Thomas Leo Clancy, Jr. (April 12, 1947 - October 1, 2013) was an American novelist and video game designer best known for his technically detailed espionage and military science story lines set during and after the Cold War. Seventeen of his novels were bestsellers, and more than 100 million copies of his books are in print. His name was also used on movie scripts written by ghost writers, nonfiction books on military subjects, and video games. He was a part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles and vice chairman of their community activities and public affairs committees.

Clancy's literary career began in 1984 when he sold The Hunt for Red October for $5,000. His works, The Hunt for Red October (1984), Patriot Games (1987), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and The Sum of All Fears (1991), have been turned into commercially successful films. Actors Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine have played Clancy's most famous fictional character, Jack Ryan; his second-most famous character, John Clark, has been played by actors Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber. Clancy died on October 1, 2013, of an undisclosed illness.

Early life

Thomas Leo Clancy was born on April 12, 1947, at Franklin Square Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up in the Northwood neighborhood. He was the second of three children to Thomas Clancy, who worked for the United States Postal Service, and Catherine Clancy, who worked in a store's credit department. His mother worked to send him to the private Catholic Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Maryland, from which he graduated in 1965. He then attended Loyola College (now Loyola University) in Baltimore, graduating in 1969 with a degree in English literature. While at university, he was president of the chess club. He joined the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps; however, he was ineligible to serve due to his nearsightedness, which required him to wear thick eyeglasses. After graduating, he worked for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1973, he joined the O. F. Bowen Agency, a small insurance agency based in Owings, Maryland, founded by his wife's grandfather. In 1980, he purchased the insurance agency from his wife's grandmother and wrote novels in his spare time. While working at the insurance agency, he wrote his debut novel, The Hunt for Red October (1984).

Literary career

Clancy's literary career began in 1982 when he started writing The Hunt for Red October, which in 1984 he sold for publishing to the Naval Institute Press for $5,000. The publisher was impressed with the work; Deborah Grosvenor, the Naval Institute Press editor who read through the book, said later that she convinced the publisher: "I think we have a potential best seller here, and if we don’t grab this thing, somebody else would." She believed Clancy had an "innate storytelling ability, and his characters had this very witty dialogue". The publisher requested Clancy to cut numerous technical details, amounting to about 100 pages. Clancy, who had wanted to sell 5,000 copies, ended up selling over 45,000. After publication, the book received praise from President Ronald Reagan, who called the work "the best yarn", subsequently boosting sales to 300,000 hardcover and 2 million paperback copies of the book, making it a national bestseller. The book was critically praised for its technical accuracy, which led to Clancy's meeting several high-ranking officers in the U.S. military.

Clancy's fiction works, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games (1987), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and The Sum of All Fears (1991), have been turned into commercially successful films with actors Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck as Clancy's most famous fictional character Jack Ryan, while his second most famous character, John Clark, has been played by actors Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber. All but two of Clancy's solely written novels feature Jack Ryan or John Clark.

The Cold War epic Red Storm Rising (1986) was co-written (according to Clancy himself in the book's foreword) with fellow military-oriented author Larry Bond.

The first NetForce novel, titled Net Force (1999), was adapted as a 1999 TV movie starring Scott Bakula and Joanna Going. The first Op-Center novel (Tom Clancy's Op-Center published in 1995) was released to coincide with a 1995 NBC television miniseries of the same name starring Harry Hamlin and a cast of stars. Though the miniseries did not continue, the book series did, but later had little in common with the first TV miniseries other than the title and the names of the main characters.

With the release of The Teeth of the Tiger (2003), Clancy introduced Jack Ryan's son and two nephews as main characters; these characters continued in his last four novels, Dead or Alive (2010), Locked On (2011), Threat Vector (2012), and Command Authority (2013).

Clancy wrote several nonfiction books about various branches of the U.S. Armed Forces (see nonfiction listing, below). He also branded several lines of books and video games 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; he only thanked the actual authors in the headnotes for their "invaluable contribution to the manuscript".

By 1988, Clancy had earned $1.3 million for The Hunt for Red October and had signed a $3 million contract for his next three books. By 1997, Penguin Putnam Inc. (part of Pearson Education) reportedly would pay Clancy $50 million for world rights to two new books and another $25 million to Red Storm Entertainment for a four-year book/multimedia deal. Clancy followed this up with an agreement with Penguin's 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 $22 million, bringing the total value of the package to $97 million.

In 1993, 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 a divorce settlement cost.

In 2008, the French video game manufacturer Ubisoft purchased the use of Clancy's name for an undisclosed sum. It has been used in conjunction with video games and related products such as movies and books. Based on his interest in private spaceflight and his US$1 million investment in the launch vehicle company Rotary Rocket, Clancy was interviewed in 2007 for the documentary film Orphans of Apollo (2008).

Political views

A longtime holder of conservative and Republican views, Clancy dedicated books to American conservative political figures, most notably Ronald Reagan. A week after the September 11, 2001, attacks, on The O'Reilly Factor, Clancy suggested that left-wing politicians in the United States were partly responsible for September 11 due to their "gutting" of the Central Intelligence Agency.

On September 11, 2001, Clancy was interviewed by Judy Woodruff on CNN. During the interview, he asserted "Islam does not permit suicide." 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 and criticized the news media's treatment of the United States Intelligence Community. Clancy appeared again on PBS's Charlie Rose, to discuss the implications of the day's events with Richard Holbrooke, New York Times journalist Judith Miller, and Senator John Edwards, among others. Clancy was interviewed on these shows because his book Debt of Honor (1994) included a scenario wherein a disgruntled Japanese airline pilot crashes a fueled Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol dome during an address by the President to a joint session of Congress, killing the President and most of Congress. This plot device bore strong similarities to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In later years, Clancy associated himself with General Anthony Zinni, a critic of the George W. Bush administration; Clancy was also critical of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Personal life

His first wife Wanda Thomas King, a nursing student who became an eye surgeon, and he married in 1969, separated briefly in 1995, and became permanently separated in December 1996. Clancy filed for divorce in November 1997, which became final in January 1999.

On June 26, 1999, Clancy married freelance journalist Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, whom he had met in 1997. Llewellyn is the daughter of J. Bruce Llewellyn and a family friend of Colin Powell, who originally introduced the couple to each other. They remained together until Clancy's death in October 2013.

Property

Clancy's 80-acre (32 ha) estate, which was once a summer camp, is located in Calvert County, Maryland. It has a panoramic view of the Chesapeake Bay. The stone mansion, which cost US$2 million, has 24 rooms and features a shooting range in the basement. The property also features a World War II-era M4 Sherman tank, a Christmas gift from his first wife.

Clancy also purchased a 17,000-square-foot (1,600 m2) penthouse condominium in the Ritz-Carlton, in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, for US$16 million. Clancy and his wife combined four units to create the apartment.

Death

Clancy died on October 1, 2013, of an undisclosed illness at Johns Hopkins Hospital, near his Baltimore home. Clancy is survived by his wife, Alexandra; their daughter, Alexis; and four children from his marriage to Wanda King: Michelle Bandy, Christine Blocksidge, Kathleen Clancy, and Thomas Clancy III. The Chicago Tribune quoted Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stephen Hunter as saying, "When he published The Hunt for Red October, he redefined and expanded the genre and as a consequence of that, many people were able to publish such books who had previously been unable to do so."

John D. Gresham, a co-author and researcher with Clancy on several books, attributed Clancy's death to heart problems: "Five or six years ago Tom suffered a heart attack and he went through bypass surgery. It wasn’t that he had another heart attack, just wore out."

Bibliography

Main article: Tom Clancy bibliography

Board games

• The Hunt for Red October (1988)

  Naval wargame published by TSR, Inc., based on the novel of the same name. It covered modern naval warfare between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

• Red Storm Rising (1989)

  Ground warfare wargame 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.

• Tom Clancy's Politika (1997)

Tom Clancy's Video Games

Achievements and awards

• Clancy was one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing in the 1990s (the others were John Grisham and J. K. Rowling). Clancy's novel Clear and Present Danger (1989) sold 1,625,544 hardcover copies, making it the #1 bestselling novel of the 1980s.
• Clancy received an honorary doctorate in humane letters and delivered the commencement address at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1992, and has since worked a reference to the school into many of his main works.
• Clancy was an honorary Yeoman Warder of the Tower of London, and received the title "Supernumerary Yeoman" after being arrested for scaling its walls.

• Clancy received the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement from the Navy League of the United States in 1990.

Quotes

Delivering the commencement address to the 1986 graduating class of Loyola University, Clancy offered this passage of encouragement:

"Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Your life may change, but your dream doesn’t have to. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Your spouse and children need not get in its way, because the dream is within you. No one can take your dream away."

Clancy finished his speech with:

"In getting this far, you have fulfilled your parents’ dreams. Now you can start working on your own."

“The odds against becoming the next Frederick Forsythe are, of course, somewhere between merely exponential and astronomical-incredible. I’ll settle for a book-jacket with my name on it.” — From personal correspondence, 1983, a year before his first novel was published

In popular culture

Radio

• The BBC Radio 4 sitcom Deep 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.

Sports

• On March 31, 2014, the Baltimore Orioles honored Tom Clancy and other members of the Orioles family who died since the previous season's opening day with a video tribute during the Orioles Opening Day festivities at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The team wore a name patch on the right jersey sleeve for Clancy throughout the 2014 season.

Television

• On 9/11/2001, Clancy was interviewed by Judy Woodruff on CNN since the plot of one of his novels resembled the attack on the WTC, but after Clancy's remarks disparaged the U.S. press, the press lost interest in interviewing him.
• In the BBC sitcom My Family, the character Ben Harper often reads Clancy's novels in bed.
• Clancy appeared in the The Simpsons episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", wearing a cap saying "USS Iowa (BB-61)" and was tricked into giving Marge Simpson a quote for her upcoming book.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]