Happy Birthday, Tom Clancy

NORFOLK, VA – JUNE 1988: Author Tom Clancy tours the Yorktown, a U.S. battle cruiser off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. Here is the Yorktown’s Combat Information Center, Clancy does research for his many military theme based novels. (Photo by Joe McNally/Getty Images)

My first introduction to Tom Clancy and his world of espionage and military techno-thrillers was The Hunt for the Red October. Dad handed it to me sometime in my early teens, and I remember seeing the movie with him shortly after it came out.

I’ll never forget it. it. I remember Sean Connery’s character, Russian submarine captain Marko Ramius telling Alec Baldwin’s CIA analyst character Jack Ryan that “most things in this room don’t react well to bullets” (those things were nuclear missiles, and I somehow doubt that a nuclear missile is so volatile that a bullet could detonate it alone). I remember Ramius’ second in command dying in his arms, his dream of defecting to America and having a rabbit farm in Montana draining away as he bled out from bullet wounds, and his last words that he “would like to have seen Montana.” I remember the thrill as the submarines hunted each other, guided by nothing more than a few men in thick headphones, listening for any sound of enemy submarines in the water around them.

It was awesome. I’ll never forget reading The Hunt for Red October, nor the sequels, as well as the memorable movies. More recently Amazon has remade the character with John Krasinski, and they’re fun. Still, they’re not the character that Tom Clancy created–a more cerebral analyst thrust into the world of military conflict, working off his depth of knowledge and instincts to keep the world safe. Amazon’s rendition is more of a Jason Bourne-lite spy, much more on the ground than Alec Baldwin’s character. It’s fun, but not the same thing.

Today is Tom Clancy’s birthday. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland (1947) and was the author of many military thrillers, including The Hunt for Red October (1984), Patriot Games (1987), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and The Sum of All Fears (1991). According to Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, his research was so meticulous, and his books so accurate in the tiniest detail, that they were very popular among members of the armed forces. He was invited to lecture at the Pentagon several times, and he often sat in on weapons briefings. But Clancy — although he had been a naval history buff since he was a kid — never served in the military. He did join the ROTC in college, but his eyesight was terrible, and he was rejected from the service.

“I tell [aspiring writers] you learn to write the same way you learn to play golf,” he once said. “You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired — it’s hard work.”