Tom Clancy

Writer

• Born: April 12, 1947
• Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
• Died: October 1, 2013

American novelist and historian

Biography

Thomas L. Clancy Jr. is often described as the “king of the technothriller,” a genre in which elements from science fiction and suspense combine with descriptions of advanced military technology to drive the plot. The second of three children, Clancy was born into an Irish American, working-class family in Baltimore. His father was a postman, and his mother was a department store credit clerk. Educated in parochial schools, Clancy, a self-described “nerd” who enjoyed playing military board games, was an avid reader, especially of military history books and science fiction. Poor eyesight kept Clancy from joining the military as had his father, a World War II Navy veteran, but he did join the ROTC while at Loyola College. There he majored in English and dreamed of becoming a famous novel writer. After graduation in 1969, Clancy married Wanda Thomas and became an insurance underwriter in Connecticut; he later worked at the insurance firm in Maryland owned by Wanda’s grandfather. The couple had three daughters and one son. In 1980 Clancy bought the family company, which afforded him some time to focus again on writing. (In 1998 Clancy and Thomas divorced, and in 2000 he married former television newscaster Alexandra Maria Llewellyn.)

According to Helen S. Garson, author of Tom Clancy: A Critical Companion (1996), Clancy’s early love of science fiction combined with his fascination with military gadgets and technology, interest in computers, reverence for all things related to the military, and patriotic fervor to create a solid base for the genre for which he would become famous.

Like James A. Michener, famous for his in-depth research of people and places for novels such as Hawaii (1959) and Centennial (1974), Clancy wrote his novels and nonfiction works after conducting extensive research in military technology, culled from such publications as the Armed Forces Weekly and Jane’s Defence Weekly, and collaborating with subject experts ranging from Soviet defectors to retired Air Force generals. The resulting best-sellers contain tremendous detail about terrorist operations, fleet maneuvers, military hardware, and intelligence technology.

Clancy based his first novel on the real-life attempted defection to Sweden by the crew of the Storojeroï, a Soviet frigate. After conducting extensive research on nuclear submarines, and with advice from then-naval analyst and computer war game expert Larry Bond, author of Red Phoenix (1989), he finished The Hunt for Red October in 1982; it was published by the Naval Institute Press in 1984. A strategic public relations plan that targeted Washington area bookstores and government officials combined with good book reviews to boost sales. The Hunt for Red October became a best seller after it was given to President Ronald Reagan, who described it as “the perfect yarn.”

Like technothrillers by writers such as Stephen Coonts, author of Flight of the Intruder (1986), Clancy’s novels rely on a predictable structure: a main plot about a current threat to world stability combined with multiple subplots, all wrapped within intense technical detail. In Clancy’s novels, according to Garson, “political views are central and powerful . . . old and new fears of the Russian bear, the red menace, creeping communism, Asians and Latins, all these [are] personified through evil characters.” His work appeals to what critics such as Jason Crowley of the New Statesman describe as an American fascination with and addiction to “narratives of catastrophe.” Indeed, reality mirrored fiction on September 11, 2001, when Islamic militants hijacked civilian planes—a scenario similarly portrayed in Clancy’s 1991 The Sum of All Fears.

In Clancy’s work, world chaos threatens and must be restrained and eliminated by heroes such as Jack Ryan, a former US Marine, history professor, and civilian employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Often described as Clancy’s alter ego, he is similar to other Clancy characters, who, as Louis Menand of The New Yorker describes, are “daring . . . highly trained, disciplined, clean-cut, and honest” and somewhat cynical because “they know how hard it is to live up to principles, they know how easy it is to cheat on them, and this knowledge makes them at times acutely aware that the world is probably not entirely worthy of their dedication to its survival.”

Whether capturing a Soviet nuclear submarine in The Hunt for Red October, taking on Columbian drug cartels in Clear and Present Danger (1989), or preventing a takeover of the world by an evil Japanese business consortium in Debt of Honor (1994), Clancy’s characters (and his writing formula) made him one of the most financially successful writers of all time. By 2002, his novels and nonfiction books (published by G. P. Putnam's Sons) had sold more than fifty million copies. While he did publish one more Jack Ryan novel in the first decade of the twenty-first century, titled The Teeth of the Tiger (2003), which was the first to focus instead on Jack's eldest son as he becomes a field operative, he did not return to fiction or that familiar world again until 2010. In that novel, titled Dead or Alive, Clancy brings together all of the major characters from his previous books to help hunt down a known terrorist. His next novel, Against All Enemies (2011), introduces a new main character by the name of Max Moore, who is an ex-Navy SEAL working in the Middle East for the CIA. However, the last three novels that he would see completed in his lifetime, Locked On (2011), Threat Vector (2012), and Command Authority (2013), return to the still compelling story of Jack Ryan—and all were written with a coauthor.

Critics, while generally complimenting Clancy on his ability to write action-oriented tales, often criticized his simplistic views on world politics and tendency to create stereotypical characters. Menand described Clancy’s characters as people who are “cut out carefully along the dotted lines” and points out how Clancy’s female characters are often humiliated or punished for no apparent reason. Others critiqued Clancy’s prose as uninspired; “prose that is no better than workmanlike” according to Robert Lekachman. Other complaints circled around the increasing number of subplots and tome-size books.

Nonetheless, Clancy’s popularity has continued. In addition to his many novels, he wrote nonfiction works such as Submarine and Fighter Wing, which detail American war-fighting resources, and a series of books about and with military commanders, such as Every Man a Tiger with Air Force general Chuck Horner and his final nonfiction book Battle Ready (2004) with Marine general Tony Zinni. According to Crowley, Clancy franchised his name to other writers under the Op-Center series and expanded his work into multimedia through his Red Storm Entertainment company that creates video games based on his books. The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears have been turned into films. In 2014, actor Chris Pine had a turn as Clancy's most well-known character in the film Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, which is meant to serve as a prequel to The Hunt for Red October. Clancy also turned the Op-Center and Net Force paperback series into television products. He became what Crowley described as “his own global brand.”

After a brief illness, Clancy passed away at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 1, 2013, at the age of sixty-six. He was survived by his second wife and their daughter as well as the four children from his first marriage. Not long after his death, amidst concern expressed by the media over whether fans could expect the Jack Ryan series to end with the author's death, Clancy's estate commissioned one of his previous coauthors, Mark Greaney, to continue writing about Clancy's characters. While his first solo novel, Support and Defend (2014), focuses instead on the character of Dominic Caruso, Jack Ryan's nephew, Greaney's next book, Full Force and Effect (2014), serves as his first real attempt to justifiably render the characters of Jack Ryan and his son. After his third novel, Commander in Chief (2015), another former coauthor, Grant Blackwood, took up the challenge and subsequently published two more novels in the series, Under Fire (2015) and Duty and Honor (2016). While comparisons to Clancy's writing and military detail have inevitably been made, overall fans and critics alike have been happy to see the series continue.

No matter the medium in which his work has appeared, according to Garson, Clancy’s popularity is a result of his ability to convey “the reassurance of safety even as the real or fictional world explodes. . . . We can confront our foes, knowing someone else will act for us and win. Our hero—ourself—will live to fight another day.”

Bibliography

Anderson, Patrick. “King of the ‘Techno-Thriller’” New York Times. New York Times, 1 May 1998. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Bishop, Chuck. “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Secular Catholic Hero?” Catholic New Times 20 Oct. 2002. Print.

Bosman, Julie. "Tom Clancy, Best-Selling Master of Military Thrillers, Dies at 66." New York Times. New York Times, 2 Oct. 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Buckley, Christopher. “Megabashing Japan.” Rev. of Debt of Honor, by Tom Clancy. New York Times Book Review 2 Oct. 1994: 28–29. Print.

Clancy, Tom. “An Interview with Tom Clancy.” Interview by John Mutter. Publishers Weekly 8 Aug. 1986: 53–54. Print.

Cowley, Jason. “The New Statesman Profile: Tom Clancy.” New Statesman. New Statesman, 24 Sept. 2001. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Garson, Helen S. Tom Clancy: A Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood, 1996. Print.

Greenberg, Martin H., ed. The Tom Clancy Companion. Rev. ed. New York: Berkeley, 2005. Print.

Lekachman, Robert. “Making the World Safe for Conventional War.” Rev. of The Cardinal of the Kremlin, by Tom Clancy. New York Times Book Review 31 July 1988: 6. Print.

Menand, Louis. “Very Popular Mechanics.” Rev. of The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clancy. New Yorker 16 Sept. 1991: 91+. Print.

Vinciguerra, Thomas. “Word for Word: The Clancy Effect.” New York Times 18 Aug. 2002. Print.