Tom Clancy Dies at 66

[questionmark]

Tom Clancy, whose complex, adrenaline-fueled military novels made him one of the world’s best-selling and best-known authors, died on Tuesday in a hospital in Baltimore. He was 66.

Ivan Held, the president of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, his publisher, did not provide a cause of death.

Mr. Clancy’s books were successfully transformed into blockbuster Hollywood films, including “Patriot Games,” “The Hunt for Red October” and “Clear and Present Danger.”

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[libstaK]

RIP Tom Clancy - thanks for the stories, they will be remembered and loved for years to come.

[Rafterman]

Very sad to hear this.

Getting that new hardback thriller was a rite of passage. My copy of Hunt for Red October is held together with duct tape.

Conn, sonar. CRAZY IVAN!

[onereaderone]

RIP tom clancy

Conn, sonar. CRAZY IVAN!

[Kowalski]

Awww, that sucks.....

His books were great. Looooong but great.....

[supervike]

Very sad to hear this.

Getting that new hardback thriller was a rite of passage. My copy of Hunt for Red October is held together with duct tape.

Conn, sonar. CRAZY IVAN!

That's actually one of the only books I've felt the movie was BETTER than the novel.

Don't get me wrong, the novel was great too.

He was a fantastic story teller, and an all around interesting character.

[Rafterman]

That's actually one of the only books I've felt the movie was BETTER than the novel.

Don't get me wrong, the novel was great too.

He was a fantastic story teller, and an all around interesting character.

I haven't been so crazy about his latest ones, but his first six or so were rights of passage for me in high school and college.

Probably my all time favorite was Red Storm Rising which kind of gets overlooked since it's not in the Jack Ryan universe.

[Shiloh17]

Well, October seems a fitting month, considering "The hunt for Red October." RIP Tom.

[Kaa-Tzik]

Hunt for Red October was a great book and film. I still smile at the irony that the Storozhevoi mutiny that he part based the novel on, was for the exact opposite reasons he uses in his novel, more communism, not an escape from it. Still no film made about the real mutiny, a pity.

[+and-then]

Tom Clancy was the first person I thought of on 9-11-01. Debt of Honor had a scene where the Capital was destroyed by a 747 piloted by a fanatic. I wondered if those guys got the idea from him.

[supervike]

Tom Clancy was the first person I thought of on 9-11-01. Debt of Honor had a scene where the Capital was destroyed by a 747 piloted by a fanatic. I wondered if those guys got the idea from him.

That's an interesting thought. However, I wonder if it wasn't the other way around. Clancy maybe got the idea from some of the insiders in the Intelligence agencies. Maybe that was a real threat the agencies knew about.

[Kaa-Tzik]

There is certainly an under the table story with Clancy, and that is not how he got such high level information as a civilian, but why. Sometimes it almost seems he was fed information for some purpose other than making an interesting book. He published Red October in 1984 and it was clear he was, apart from the fantasy "propulsors", writing about the Typhoon SSBNs. This was incredible as TK208 (Dmitri Donskoi) had only been commissioned by December 1981 and the missile system was not operational until 1984. Why was Clancy fed this information? to let Soviet Union know that at least the existance of Typhoons was not a secret, even if technical details still were, or what?...... And in his other books, curiouser and curiouser....