Tom Clancy had incredible insight...

And this isn't the only "prediction" he wrote in his many books, and even video games... he had a part in...

Incredible...

Clancy certainly was a gifted writer and a visionary of future military trends.

And he died much too young.

...if only Clancy had actually written this book.

It was written by Mark Greaney. If this was a TV show, Clancy would've received "consulting producer" or "original characters created by" credit.

Not to say it's a bad book, it's actually better than Clancy's own later stuff like Teeth of the Tiger, it's just not Clancy.




The Jedi Master

Like his prediction of Japan (with cooperation from China) going to war with the United States- and the Jack Ryan character becomes the leader of the free world when the US government had been wiped out by the Japanese with a suicide plane crashing into Washington D.C.

I never found his insights particularly compelling, often very non-specific details but the overall stories could be either hit or miss on the realism scale, some just completely in the realm of alternate reality fantasy. Many other things aren't so much predictions as they are gleaning from world events and writing a story from them. The conceit of Russian nationalism embittered by the NWO led by old school politicians trying to reshape lost republics and CIS states and fold them back into a 'new' USSR isn't unique to Clancy at all.

The airliner crashing into Washington DC wiping out Congress for example is similar to the 9/11 attacks, but he apparently gets lucky on that one, his novel assumes state actors rather than a terrorist plot by Islamists.

Manipulations of snakes. Offensive and arrogant. The create problems and then conveniently come up with the answer. They want control.

There's a line in The Hunt for Red October where Sam Neil's character wants to get a recreational vehicle and drive state to state. "No papers" he asks? "No papers" responds the captain. There are those who are actively trying to change that within our own country. Blurring borders, robbing sovereignty and taking control.

No, the Islamists nuke the Super Bowl. And infiltrate the Secret Service to try and kill the President.

The 747 was an OKC-type act by one man, well planned, using the access his job granted him to use the plane as a weapon. It wasn't "state actors".

In Clancy's books, the worst thing a "state" ever does is try to nuke the US (Bear and the Dragon) but fail. The worst success was the attempted assassination of John Paul II (although he lives).



The Jedi Master

When you write prolifically, and you write about so many scenarios, perhaps some of them are bound to look like real world events, eventually, but like Nostradums, people will tend to fall towards confirmation bias, they will provide the missing links to connect them to the real world when it appears to work- when it doesn't, those misses are forgotten or not noticed.

I don't know if he even was trying to predict anything (but maybe on occasion taking credit for some ideas like the airplane attack on Washington), but generally, these stories are really hard for me to reconcile with the real world- except for the covert operations, in which cases you would never hear about these to compare anyway.

Indeed he was an amazing writer and intersting human being. Really a pity he is now gone.

I can't really comment on his writing abilities, but he was never an insider, his information comes from non-classified sources that anyone can collect, nothing that anyone who reads Jane's couldn't get or if they didn't have a contact in the military advising them or after they achieved notoriety.

In other words, I don't really get what people think was valuable about his knowledge and contributions, unless just cutting down on their research time by getting their information from one second hand source rather than many others.

It's not to say he didn't have interesting or good ideas to write about, but the stuff I did read wasn't that exciting or kind of self defeating to leave the story open for more.

For example, Red Storm Rising again was another probably implausible strategic story setting up WWIII, and in the end, the Soviets don't use what they would have used- tactical nuclear weapons at the very least, either at the outset in order to open up lines in NATO first echelon units, headquarters units and perhaps even around some industrial targets, or shortly after if the Soviets fall behind timetables.

His novels also I think tend to fall on the particular, individual human efforts to overcome the tide of events, a lone agent either working on principle or because of some family tragedy who might become disillusioned. That sort of thing tends to be a bit on the dramatic side, but I think kind of easy gimmicks to get out of the potentially devastating results the author sets up.

I kinda lost interest in Clancy after RSR and HfRO. Supposedly the Cardinal of the Kremlin is good, but couldn't bear buying it when I read a few others and was just disappointed in the books.

He was a good author in the genre he was in but the last few books which were co-written (ghost written?) weren't as good as his past efforts. I tend to lose interest after Executive Decisions, but the last few books aren't terrible just written for a younger generation with a quicker pace. I agree though that he sometimes hit the head on current events but I think it was just dumb luck most of the time.

The "passportization" is not something new from Russia, they've done it South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria for years.

CotK was IMO the book that should've been made into a film back in the early 90s when the Cold War was still fresh. It had SDI/missile defense, Islamist militants, and great KGB stuff. Ryan also was a "realistic" hero in that he has no gun play, no "action", yet is involved intricately.



The Jedi Master