Tom Clancy, a writer who was as famed for what Stephen King called his “monster advances” as his wildly popular thrillers, including The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games, has died in hospital in Baltimore at the age of 66.
The author of 17 New York Times bestsellers was launched on his career by former US president Ronald Reagan.
The Hunt for Red October, his first novel, had been bought for a lowly US$5,000 by the Naval Institute Press. When Reagan pronounced it “the perfect yarn” in 1984, Clancy, then a Maryland insurance agent, was propelled into a hugely successful writing career.
REAGAN
In 1996 he returned the compliment by dedicating his book Executive Orders to Reagan. A lifelong Republican, Clancy dedicated several of his other novels to conservative politicians.
Recalling the story in 2002, he told an interviewer: “President Reagan, despite all the nasty things people used to say about him, was actually a big reader, and he read the book during his tenure at the White House, and he liked it, and he talked it up and Time magazine found out and ... did an article about it, and I became a bestselling author.”
He added: “I mean, I would have done so anyway in all likelihood.”
Forbes magazine estimated his yearly earnings for 2007-2008 at US$35 million.
The Hunt for Red October introduced his most famous character, Jack Ryan, a CIA agent who becomes president. Ryan has been portrayed by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck respectively in films including Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears.
A new Jack Ryan film, Shadow One, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Chris Pine, is planned for release later this year. Clancy described the heroic Ryan as a version of himself — “an improved version, because he never had to get his eyes fixed by an ophthalmologist and all that stuff that I’ve had to do.”
COLD WAR
His early novels were marinated in the Cold War, but he also tackled terrorism and his 1994 novel Debt of Honor was eerily prescient: It features a scene in which a jingoistic Japanese industrialist, bent on bringing the US to its knees, crashes a Boeing 747 jet into the US Capitol dome, killing the president and most of Congress.
In 2003, Clancy said: “Osama bin Laden has never sent me any fan mail, and I haven’t really sold that many books in Afghanistan... If I could predict the future, I’d be down on Wall Street.”
Clancy was one of the pioneers of the notion of author as brand. Alongside the thrillers he wrote — including Command Authority, the 13th Jack Ryan novel, which is published in December — he also sold his intellectual property rights for an estimated US$100 million to a videogame company and had his name attached to a number of novel series written by other authors.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the