Numerous outlets, including
Deadline
and
The New York Times, are reporting the death of author Tom Clancy at the age
of 66 following a brief illness. Clancy was one of the biggest names in spy
fiction—certainly one of the genre’s bestsellers in the Eighties and Nineties. He
was also one of the indisputable founding fathers of the modern genre dubbed
the “techno-thriller,” well-researched page turners based on cutting edge
technological concepts. (The techno-thriller and spy thriller genres often
dovetail, as they did in Clancy’s books.) Clancy was the creator of one of the
most recognizable spy franchise characters of modern times, CIA analyst Jack
Ryan. Ryan first appeared in Clancy’s 1984 Cold War classic
The Hunt for Red October,
the first work of contemporary fiction ever to be published by the Naval
Institute Press. (The initial print run was just 5,000 copies, and in the mid-Nineties, this was one of the most desirable modern first editions out there.) Part of what made the book such a success was its impressively
accurate technical details, which won the author many fans among the U.S.
military and intelligence establishment. Like Ian Fleming before him, Clancy
got a huge boost in sales when an American president endorsed his work. Ronald
Reagan told White House reporters that he was losing sleep because he couldn’t
put down
The Hunt for Red October,
calling it “my kind of yarn.”
Red October was followed by
other thick Jack Ryan thrillers, including Patriot Games, The Cardinal of the
Kremlin (my favorite), Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears. These
giant, daunting literary bricks were such a part of Eighties and Nineties pop
culture that it’s impossible to imagine a Waldenbooks or B. Dalton of my
childhood without picturing them prominently displayed in the front of the store. They were intrinsic to my own discovery of
the spy genre when I was in middle school. Many hundreds of pages long and
often weighing more than all my textbooks combined (in hardcover, anyway), each new
Clancy book I read was a challenge to be conquered. Yet despite their dense technological
details, they moved quickly and (in those days) always proved a rewarding read.
The dense technical data was never boring, because Clancy made it exciting! Reading
a Clancy novel, I always felt like I was privy to fascinating top secret
information about high-tech weaponry and the inner workings of our military and
intelligence services. Honestly, learning about submarine warfare and sniper
skills and satellite technology was as thrilling and sometimes even as
suspenseful as the roller coaster plots that Clancy concocted. (Some of those
plots proved harrowingly prescient, particularly terrorists’ use of airliners
to attack America in Debt of Honor.) I loved those novels, and I find it hard
to believe that now all three of my favorite thriller writers of my youth are
dead before their time: Ludlum, Crichton and now Clancy.
Tom Clancy’s cultural impact was
not limited to the bestseller lists. He was also a trailblazer in videogames. His
second novel, Red Storm Rising (chronicling WWIII), formed the basis for a war
game the author was actively involved in developing, and in the Nineties he
co-founded his own videogame company, Red Storm Entertainment (subsequently
subsumed by Ubisoft). Clancy lent his name and expertise to three extremely
successful Ubisoft series, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon
and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. As in his fiction, he insisted on a high level
of technical accuracy in these games, and reportedly that realism led to the
military actually using some of them in training.
Clancy also made his mark on
film and television.
The Hunt for Red October was made into a superb movie by John McTiernan in
1990 starring Sean Connery as Soviet sub captain Marko Ramius and Alec Baldwin as
Jack Ryan. With James Bond out of commission for half the decade, Jack Ryan
became
the cinematic spy hero of the Nineties, played by Harrison Ford in two further
films (both directed by Philip Noyce),
Patriot Games and
Clear and Present Danger. The latter Ford film also
introduced movie audiences to Clancy’s other primary hero, Black Ops mastermind
John Clark, played by Willem Dafoe. The series was rebooted in the early 2000s
with Ben Affleck playing a younger Ryan at the start of his career in
The Sum of All Fears, and will be
rebooted again later this year with Chris Pine playing Ryan at an even earlier
point in his career, if that makes sense. I enjoyed the movies (well, except for
Sum), but as a teenager
felt frustrated that they never seemed to do the books justice. (How
could they, cramming that many pages into a standard theatrical running time?) Clancy himself was often the most outspoken critic of the movies based on his books.
Even
though miniseries would seem the perfect medium to adapt Clancy’s books, only
two were made:
Tom Clancy’s OP Center (1995), starring Harry Hamlin, and
Tom
Clancy’s NetForce (1999), starring Scott Bakula. It was reported
in late 2011 that
Clancy was working on a new TV series about Homeland Security. I was excited by the
prospect, and I hope it might still see the light of day.
The most controversial way in
which Clancy impacted the publishing industry was by turning his name into a brand, and that brand into a cottage
industry. He lent his name to numerous series of paperback originals (some of
which were tied in with videogames or miniseries), including Tom Clancy’s Net Force,
Tom Clancy’s Op-Center, Tom Clancy’s Power Plays, and Tom Clancy’s Splinter
Cell. But despite his name being by far the largest thing on the cover, the
actual books were written by other authors. While some of those authors were
quite talented in their own right (including James Bond continuation author
Raymond Benson), it seemed a bit disingenuous to market their books as
something they weren’t. But there’s no arguing with the financial success of
the model. While consumers might have the right to gripe, publishers loved the
results. Soon, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, James Patterson and others were
following the same formula. (It’s proven very lucrative for the Ludlum estate,
enabling them to keep publishing new material with the late author’s name
splashed across the cover for more than a decade after his death, and will no doubt
do the same for Clancy’s heirs.) In later years, Clancy even started turning over
his signature Jack Ryan series to ghost writers, co-writing recent novels with
Grant Blackwood and Mark Greaney. (There’s much debate among fans over how much
co-writing Clancy actually did, as the author’s signature attention to detail
certainly dwindled. It certainly seemed as if his heart was no longer in it, even in the last books he wrote on his own.)
Even without his numerous
spin-off series, Tom Clancy’s legacy is assured. His early Jack Ryan books are bona
fide classics of the genre, and Ryan himself will live on for as long as spy
novels are read. This December will see the publication of a new Jack Ryan
novel co-wrtitten with Greaney,
Command Authority, as well as the long-awaited
cinematic reboot of the character in Kenneth Brannagh’s
Jack Ryan: Shadow
Recruit (
Deadline’s obituary is the first place I’ve seen that title), starring
Chris Pine. (Though there are rumors that Paramount may push the movie to next
spring.) But beyond Jack Ryan, Clancy’s impact will be forever felt in the
works of new authors and screenwriters he inspired. Like Ian Fleming and John
le Carré, Tom Clancy forever changed the genre, and every techno-thriller author
to come will owe him a debt of honor.
