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Author Topic: RIP: Tom Clancy  (Read 6993 times)
01101010
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You call it an accident. I call it justice.


on: October 02, 2013, 08:46:34 AM


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rattran
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Unreasonable


Reply #1 on: October 02, 2013, 09:11:30 AM

He was a terrible writer.
Numtini
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Reply #2 on: October 02, 2013, 09:20:14 AM

He was a worse human being.

If you can read this, you're on a board populated by misogynist assholes.
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Reply #3 on: October 02, 2013, 09:24:00 AM

I enjoyed his earlier stuff.

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Teleku
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Reply #4 on: October 02, 2013, 09:26:53 AM

Yeah, I have a feeling this is going to get political, but I will say I really enjoyed a lot of his earlier cold war stuff.  The man provided a lot to pop culture.

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Ingmar
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Reply #5 on: October 02, 2013, 11:21:13 AM

The only especially nice thing I have to say is I really enjoyed the Red Storm Rising computer game way back when.

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Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #6 on: October 02, 2013, 11:29:51 AM

C'mon people the dude wrote Jurassic Park, show some respect.

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WayAbvPar
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Reply #7 on: October 02, 2013, 11:31:34 AM

The only especially nice thing I have to say is I really enjoyed the Red Storm Rising computer game way back when.

 Heart

It was really a great game. Wish someone would make something with the same flavor. The Silent Hunter series is ok, but overly complicated for very little payback (imo).

I enjoyed Clancy's early stuff, more for the cool technical stuff than the hamfisted politics and one dimensional characters. Also, Without Remorse was fun in a Charles Bronson Death Wish sort of way.

C'mon people the dude wrote Jurassic Park, show some respect.
Don't know if serious... ACK!

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Paelos
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Reply #8 on: October 02, 2013, 11:34:12 AM

He was prolific as a writer, so for that I respected what he did.

Also Hunt for Red October is a great book.

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Korachia
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Reply #9 on: October 02, 2013, 03:47:24 PM

C'mon people the dude wrote Jurassic Park, show some respect.

That was the late Circhton who wrote that one.
Signe
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Reply #10 on: October 02, 2013, 04:50:15 PM

I've never read any of his books but I played a couple games and I really like Jeff Goldblum a LOT! 

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bhodi
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No lie.


Reply #11 on: October 02, 2013, 06:13:21 PM

That was the late Circhton who wrote that one.

Whoosh.

Sorry to hear about him.
Tannhauser
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Reply #12 on: October 02, 2013, 06:20:17 PM

He used to be my favorite writer.  His first seven books were good, but I bailed out after Red Rabbit (I think it's called).  Not to mention his politics.

R.I.P.
Surlyboi
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eat a bag of dicks


Reply #13 on: October 02, 2013, 06:36:52 PM

I liked Splinter Cell, so I can't totally hate the guy but his politics were pretty shitty.

Still, he will be missed.

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something.  We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail
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Reply #14 on: October 02, 2013, 08:13:07 PM

I'm glad he's dead, nothing he could have suffered comes close to what I believe he deserved. He would have been tolerable had he not said that if the highest paying job you've ever had only paid $120,000 you were a loser who had done nothing with your life. Fucking fuck him.

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Venkman
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Reply #15 on: October 04, 2013, 10:56:46 AM

He used to be my favorite writer.  His first seven books were good, but I bailed out after Red Rabbit (I think it's called).  Not to mention his politics.

R.I.P.

Not exactly Red Rabbit, but it looks like maybe a Jack Ryan (Jr) story.
Rendakor
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Reply #16 on: October 04, 2013, 01:32:52 PM

C'mon people the dude wrote Jurassic Park, show some respect.

That was the late Circhton who wrote that one.
Wow, didn't know he died...5 years ago. Damn.

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Furiously
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Reply #17 on: October 04, 2013, 02:19:08 PM

His first books were great. But yea, once it became "Tom Clancey's" brand I stopped.

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Reply #18 on: October 04, 2013, 06:59:49 PM

I enjoyed a lot of his books in the early ninties. I was a teen back then. Tried rereading them, or to read any of his stuff past 9/11 and I just could not stomach it.

So it turns out he was not a very nice person. So I am indifferent to his death.

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VainEldritch
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Reply #19 on: October 16, 2013, 07:40:23 AM

I had the misfortune of spending two nights trapped in a god-awful motorway hotel by snow (I was the only "guest"...). In a dresser draw was the usual Bible and (oddly) a ragged copy of Clear and Present Danger. It was hard to decide which was worse: both had improbabe plots with poorly realised unsympathetic characters and the main protagonists were preachy and impossible to relate to, exhibiting unlikely and flagrantly gittish behavior. In the end, both were shite.

I left that motel in the wake of snow plough, none the wiser.

 Ohhhhh, I see.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2013, 03:23:08 PM by VainEldritch »

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ghost
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Reply #20 on: October 16, 2013, 07:51:18 AM

I don't like the subject matter of Clancy's books.  I think I read Hunt for Red October. 

He was certainly no Hemingway, but then again he wasn't Kevin J. Anderson, either. 
Venkman
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Reply #21 on: October 16, 2013, 12:40:08 PM

I had the misfortune of spending two nights trapped in a god-awful motorway hotel by snow (I was the only "guest"...). In a dresser draw was the usual Bible and (oddly) a ragged copy of Clear and Present Danger. It was hard to decide which was worse: both had improbably plots with poorly realised unsympathetic characters and the main protagonists were preachy and impossible to relate to, exhibiting unlikely and flagrantly gittish behavior. In the end, both were shite.
Eh, try rewatching Commando or the first Total Recall and taking either seriously too smiley

But putting even that aside: the books were popular (iirc) in a time before Google and Wikipedia. Unearthing the "deep dark secrets" of government operations was still a marketing hook. That's how he got started (Red Storm Rising, pre-Jack Ryan series). His books weren't about the plausbility of the plots, but instead a purportedly-fact-based depiction of how the U.S. military would respond, both in its decision making process and the technology it would use.

I don't care about how he was as a person any more than I dislike Lethal Weapon because Mel Gibson's a dick or Mission Impossible 2 because Tom Cruise's a tool. I never quite understood why just because the media wants us to know everything about a talent's life we should care at all beyond the specific skill they offer to us. It's like complaining about the plumber's crack while the guy is re-piping your house.
MahrinSkel
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Reply #22 on: October 16, 2013, 01:46:04 PM

I'm not sure when it was, but at some point it seemed that he wasn't writing any of 'his' novels anymore, either he was handing an outline to an uncredited ghostwriter or he was phoning it in, at any rate it read more like a pastiche in his style than the solid potboiler war-porn he had built the brand on.

I never expected much from his stuff, but it crossed the line from thriller to badly plotted alternate history and I just lost interest.

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Reply #23 on: October 16, 2013, 02:28:21 PM

Only one of his books that I actually read was the Hunt for Red October, which was mostly ok, except when his characters started preaching about how wonderful America was to the Russians which made me vomit as a conservative 19 year old. It spawned a great movie, and the rest of the Jack Ryan movies were alright in a forgettable kind of way.

Know nothing about the guy as a person. May he rest in peace.

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Reply #24 on: October 16, 2013, 03:39:44 PM

Of the three, I only read Hunt, so can't comment on how the other 2 books where.  But I think The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger are all great\fun films that make an awesome trilogy together.  They still hold up very well, imo.  So he has my thanks for that, at the very least.

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Father mike
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Reply #25 on: October 16, 2013, 09:38:13 PM

He partnered with Larry Bond for his first few books.  Those books are the more technical, wargamey ones.  Once he stopped working with Bond, they became more and more "If I ran the world ..." screeds.

I would like to thank Vladimir Putin for ensuring that every member of the NPR news staff has had to say "Pussy Riot" on the air multiple times.
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