The famous author, and co-creator of games such as Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell, passed away on the first of October.
He will be missed.
R.I.P. Tom Clancy
-
Edmond Dantes
- Posts: 995
- Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:17 am
R.I.P. Tom Clancy
The resident X-Multiply fan.
Re: R.I.P. Tom Clancy
Indeed. I read everything up until "The Teeth of the Tiger", then stopped when he started adding co-writers.
Re: R.I.P. Tom Clancy
I've heard he wrote one last book before he died that is supposed to be out the end of this year. I'm hoping that his last book was written by himself. What is his best book? I'd probably go with Rainbow Six, but I'm curious to hear what others think.
Re: R.I.P. Tom Clancy
"Command Authority" is supposed to be released this December, and will also be co-authored.
Rainbow Six or Sum of All Fears were the best to me.
Rainbow Six or Sum of All Fears were the best to me.
Re: R.I.P. Tom Clancy
I have a kind of complicated reaction to Tom Clancy, a bit like that of Michael Crichton: Admiration for the attention to details and frustration with the ease with which he sometimes denounced groups that had specific agendas, especially if they happened to be lefties.
I thought Ghost Recon's scenario was ghostwritten - and that was one of the times it looked like a prediction that Clancy could've gotten right. Credit where credit isn't due.
At least some of his stuff is unintentionally hilarious. Rainbow Six's "eco thug terrorists are the threat" storyline is...well, it's a snapshot of what some people were seriously worried about back in those halcyon long-passed days, but still quite silly. It did make for some more interesting backdrops than the usual flood of "MEANWHILE, IN THE DUSTY MIDDLE EAST!" war stories that have appeared in large numbers since then, especially, but there was also a kind of viciousness against people who had a certain agenda. There was some minor "eco thuggery" happening at the time but nothing even remotely as dastardly as portrayed there. Maybe it's less offensively didactic than some of W.E.B. Griffin's work (a scene in The Traffickers about gun control, specifically), but only by degrees.
I'm sure there are lots of other things that look good or bad in retrospect, depending on what you pick and choose. Patriot Games has a mixture of good stuff (questioning unthinking support for "our" terrorists) and bad (what the hell @ prison rape subplot, and of course the general way in which the book represents Irish separatism is very one-sided), and makes the interesting choice of trying to portray the Prince of Wales as a good guy (which no doubt was appreciated as he's often been picked on).
The one thing that has always been a bit strange to me is how quick people are to give credit to Clancy for "predicting" things. His characters lived in the Fantasy Baseball version of the world where the US and Russia fought actual wars for years but then faced off against China (in The Bear and The Dragon). What did it mean that he has an airliner hitting Congress (piloted by a Japanese who still takes the end of the Second World War quite personally)? Some people will point to the apparent ridiculousness of how the story got there, and others can question what public service having such a scenario (which almost played out) could actually have done for the country. Were we supposed to implement the current level of TSA checks based on something that happened in a book? I question Clancy's perceived value as security strategist for the western world, but at the same time I couldn't say there was no value. Imagination is a powerful tool.
Overall I can't simply say that I appreciate what authors like Clancy have done - they certainly have done some work to help people's military literacy but at the same time they have often pursued an aggressively unbalanced political agenda.
I thought Ghost Recon's scenario was ghostwritten - and that was one of the times it looked like a prediction that Clancy could've gotten right. Credit where credit isn't due.
At least some of his stuff is unintentionally hilarious. Rainbow Six's "eco thug terrorists are the threat" storyline is...well, it's a snapshot of what some people were seriously worried about back in those halcyon long-passed days, but still quite silly. It did make for some more interesting backdrops than the usual flood of "MEANWHILE, IN THE DUSTY MIDDLE EAST!" war stories that have appeared in large numbers since then, especially, but there was also a kind of viciousness against people who had a certain agenda. There was some minor "eco thuggery" happening at the time but nothing even remotely as dastardly as portrayed there. Maybe it's less offensively didactic than some of W.E.B. Griffin's work (a scene in The Traffickers about gun control, specifically), but only by degrees.
I'm sure there are lots of other things that look good or bad in retrospect, depending on what you pick and choose. Patriot Games has a mixture of good stuff (questioning unthinking support for "our" terrorists) and bad (what the hell @ prison rape subplot, and of course the general way in which the book represents Irish separatism is very one-sided), and makes the interesting choice of trying to portray the Prince of Wales as a good guy (which no doubt was appreciated as he's often been picked on).
The one thing that has always been a bit strange to me is how quick people are to give credit to Clancy for "predicting" things. His characters lived in the Fantasy Baseball version of the world where the US and Russia fought actual wars for years but then faced off against China (in The Bear and The Dragon). What did it mean that he has an airliner hitting Congress (piloted by a Japanese who still takes the end of the Second World War quite personally)? Some people will point to the apparent ridiculousness of how the story got there, and others can question what public service having such a scenario (which almost played out) could actually have done for the country. Were we supposed to implement the current level of TSA checks based on something that happened in a book? I question Clancy's perceived value as security strategist for the western world, but at the same time I couldn't say there was no value. Imagination is a powerful tool.
Overall I can't simply say that I appreciate what authors like Clancy have done - they certainly have done some work to help people's military literacy but at the same time they have often pursued an aggressively unbalanced political agenda.
-
Edmond Dantes
- Posts: 995
- Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:17 am
Re: R.I.P. Tom Clancy
When it comes to naming Clancy's "best book" I tend to favor Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games, but to be honest I like everything up until his books started becoming a thousand pages long.
Of the latter category, I recently read and finished Rainbow Six since I was into the game (someone really needs to bump that topic... or we can merge it with this one), but to be honest the game tells the story better than the book does. Sure, the game loses Popov, who I honestly kinda liked, but it also wasn't as redundant or as stuffed full of filler, and Rainbow itself was more proactive as opposed to the novel where they find out the plot mostly due to dumb luck.
I honestly wouldn't mind doing a rewrite of Rainbow Six, or at least seeing one done. If I were doing it, I would do it as a short story book rather than a novel, and have the Phoenix Group be a recurring antagonist, and then have the last story tie it all together, sort of like a TV season. And it wouldn't be in the mainstream Jack Ryan universe... it would be... shall we say... a splinter cell?
Speaking of which, I feel like I need to give Splinter Cell another chance. I didn't like it the first time I played, but then I didn't like Rainbow Six at first either. Mostly I just kept comparing it to Metal Gear Solid and, well, Splinter Cell is its own game.
Just got a box set of the four Clancy-based movies, and watched Patriot Games. It was much better than I remembered.
Of the latter category, I recently read and finished Rainbow Six since I was into the game (someone really needs to bump that topic... or we can merge it with this one), but to be honest the game tells the story better than the book does. Sure, the game loses Popov, who I honestly kinda liked, but it also wasn't as redundant or as stuffed full of filler, and Rainbow itself was more proactive as opposed to the novel where they find out the plot mostly due to dumb luck.
I honestly wouldn't mind doing a rewrite of Rainbow Six, or at least seeing one done. If I were doing it, I would do it as a short story book rather than a novel, and have the Phoenix Group be a recurring antagonist, and then have the last story tie it all together, sort of like a TV season. And it wouldn't be in the mainstream Jack Ryan universe... it would be... shall we say... a splinter cell?
Speaking of which, I feel like I need to give Splinter Cell another chance. I didn't like it the first time I played, but then I didn't like Rainbow Six at first either. Mostly I just kept comparing it to Metal Gear Solid and, well, Splinter Cell is its own game.
Just got a box set of the four Clancy-based movies, and watched Patriot Games. It was much better than I remembered.
The resident X-Multiply fan.
-
heisenbergman
- Posts: 411
- Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 12:33 pm
- Location: Philippines
-
Edmond Dantes
- Posts: 995
- Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:17 am
Re: R.I.P. Tom Clancy
Well, I just marathoned Rainbow Six and Eagle Watch on Elite...
And I am suffering from Tetris Effect like hell right now. Seriously everything looks zoomed out to me. The hell?
And I am suffering from Tetris Effect like hell right now. Seriously everything looks zoomed out to me. The hell?
The resident X-Multiply fan.