation. RIP.

Sad how that foundation got seriously fleeced.

 

[Jagged]

I enjoyed several of his books both fiction and nonfiction. He was a great source and did the modern military thriller well. He'll be missed.

 

[Balladeer08]

He wrote some good early books. With some occasional idiotic flaws (2 AFC teams in the SuperBowl? Can't happen)

But I think he was a lousy person. I read an interview with him where he said something about people who make less than $200,000/year are unimportant.

As far as I'm concerned, they should bury him vertically. Head down.

 

[Wrong Element]

It says something about the relative position of writers in pop culture that most of the televised obituaries I've seen for Clancy are dominated by footage of Harrison Ford running around doing stuff.

 

[trysail]

This is hearsay but I suspect there's some truth to it. Clancy was once invited to address a school where smoking was prohibited. He proceeded to light up while on stage.

 

[rosco rathbone]

I admit to reading and enjoying Red October and the one about the third world war, but his stuff was mostly wank fodder for spotty bespectacled war nerds.

 

[ryan8558]

I admit to reading and enjoying Red October and the one about the third world war, but his stuff was mostly wank fodder for spotty bespectacled war nerds.

Try Without Remorse. It's a revenge story.

 

[Wrong Element]

I admit to reading and enjoying Red October and the one about the third world war, but his stuff was mostly wank fodder for spotty bespectacled war nerds.

There was definitely a Walter Mitty element to Clancy's whole career: a guy who stayed out of uniform because his eyesight was so poor inventing a badass military alter ego. I always assumed Clancy's primary audience was made up of chicken hawks, and those who like himself had physical limitations that kept them out of uniform. His most significant early supporter was none other than Ronald Reagan, who was so envious of his generational colleagues who went to war that he later inserted himself into stories about being there when the concentration camps were liberated.

 

[Ishmael]

I admit to reading and enjoying Red October and the one about the third world war, but his stuff was mostly wank fodder for spotty bespectacled war nerds.

And obviously more than a few terrorists as well. Three of his scenarios concerning terrorist attacks have come to fruition so far. The recent Kenyan shopping mall attack is right out of "Teeth of the Tiger" (2003).

Ishmael

 

[RobDownSouth]

There was definitely a Walter Mitty element to Clancy's whole career: a guy who stayed out of uniform because his eyesight was so poor inventing a badass military alter ego. I always assumed Clancy's primary audience was made up of chicken hawks, and those who like himself had physical limitations that kept them out of uniform. His most significant early supporter was none other than Ronald Reagan, who was so envious of his generational colleagues who went to war that he later inserted himself into stories about being there when the concentration camps were liberated.

He was big with the pew-pew-pew neocon chickenhawk segment.

"Red October" was a good read, though.

 

[Dazzle1]

I admit to reading and enjoying Red October and the one about the third world war, but his stuff was mostly wank fodder for spotty bespectacled war nerds.

His eraly books were well written with developed characters.

More worth reading tham most of the fiction out there or drivel by people like Maya Angelou

 

[Busybody]

And obviously more than a few terrorists as well. Three of his scenarios concerning terrorist attacks have come to fruition so far. The recent Kenyan shopping mall attack is right out of "Teeth of the Tiger" (2003).

Ishmael

you will say that about me

when APT BUILDING BURN

MALLS BURN

FORESTS BURN

5th AVE IS SHOT UP

 

[JohnnySavage]

Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, John Grisham, Stephen King...

They all write to a commercial formula. And while I enjoy the mindless reading of a good story as much as the next guy (big Clive Cussler fan), let's not say that any of them are great contributors to man's body of literature.

They are good reads for a certain demographic. Just like the bodice-busting romance novels are.

 

[Busybody]

Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, John Grisham, Stephen King...

They all write to a commercial formula. And while I enjoy the mindless reading of a good story as much as the next guy (big Clive Cussler fan), let's not say that any of them are great contributors to man's body of literature.

They are good reads for a certain demographic. Just like the bodice-busting romance novels are.

Dummy

I had a thread for you a while back


Read Steve Berry

 

[JohnnySavage]

Dummy

I had a thread for you a while back


Read Steve Berry

I missed it.

Your threads are all the same so I tend to skip over them.

 

[Busybody]

I missed it.

Your threads are all the same so I tend to skip over them.

Dummy

 

[cleaver]

inertia
from the first batch of very good fictions
and the truly great non-fictions
kept me buying... (and that's the operative word to the career of a clancy)

the last two novels were desperately bad.
and though truly of interesting subject matter,
the delivery and style
and... joie de storytelling
were plainly gone...

threat vector
were it not a "clancy" (canon) book,
would have been unfinishable...

yes.
it was a collaboration ( i suspect he was quite ill at the time )
but it was also a disservice to the jack ryan story...

also, as he got older,
he treated his scant female characters
more and more shittily...

parts of the later works are simply painful...

still.
red october
through cardinal are... great mind fodder...

clancy probably did more - in fact based fictions -
to promote the revolutionary reagan-style military modernization...
than any other popular writer...

and his prescience - right to the "chi-com" military's aggressive cyber warfare status - made his fictions seem part of an enlightened(?) realpolitik...

god!
i so wish that he...
or in his name, he...
had written better longer.

the shit obscures what was and could have been legendary...

oh.
in his heyday,
TC (yes he even referred to himself as TC) had as many as 40-50 paid researchers on staff...
in his prime, he was lord of a warhol-like factory;
producing collaboratively and prodigiously
under mostly 1 byline...

nice little empire.

hell! the stories were mostly good.

*** rip ***

 

[CHNOPS]

in his heyday,
TC (yes he even referred to himself as TC) had as many as 40-50 paid researchers on staff...
in his prime, he was lord of a warhol-like factory;
producing collaboratively and prodigiously
under mostly 1 byline...

I first heard this same urban legend about Stephen King. It gets attached to a new author every few years. "So and so went for a job interview there and there were like, 40 people lined up writing. He puts his name on their work!! My friend walked right out."