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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."
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.
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.
Kind of like every time there's a problem with a plane they roll out "Miracle on the Hudson" Capt. Sullenberger?
Clancy did a lot of research for all of his books, you have to give him props for that. While he never served in the Military he
knew a lot about the motivations and the technology which made his books more realistic.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Clancy did a lot of research for all of his books, you have to give him props for that.
He was given unfettered access to the military and often his stories were really just fictionalizations with mild embellishments of actual events. This follows on a long tradition of artists (painters, writers, photographers) being given special access to war theaters. So nothing wrong with that, I just don't know if I would call this "research".
Setting aside his writing for the moment, he impressed me back in 2001 on September 11. He had a book where some terrorists hijacked a plane and crashed it into the capital building, so the news drones had him on so they could say things at him about that. Meanwhile, he had a message: "Don't make the mistake of blaming Islam or Muslims for this. This was a specific group of terrorists, not representative of Muslims in general." (I paraphrase.) The talking heads tried to redirect him, ask him how he "felt" about this or that nonsense, but he stayed on message.
He was the only one for at least a couple of days after 9/11 (that I saw on TV at least) who both recognized that this would be a problem and who called for consideration in the face of bigotry. I have trouble believing that he was the only one who recognized that this would be a problem.
Although his writing was pretty mechanical, his stories were real page turners.
I guess that the people who claim that Tolkien's writing in LoTR progresses very slowly haven't read the six or so pages (forming an entire chapter) that Clancy spends on the first thirty nanoseconds of the nuclear explosion in Sum of All Fears. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20