Tom Clancy
Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. was an American novelist. He is best known for his technically detailed espionage and military-science storylines set during and after the Cold War. Seventeen of his novels have been bestsellers and more than 100 million copies of his books have been sold. His name has also been used on screenplays written by ghostwriters, nonfiction books on military subjects occasionally with co-authors, and video games. He was a part-owner of his hometown Major League Baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles, and vice-chairman of their community activities and public affairs committees.
Originally an insurance agent, Clancy launched his literary career in 1984 when his first military thriller novel The Hunt for Red October was published by the small academic Naval Institute Press of Annapolis, Maryland.
The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears have been turned into commercially successful films. Tom Clancy's works also inspired games such as the Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and The Division series. Since Clancy's death in 2013, his Ryanverse franchise has been continued by his family estate through a series of authors.
Early life and education
Clancy was born on April 12, 1947, at the Franklin Square Hospital in the Rosedale area of eastern Baltimore County, Maryland, into an Irish-American family, and grew up in the Northwood neighborhood in northeast Baltimore. He was the second of three children to Thomas Leo Clancy, who worked for the United States Postal Service, and Catherine Mary Clancy, who worked in a store's credit department. He was a member of Troop 624 of the Boy Scouts of America. Clancy's siblings are Patrick and Margaret.Clancy's mother worked to send him to Loyola High School in Towson, Maryland, a private Catholic secondary school taught by the Jesuit religious order. He graduated from Loyola High School in 1965. He then attended the associated Loyola College in Baltimore. Clancy began his college career as a physics major. Due to poor grades, he later changed his concentration to English since "it was an easy major." Despite the academic change, he continued to be an indifferent student spending a majority of his time reading books on military and naval history instead of tending to his studies. Clancy graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature in 1969 receiving a 1.9/4.0 GPA. While at Loyola College, he was president of the chess club. He joined the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps; however, he was ineligible to serve due to his myopia, which required him to wear thick eyeglasses.
After graduating, Clancy earned certifications in business and insurance and worked for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut.
In 1973, Clancy joined the O. F. Bowen Agency, a small insurance agency based in Owings, Maryland, founded by his wife's grandfather. In 1980, he purchased the insurance agency from his wife's grandmother and wrote novels in his spare time. While working at the insurance agency, he wrote his debut novel, The Hunt for Red October.
Career
Clancy's literary career began in 1982 when he started writing The Hunt for Red October, which in 1984 he sold for publishing to the Naval Institute Press for $5,000. The publisher was impressed with the work; Deborah Grosvenor, the Naval Institute Press editor who read through the book, said later that she convinced the publisher: "I think we have a potential best seller here, and if we don't grab this thing, somebody else would." She believed Clancy had an "innate storytelling ability, and his characters had this very witty dialogue". Clancy, who had hoped to sell 5,000 copies, ended up selling over 45,000. After publication, the book received praise from President Ronald Reagan, who called the work "the best yarn", subsequently boosting sales to 300,000 hardcover and two million paperback copies of the book, making it a national bestseller. The book was critically praised for its technical accuracy, which led to Clancy's meeting several high-ranking officers in the U.S. military, as well as Steve Pieczenik, and to inspiration for recurring characters in his works. Clancy's novels focus on the hero, most notably Jack Ryan and John Clark, both Irish Catholics like himself. He repeatedly uses the formula whereby the heroes are "highly skilled, disciplined, honest, thoroughly professional, and only lose their cool when incompetent politicians or bureaucrats get in their way. Their unambiguous triumphs over evil provide symbolic relief from the legacy of the Vietnam War."The Cold War epic Red Storm Rising was co-written with fellow military-oriented author Larry Bond. The book was published by Putnam and sold almost a million copies within its first year. Clancy became the cornerstone of a publishing list by Putnam, which emphasized authors like Clancy who would produce annually. His publisher, Phyllis E. Grann, called these "repeaters."
Finances
Clancy has author status on the cover of dozens of books. Seventeen of his novels made it to the top of the New York Times best seller list. He co-authored memoirs of top generals, and produced numerous guided tours of the elite aspects of the American military. Andrew Bacevich states:Clancy did for military pop-lit what Starbucks did for the preparation of caffeinated beverages: he launched a sprawling, massively profitable industrial enterprise that simultaneously serves and cultivates an insatiable consumer base. Whether the item consumed provides much in terms of nourishment is utterly beside the point. That it tastes yummy going down more than suffices to keep customers coming back.
By 1988, Clancy had earned $1.3 million for The Hunt for Red October and had signed a $3 million contract for his next three books. In 1992, he sold North American rights to Without Remorse for $14 million, a record for a single book. By 1997, Penguin Putnam Inc. paid Clancy $50 million for world rights to two new books and another $25 million to Red Storm Entertainment for a four-year book/multimedia deal. Clancy followed this up with an agreement with Penguin's Berkley Books for 24 paperbacks to tie in with the ABC television miniseries Tom Clancy's Net Force, which aired in the fall/winter of 1998. The Op-Center universe has laid the ground for the series of books written by Jeff Rovin, which was in an agreement worth $22 million, bringing the total value of the package to $97 million.
In 1993, Clancy joined a group of investors that included Peter Angelos, and bought the Baltimore Orioles from Eli Jacobs. In 1998, he tentatively reached an agreement to purchase the Minnesota Vikings, but had to abandon the deal because of a divorce settlement cost.
The first NetForce novel, titled Net Force, was adapted as a 1999 TV movie starring Scott Bakula and Joanna Going. The first Op-Center novel was released to coincide with a 1995 NBC television miniseries of the same name starring Harry Hamlin and a cast of stars. Though the miniseries did not continue, the book series did, but later had little in common with the first TV miniseries other than the title and the names of the main characters.
Clancy wrote several nonfiction books about various branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. He also branded several lines of books and video games with his name that are written by other authors, following premises or storylines generally in keeping with Clancy's works.
With the release of The Teeth of the Tiger, Clancy introduced Jack Ryan's son and two nephews as main characters; those characters continued in his last four novels, Dead or Alive, Locked On, Threat Vector, and Command Authority.
In 2008, the French video game manufacturer Ubisoft purchased the use of Clancy's name for an undisclosed sum. It has been used in conjunction with video games and related products such as movies and books. Based on his interest in private spaceflight and his investment in the launch vehicle company Rotary Rocket,
Clancy was interviewed in 2007 for the documentary film Orphans of Apollo.
Political views
Clancy was a conservative and Republican, and dedicated several of his books to American conservative political figures, including Ronald Reagan. Clancy supported the National Rifle Association and opposed abortion.Clancy praised President George W. Bush as a "good guy"; however, he opposed the Iraq War and argued it lacked a casus belli. Clancy once clashed with Richard Perle, with Clancy stating he almost "came to blows" with Perle, after Perle criticized Colin Powell for being too concerned with the lives of American troops.
Ahead of the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Clancy said that voting for Democrat John Kerry would be "a stretch for me", while also declining to endorse Bush.
Numerous scholars have examined the political dimensions of Clancy's books, especially in the context of the Cold War. Historian Walter Hixson has argued that Clancy's novels, especially The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, were "popular representations of Reagan-era Cold War values. They reflect both popular perceptions of Soviet behavior and the predominant national security values of the Reagan era."
September 11 attacks
On September 11, 2001, Clancy was interviewed by Judy Woodruff on CNN. During the interview, he noted that orthodox "Islam does not permit suicide." Among other observations during this interview, Clancy cited discussions he had with military experts on the lack of planning to deal with a hijacked plane being used in a suicide attack and criticized the news media's treatment of the United States Intelligence Community. Clancy appeared again on PBS's Charlie Rose, to discuss the implications of the day's events with Richard Holbrooke, New York Times journalist Judith Miller, and Senator John Edwards, among others. Clancy was interviewed on those shows because his book Debt of Honor included a scenario wherein a disgruntled Japanese airline pilot crashes a fueled Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol dome during an address by the President to a joint session of Congress, killing the President and most of Congress. In the book, Clancy also implies that Japan's prosperity is due primarily to unequal trading terms. In the book's sequel Executive Orders, the president announces a new foreign policy doctrine, under which the United States will hold personally accountable any foreign leader who orders attacks on U.S. citizens, territory, or possessions in the future.A week after the September 11 attacks, Clancy suggested on The O'Reilly Factor that American left-wing politicians were partly responsible for the failure to prevent the attacks due to their "gutting" of the Central Intelligence Agency.