Semi OT Tom Clancy, Best-Selling Novelist of Military Thrillers, Dies at 66

[kato13]

Sad Day

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/bo...-66.html?_r=1&

[Cdnwolf]

Great Loss... his novel Red Storm Rising is still one that I take on long trips with me.

[Raellus]

When I read Red Storm Rising for the first time in around '88, it meshed almost perfectly with my 14-year-old, T2K-inspired worldview. I must have read it 3-4 times as a teenager and again three or four years ago. I still enjoy the heck out of it. I like some of his other '80s work as well, but over the last two decades it seemed like he was basically just calling it in. His last few full-length novels were co-written, which seemed odd because he seemed to do pretty well on his own, and a lot of recent stuff published as "Tom Clancy's" so-and-so weren't written by him at all. I found it kind of sad.

But, '80s Clancy was pretty awesome and I'm sorry to see anyone pass away that young.

[Adm.Lee]

I stopped reading his stuff a while ago, but I am still saddened by this loss.

I remember really looking forward to his works in the '90s, eagerly reading the books to see where characters we'd met before would turn up, and counting the various plot threads and wondering how he was going to connect them all.

Once Ryan became President, I started to lose interest, and once he was out of office, I eventually quit.

I honor his creativity-- while some say he repeated cliches in every book, many bits of his plots were quite original.

[Rainbow Six]

A sad day indeed...it's probably fairly obvious that I'm a fan, although more so of his earlier works...I think the last novel I read all the way through was the Bear and the Dragon...I tried one of the new Jack Ryan books last year but couldn't really get into it and never got into the stuff he co wrote with others...

[Matt Wiser]

RIP, Mr. Clancy. You invented a whole genre, and writers like Dale Brown, Harold Coyle, Richard Herman, and Larry Bond (one of your co-authors), owe you a debt of gratitude. Fair winds and following seas, Sir.

[Rabar]

I was just 11 years old when I read my first Tom Clancy book, Rainbow Six. Incredibly sad news.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Matt Wiser

RIP, Mr. Clancy. You invented a whole genre, and writers like Dale Brown, Harold Coyle, Richard Herman, and Larry Bond (one of your co-authors), owe you a debt of gratitude. Fair winds and following seas, Sir.

Team Yankee was published maybe a year and a half after Hunt for Red October. I don't think Harold Coyle owes Tom Clancy any debt at all. They were starting their writing careers pretty much as contemporaries.