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Tom Clancy Is Dead At 66
guttentag writes "The author of The Hunt for Red October and many military and espionage novels which inspired a number of movies video games died last night in a Baltimore Hospital. The news was first reported by Publishers Weekly's Twitter account this morning and confirmed by New York Times Book Reporter Julie Bosman's Twitter account."
Although his writing was pretty mechanical, his stories were real page turners. It's sad to see him go.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Huge influence on my life as a reader and tech enthusiast. He will be dearly missed.
Write the story for Ghost Recon 17: Invade Cuba Again?
n/t
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
(A)
I loved his stuff as an ass-kicking young man but as I grew older I lost interest.
But his written work hasn't impacted me nearly as much as the hours spent playing Rogue Spear.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
The technical detail and intriguing blending of military tactics and politics engrossed me as a child. Perhaps more importantly, his political views that often shone through his writings challenged my own, which are often contrary to the ones he held, in a way that did not make me instinctively defensive or unreasonable. He was a great writer, indeed. RIP.
He was very tech oriented and worked extensively with people in the field to try to make his novels sound as accurate on the details as he could. He was good enough at taking non-classified data and extrapolating where things could go from there that he received visits from the FBI and CIA to find out how he knew what he knew.
He certainly made things up (caterpillar drive for the sub etc), but the point is he worked tirelessly to get technical details right in as many cases as he could, and to try get them as plausible as he could get away with in those cases where he needed to make the up. He put a lot more effort into getting the details right than most authors and far more than Hollywood ever did and for that his passing is very relevant for Slashdot. He took creative license, but he took it far less than a lot of other authors (Bourne Ultimatum series etc) and used it far more selectively.
He wrote 17 number one selling books and had three of his books turned into blockbuster movies. He was active in having games made about his books even back in the 80's and made sure a series of games was made ever since then. He came up with ideas for terrorism like flying a civilian airliner into a government building before 9/11.
So the passing of an author who is popular amongst nerds and geeks gets mentioned here (all due respect to Clancy) while the obituaries of much more significant pioneers of geeky, nerdy things are routinely dropped from consideration after submission. It happens again and again. It seems like popularity trumps significance. How about an Obituary Section?
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I read one Clancy novel and looking at the plot summary, it looks like the one I read. And at the end, when he's in the hospital, the docs keep from him that they treated him for some STD that he got from his ex-hooker girlfriend.
Anyway, he had this shotgun stick - a pipe with a handle/firing pin and you put one shell in there and "stab" the guy in the diaphragm and it blew out his lungs and heart and was muffled by the chest cavity. Someone must have built one of those.
Clancy had a lot of details. It is a good book - for a middle aged male version of a romance novel.
I've always wondered what kind of audience his books are intended for. I really liked Red Storm Rising when I first read it at the age of 14-15, Patriots, Hunt For the Red October and something else were also fun. Then I (and my classmates) kind of outgrew him, and the later books just seems bizarre - greens are terrorists?
I can still enjoy re-reading some stuff, just like I can kind of enjoy watching teen-movies like Pacific Rim (ok, that's not totally true - stopped watching after 4/5th when I got tired of all pointless robot battles). But I get the impression most of his readers are adults?
Anyway, thanks Tom for at least providing the inspiration for Red Storm Rising the sub simulator! One of the best C64 games ever.
Obamacare starts. Tom Clancy Dies. Coincidence? I think not.
AC seems a reasonable source. Update Wikipedia, its not on there yet.
Am I the only one who finds it sad that such an influential author's death warranted only a tweet by his publisher and that it was "confirmed" by a NYT reporter's tweet as opposed to say, Clancy's estate or an official family statement? Tom Clancy dies and he gets two tweets. I suppose there's a bit of irony there. Now get off my lawn.
and died very very happy.
Seriously do you think somebody that wrote WAR Novels gave a flying [redacted] about the Vegan agenda??
but anyway lets shelve this until we find out what he died of.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I shout this every time I see someone fake right then flip around for a u-turn at a 4-way stop in San Francisco, which is like every day.
Sorry for talking to myself here, but I just realized it was "Publisher Weekly's" twitter account, not "his publisher's weekly" twitter account. My mistake!
Michael Clarke Duncan was a Vegetarian and he died at 54.
http://www.peta.org/features/Michael-Clarke-Duncan.aspx
I read one Clancy novel and looking at the plot summary, it looks like the one I read. And at the end, when he's in the hospital, the docs keep from him that they treated him for some STD that he got from his ex-hooker girlfriend.
That was actually towards the first 1/3 of the book. The girl he picked up got killed pretty early on.
Anyway, he had this shotgun stick - a pipe with a handle/firing pin and you put one shell in there and "stab" the guy in the diaphragm and it blew out his lungs and heart and was muffled by the chest cavity. Someone must have built one of those.
All it was is a shark bang stick. They are commercially available. What was always more interesting to me was when he converted his 1911 into a .22 with a kit and then fabricated his own silencer.
It is a good book - for a middle aged male version of a romance novel
I have a hard time calling a book with torture, revenge murder, drug use, and a special forces raid on a Vietnam POW camp a "romance novel". It's a character origin novel, and a really good story.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Where will I get totally probable conspiracy theories for my aluminum foil hat group now? (Big fan. He will be missed.)
And my grandfather was slaughtering a cow when he passed from an aneurysm at the age of 93.
He ate meat everyday and swore by a nice rare grass-fed steak. He did hate range maggots though (sheep).
I guess if he was a vegan he would have died at 60, overweight and sporting wheat-belly.
This whole thread will probably be modded down, but the OP, statistically is probably right. Someone dieing in the US @ 66 was probably afflicted with coronary artery disease (almost always from a lifetime of chronic animal consumption, as a plant-based diet doesn't impart plaque on the artery walls like an animal-based diet does), or died from the the symptoms of diabetes. He wasn't a smoker, so lung cancer can probably be ruled out. Also doubt he got hit by a car while on his skateboard.
Is very lacking. Basically two paragraphs that belittle his style of writing.
Where I am going, you cannot follow.
I doubt this whole story, but good on him!
Welcome to our brave new world, where the most prominent news outlets are operated by the populace, as opposed to a few illuminati with the power to decide what news is fit to print and what is not.
The Hunt for Red October was made into at least two video games; I played the more complex "simulator-style" game on the Amiga, and it was actually a fantastic game.
Most American eat meat at *every* meal. That or pasta which is why they're always sick.
Back to 4chan you go kiddo.
[R]ed Storm Rising
[I]nto the Storm
[P]atriot Games
Tom Clancy :'(
***
And lets not forget his depicting an aircraft being crashed into the capitol building years before it was attempted in real life.
The NSA got wind of his latest spy thriller.
Do you have a source for this? He looks quite alive to me still. Although the guy who hit him with his car a while back died yesterday. Is that what you are referring to?
Seemed like a decent guy (nice stuff with that kid Kyle in the 90's).
When they talk about delaying social security to improve your payments, need to keep this in mind. For the most part- taking social security early or late still results in a break even between 82 and 84. If you take it early, you start losing your bet at age 82. If you take it late, you start winning your bet between 82 and 84.
If you think you are likely to die prior to age 82 (when did your parents and grandparents die, what kind of health are you in), then you may want to take social security early.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Way back when John Grisham's first book had hit it big Clancy was being interviewed on one of the morning shows. They asked him with the popularity of Grisham's book would he ever write a book with a lawyer as a hero. His answer was, "I think I'm a pretty good fiction writer, but I'm not that good." (Paraphrase from a 20 year old memory.)
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
I loved the early Red Storm Entertainment games of Rainbow 6 and the original Ghost Recon. Still haunts me that a game released circa 2000 predicted a Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. And then it happened.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I first heard about Hunt for Red October. I still have my first edition copy.
I had lots of questions from friends and family about how Nuclear Reactors really worked, and until that book came out, I was really scared about what I could and couldn't say without jeopardizing my security clearance.
After I read that book, I would reference people with questions to that book. It answered their questions.
I'll be that within 24 hours of his death he wasn't doing much of anything.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
Truly an American icon.
dinner: it's what's for beer
You're always free to buy or not buy what you like or don't like.
Unless the cartel bundles what you don't like with what you like, such as the cooking channels with a cable channel that shows film adaptations of Tom Clancy novels.
It used to be you could read Tom Clancy and identify with the characters, exult in the common mission, and marvel at his technical details. It didn't matter what part of the political spectrum you hailed from, you could still read his books and feel good about being an American. Then at some point, I think it was "Debt of Honor," his schtick slid beyond to a right-wing crazyland fantasy where I could not follow.
I come from a military family. I come from a family with deep roots in America, half native-American, half-original European settlers. I could not stomach the jingoism that defined his later writing. America is not a destination, it's a process. If you forget that, and kick everybody who you don't see eye-to-eye with off the bus, then you forfeit your own seat on the ride, as far as I'm concerned.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Also, at the risk of Godwinning the thread, a certain vegetarian German politician died at 56.
Vegetarians and vegans aren't necessarily any healthier than anyone else: It all depends on a lot more than what somebody eats or doesn't eat.
I am officially gone from
Now what author's books can people leave in hotel lobbies? Not to mention buy in airport book stores as last minute gifts for middle aged white guys.
I recall with fondness a speech he gave at our university years ago:
"To all you liberal arts girls who wouldn't look twice at me, well, you missed your chance."
I thought he was a lifetime smoker?
Also, lung cancer is just one of many ways smoking kills people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Does anyone know the cause of death? 66 is pretty young when you consider the average lifespan.
Figures.
He was a smoker: Check out his "Smoker's Rights" Page: http://edgeworthstreet.tripod.com/clancy.html
Darwin @ work.
It is weird that tomclancy.com says nothing about his death.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Clancy was a prolific drinker all his life. In later years he could often be seen closing the bars around Fell's Point. Kidney, liver, lung problems--it finally caught up with him and his body just shut down.
That was actually towards the first 1/3 of the book. The girl he picked up got killed pretty early on.
I was very invested in the book. When that happened I had to put the book down for a few weeks
Clancy was, too, a smoker. And most of the characters in his novels were heavy smokers.
It would be poetic justice if Clancy died from smoking-related cause(s). Perhaps this is why the cause of his death has not be released.
Vegetarians and vegans aren't necessarily any healthier than anyone else: It all depends on a lot more than what somebody eats or doesn't eat.
I know a vegan who eats a steady diet of ho-ho's and sugared coconut milk. This individual is about 450lbs.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
His early books, (all in the Jack Ryan) series, up to and including Cardinal of the Kremlin, were excellent, as was Red Storm Rising and some of his non-fiction books were excellent. Well-written, tightly-plotted, thrillers with interesting characters. I think Sum of All Fears was the start of the slide (Clear and Present was borderline...)
I was first introduced to his books when reading a copy of Hunt for Red October in my high-school library. In retrospect, I should have stolen it, as it was a first-edition copy from the Naval Institute Press. (His jacket photo was of him as a dorky clerk in his Father-in-law's insurance office.)
I think his later books suffered from his success, as they were written like he no longer paid any attention to his editor (I once saw the same sentence repeated on consecutive pages), and his books become overlong, sloppy, and too packed with rambling polemic. (Although I suppose you can argue that for the audience that enjoys polemic, they were too mild.)
He wrote 17 number one selling books and had three of his books turned into blockbuster movies.
More than 3 books became movies. Off the top of my head, Hunt for Red October, Sum of All Fears, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, Red Storm Rising. Would not be surprised to see several more of his works become movies at some point.
Dead October? Too bad. I enjoyed his books.
I remember reading The Sum Of All Fears in 1993 as my first Clancy book. I couldn't put it down and read it all the way through until 4 am.
Fast forward 20 or so years, and many books by Clancy. Then I started reading his Red Rabbit.
What a horrible book. His whining and rambling about how much worse the coffee is in England than in the US. How horrible the beef in Eastern Europe is as compared to the US. And making the same comments on this, over and over and over and over again. What a load of drivel it became!
Still enjoy playing the Ghost Recon games though.
Too bad he cannot do part 2 of this http://feisar.de/content/gfx_en_sumofallcliches.html
Hunt for Red October. When I read it, I was no more than 10 years old. The size of the book more than the prose was what I found intimidating back then. RIP Tom Clancy. You contributed something to this world that was appreciated.
4chan??? "Stephen King is dead" is one of the classic /. trolls from way back, and strangely appropriate here ... (was kinda hoping the summary would say that Clancy was truly an American icon, but sadly not).
*sigh* ... youngsters. Get off my lawn, etc.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
(Seriously, is there an older copy-paste troll still seeing regular use on /. than this? How in the world does anyone fall for it?!)
Larry Bonds, the creator of the naval simulator Harpoon basically wrote HFRO. Whole paragraphs of his user manual made it into the 'novel' which was basically unreadable and despite its reputation, contained no information that wasn't publicly available to anyone who reads Jane's. Clancy was basically a brand manager for ghost writers.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
You'd particularly think they would update it since he turned 66 2-ish weeks ago.
Given the young age at which he died (in mortality terms), he probably dropped dead without warning. That's quite a traumatic and busy time for those around you, and press releases may may not be top of your list.
[FUCK BETA]
> bet he was a meat eater?
Considering he was a Republican so therefore had no respect for life, he obviously is one of those meat eaters. The world is better off with one less of their kind.
That certain someone enjoyed the services of a "doctor" who was shooting him up with all sorts of crap. The politician might as well have been on a sausage-only diet.
Not sure where you're getting your info: Clancy was a known heavy smoker.
I have a hard time calling a book with torture, revenge murder, drug use, and a special forces raid on a Vietnam POW camp a "romance novel". It's a character origin novel, and a really good story.
He was JOKING.
Good grief.
Also, at the risk of Godwinning the thread, a certain vegetarian German politician died at 56.
Vegetarians and vegans aren't necessarily any healthier than anyone else: It all depends on a lot more than what somebody eats or doesn't eat.
I disagree,
There aren't any vegan rock stars because they all collapsed mid show due to a lack of iron and protein.
Plus it's near impossible to find organic, fair-trade cocaine.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I was taking high school physics, specifically the basics of nuclear fission, at the time that I read the book in hardcover. That book made the class more interesting and the classes gave an extra layer of interest to the book
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
In the mid to late 90's my favourite video game was Harpoon, a naval command sym game based on work by Clancy and others. It was rather plain looking in terms of UI, but probably the best of this type of game I've played. I wish they had created something as good lately. But since this doesn't involve all sorts of cools graphics, I guess it's no wonder.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Tom Clancy? The guy who thought that throwing as many acronym's and jargon into a paragraph as he could was good writing? His books, especially the recent ones, were Fetish fuel for right wing engineers who read Janes.
A lot of people deciding to become vegetarians, do so out of fear from existing or potential health problems.
He/she isn't a very good vegan then... Ho-Ho's contain animal fat shortening.