Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy Jr. (born 12 April, 1947) is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage and military science storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War and his video games. His name is also a brand for similar movie scripts written by ghost writers and many series of non-fiction books on military subjects and merged biographies of key leaders. He is also part-owner and Vice Chairman of Community Activities and Public Affairs of the Baltimore Orioles, a Major League Baseball team.
Thomas Leo Clancy, Jr. was born in Annapolis, Maryland, United States. He attended Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Maryland, graduating with the class of 1965. He studied English Literature at Loyola College in Baltimore, graduating in 1969. Though he wanted to serve in the United States military, he was rejected after failing a required eye exam in the ROTC. Before making his literary debut, he spent some time running an independent insurance agency. This agency thrived for a few years before joining a group of investors.
In 1993, Tom Clancy joined a group of investors that included Peter Angelos and bought the Baltimore Orioles from Eli Jacobs. In 1998, he reached an agreement to purchase the Minnesota Vikings, but had to abandon the deal because of the divorce settlement cost.
On June 26, 1999, Clancy married freelance journalist Alexandra Marie Llewellyn. Llewellyn is the first cousin of Colin Powell, who originally introduced the couple to each other.
In 2008, the use of Clancy's name was purchased by French video game manufacturer Ubisoft for an undisclosed sum. It will be used in conjunction with video games and related products such as movies, and books.
Political views
Clancy has generally been regarded as a political conservative, and has donated over US$256,000 to Republican Party political candidates.
A week after the 9/11 attack, on The O'Reilly Factor, Clancy stated that left-wing politicians in the United States were partly responsible for September 11 due to their gutting of the CIA. Clancy has also associated himself with General Anthony Zinni, a critic of the George W. Bush administration, and has been critical of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Some of his books bear dedications to Republican political figures, most notably Ronald Reagan. In his novels, countries portrayed as hostile to the U.S. include the former Soviet Union, Syria, China, Iran, India, and Japan while Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom are shown as close allies of the USA.
Clancy was an early defender of Islam during the aftermath of September 11 attacks. On CNN, Clancy argued that Islam does not condone suicide attacks.
On September 11, 2001, Clancy was interviewed by Judy Woodruff on CNN. Among other observations during this interview, Clancy cited discussions he had with military experts on the lack of planning to handle a hijacked plane being used in a suicide attack, criticized the news media's treatment of the U.S. intelligence community. Clancy appeared again on PBS's Charlie Rose, where he debated Vice-Presidential candidate Senator John Edwards.
The website IMDB reports that Tom Clancy's novel Without Remorse is to be made into a movie and is expected to be released in 2011.
With the release of The Teeth of the Tiger, Clancy introduced Jack Ryan's son and two nephews as main characters.
Clancy has written several nonfiction books about various branches of the U.S. armed forces (see non-fiction listing, below). Clancy has also branded several lines of books with his name that are written by other authors, following premises or storylines generally in keeping with Clancy's works:
These are sometimes referred to by fans as "apostrophe" books; Clancy did not initially acknowledge that these series were being authored by others, only thanking the actual authors in the headnotes for their "invaluable contribution to the manuscript".
In 1997, Clancy signed a book deal with Penguin Putnam Inc. (both part of Pearson Education), that paid him US$50 million for the world-English rights to two new books. He then signed a second agreement for another US$25 million for a four-year book/multimedia deal. Clancy followed this up with an agreement with Berkley Books for 24 paperbacks to tie in with the ABC television miniseries Tom Clancy's Net Force 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 US $22 million bringing the total value of the package to US$97 million.
All but two of Clancy's novels feature Jack Ryan or John Clark.
Clancy's first published novel. CIA analyst Jack Ryan assists in the defection of a respected Soviet naval captain, along with the most advanced ballistic missile submarine of the Soviet fleet. The movie (1990) stars Alec Baldwin as Ryan and Sean Connery as Captain Ramius. Captain Mancuso is introduced here. Nearly every book after has Mancuso in ever increasing command of U.S. submarine forces.
War between NATO and USSR. The basis of the combat game of the same name, this book is not a member of the Ryan story series (although the protagonist of the story has many similarities with Jack Ryan). He co-wrote it with Larry Bond.
The first book that Clancy wrote, Patriot Games predates The Hunt for Red October in chronological order. Jack Ryan foils an attack in London on the Prince and Princess of Wales by the "Ulster Liberation Army". The ULA then attacks Ryan's Maryland home while he is hosting the Prince and Princess for dinner. The movie stars Harrison Ford as Ryan and Samuel L. Jackson as Robby Jackson.
First appearance of John Clark and Sergey Golovko. Ryan leads a CIA operation which forces the head of the KGB to defect. Other elements include anti-satellite lasers and other SDI-type weapons, and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Major Alan Gregory is introduced here. (He appears later, updating SAM software in The Bear and the Dragon). Colonel Bondarenko also is introduced here. (He appears in later books offering advice to Golovko in "Executive Orders" and commanding the Russian Army defenses against China in its sequel "The Bear and the Dragon")
The President authorizes the CIA to use American military forces in a covert war against cocaine producers in Colombia. The operation is betrayed. Ryan meets John Clark as they lead a mission to rescue abandoned soldiers. Domingo "Ding" Chavez (Clark's protege in later novels) is one of the rescued soldiers. The movie (1994) stars Harrison Ford as Ryan, Willem Dafoe as Clark and Raymond Cruz as Chavez.
Arab terrorists find a nuclear weapon that had been lost by Israel, and use it to attack the United States. This nearly triggers a war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, due to the incompetence of the new President and his mistress with an anti-Ryan agenda. Ryan intervenes to avert the war. The 2002 movie stars Ben Affleck as Ryan, Liev Schreiber as Clark, and changes the identity and motivation of the terrorists to neo-Nazis.
The sixth book published in the Jack Ryan series gives the earliest events in Ryan's life. Without Remorse takes place during the Vietnam War, when Jack Ryan was a teenager. Ex-SEAL John Clark (then John Kelly) fights a bloody one-man war against drug dealers in Baltimore, attracting the attention of Jack's father Emmett, a Baltimore police detective. He also helps plan and execute a raid on a prisoner-of-war camp in North Vietnam. Clark joins the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
A secret cabal of extreme nationalists gains control of Japan (having acquired some nuclear weapons), and start a war with the U.S. Ryan, now National Security Advisor, and Clark and Chavez, agents in Japan, help win the war. The Vice President resigns in a scandal, and the President appoints Ryan to replace him. A vengeful, die-hard Japanese airline pilot then crashes a jetliner into the U.S. Capitol during a joint session of Congress attended by most senior U.S. government leaders, including the President. Ryan thus becomes the new President through succession.
This is the immediate sequel to Debt of Honor. President Ryan survives press hazing, an assassination attempt, and a biological warfare attack on the USA. Clark and Chavez trace the virus to a Middle Eastern madman, and the U.S. military goes to work.
Follows the missions of USS Cheyenne in a future war with China precipitated by China's invasion of the disputed Spratly Islands. Also not a Ryanverse book, SSN is actually a loosely connected collection of "scenario" chapters in support of the eponymouscomputer game.
Released to coincide with the computer game of the same name. John Clark and Ding, who is now Clark's son-in-law, lead an elite multi-national anti-terrorist unit that combats a worldwide genocide attempt by eco-terrorists. (Jack Ryan is the U.S. President and only mentioned or referred to as either 'The President' or 'Jack'.)
War between Russia and China. Ryan recognizes the independence of Taiwan, a Chinese police officer kills a diplomat, and the American armed forces help Russia defeat a Chinese invasion of Siberia.
Jack Ryan's son, Jack Ryan Jr., becomes an intelligence analyst, and then a field consultant, for The Campus, an off-the-books intelligence agency with the freedom to discreetly assassinate individuals "who threaten national security", following the end of the Jack Ryan Sr. presidential administration. This is the latest book of the Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy, introducing Ryan's son and two nephews as heirs to his spook-legacy.
There are "continuity errors" in the series. Some are clearly due to the non sequential order in which the books are written, for example there is no reference to the events in "Red Rabbit" in books which cover later events, in particular a reference to his lack of field experience and in meeting defectors in "The Hunt for Red October", when Jack Ryan had by that time been in the field and met a defector in "Red Rabbit". Some however are not: in "Clear and Present Danger" Jack Ryan claimed he had not flown in a helicopter since his accident in Crete, i.e., before "Patriot Games", but in "The Hunt for Red October", which falls between the events, at the end of the book he takes a helicopter flight to Washington.
The Tom Clancy Companion - Edited by Martin H. Greenberg — Writings by Clancy along with a concordance of all his fiction novels, detailing characters and military units or equipment.
Video games
In 1996, Clancy co-founded the computer game developerRed Storm Entertainment and ever since he has had his name on several of Red Storm's most successful games. Red Storm was later bought by publisher Ubisoft Entertainment, which continues to use the Clancy name. This game series includes:
Red Storm Rising: A submarine sim game loosely based on the novel of the same name. Produced in 1988 by MicroProse for IBM PC Compatible, C64, and Amiga.
Splinter Cell Series: Third person stealth games, lately spawned a line of books written by a series of different authors, all writing under the pseudonymDavid Michaels.
Many of the games bearing the Clancy name have been very successful, spawning several sequels and expansions. It is unknown how much input Clancy has into the games.
World news media is a fictional news network that had been featured in many Tom Clancy's video games.
Ground warfarewargame published by TSR, Inc., based on the novel of the same name. It covered an attack on NATO forces in western Europe by the Warsaw Pact. It included rules for integration with The Hunt for Red October game of the year before. The publisher reused the system for Europe Aflame (1989), a strategic World War II game, and A Line in the Sand, a strategic game about the First Gulf War.
Clancy is one of only two authors to have sold two million copies on a first printing in the 1990s. (John Grisham is the other author.) Clancy's 1989 novel Clear and Present Danger sold 1,625,544 hardcover copies, making it the #1 bestselling novel of the 1980s.
Clancy is an honorary Yeoman Warder of The Tower of London holding the title "Supernumerary Yeoman". On the television show Ace of Cakes his wife commissioned, for his 60th birthday, a special cake in the shape of the Tower of London in acknowledgment of his status. In the episode, Tom Clancy referred to the Beefeaters as, "Just a terrific bunch of guys".
The BBC Radio 4sitcomDeep Trouble, set on a nuclear submarine, features a humorous version of Clancy as a recurring character. He is portrayed by Ben Willbond, co-writer of the series.
^ His Who's Who entry gives his date of birth as 12 March, 1947.
References
^"alt.books.tom-clancy post by Tom Clancy". Groups.google.co.nz. http://groups.google.co.nz/group/alt.books.tom-clancy/browse_thread/thread/f5401cb62aa93da8/f54319f05c6ef4a7?lnk=gst&q=%22Tom%27s+Life%3F%3F%22&rnum=1#f54319f05c6ef4a7. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
^ "Alexandra Llewellyn, Tom Clancy," The New York Times, June 27, 1999.
^Mitchell, Richard (2008-03-25). "Clancy name bought by Ubisoft, worth big bucks". Xbox360fanboy.com. http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/03/25/clancy-name-bought-by-ubisoft-worth-big-bucks/. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
^ Tom Clancy - Political Donations at newsmeat.com
^ Paperback Writer, The New Republic, May 25, 2004
^23 oktober 2007. "Tom Clancy on Sept 11 2001 & WTC 7 Collapse". Youtube.com. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGaljPXBbfA&feature=related. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
^"An hour about the 9/11 attacks". Charlierose.com. 2001-09-11. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/2955. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
^"Washington Post". Washington Post. 1997-06-01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/25thann/bestsellers.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
^"Rensselaer Magazine: Summer 2004: At Rensselaer". Rpi.edu. http://www.rpi.edu/dept/NewsComm/Magazine/summer04/atrensselaer/atrensselaer10.html. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
^Wolf, Ian. "Deep Trouble — Production Details, Plus Regular Cast and Crew". British Comedy Guide. http://www.comedy.org.uk/guide/radio/deep_trouble/details/. Retrieved October 4, 2009.
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Transcript of interview with Deborah Norville on the War in Iraq - April 2004