Tom Clancy Gone?

by Bill Doughty

More than 20 years ago Martin Greenberg edited “The Tom Clancy Companion."   Like many Americans I thought about the iconic Clancy this week after his obituaries were published: Tom Clancy, author of “The Hunt for Red October,” “Red Storm Rising,” “Patriot Games,” “Clear and Present Danger” and other now-classic techno-thrillers, dead at 66.

Tom Clancy loved the Navy, and the feeling was mutual.

With an introduction by his writing partner and family friend Larry Bond, this easy read is presented in four parts: an essay by Marc A. Cerasini on “The Birth of the Techno-Thriller,” an interview with the author by Greenberg, a series of essays by Clancy, and “A Tom Clancy Concordance,” an encyclopedic compilation by Roland J. Green.  The concordance includes an entry for USS Reuben James (DDG-57), central to “Red Storm Rising.”

The interview with Clancy shows the author’s strong feeling on the mission, capabilities and power of the Navy as well as the long-lasting international impact of democracy and freedom.

 “What will happen, what must happen, very simply is that democracy is going to spread itself across the world.  And the reason democracy is going to spread itself across the world is that it works.  Over the past 200 years, representative democracy and the free-enterprise system have proven to be extraordinarily effective at giving people the things they want -- justice and prosperity.”

Read Clancy’s interview and essays and learn, among other things, his views on Reagan, Ricin, Napoleon, Apple computers, stealth technology, Bush Sr., Iran and Iraq, science and technology, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Baltimore, God and science fiction writers, including Joe Haldeman, Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne.

Essays

“Dinosaurs” discusses the outdated, outmoded weapons systems from previous wars and calls for extending former President Reagan’s “Zero Option” for theater nuclear forces and “an international agreement to bring intercontinental-ballistic weapons down to as close to zero as we can,” in Clancy’s words.

Clancy's essay “Before Anyone Gets Carried Away” eviscerates Oliver Stone’s movie about JFK and gives a logical and forceful view about Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.  “But I Like to Shoot” gives the author’s views on responsible gun ownership and gun control, while “Funeral” celebrates the death of communism.  Revised in 2005, "Companion" expanded the concordance and retained the original essays.

“Getting Our Money’s Worth” showcases the British Royal Navy and prevention of war through strength, commitment and expertise.  It seems to presage CNO Adm. Greenert’s “Warfighting First” tenet:

“The military needs to restore the warrior ethic.  A warrior is someone who kills his fellow man for a living, and wants to be good at it.  Not all officers are or can be warriors, but only those who are deserve to command at any level.  The military must change its programs to identify them, to nurture them, to select only the best from their ranks, and then to give them the support and experience they need to fulfill their wartime missions at every level of command responsibility.  That will give us the force which will win in war; and recognition of it will go far toward preventing one.”

Several essays get to the heart of Clancy’s personal philosophy.  In “Investia-3. Principles,” he writes that, “A healthy society allows citizens of different beliefs to speak their mind.  In words that resonate today:

“As citizens of a free society you have a civic duty both to tolerate people whose beliefs are different from your own, and a moral duty to listen to them from time to time, because even a fool has something intelligent to say once in a while.”

“Back to the Frontier” calls for support to the nation’s space program, recalling Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s walk on the moon in 1969.

Harrison, Baldwin and Affleck as Jack Ryan.

“Who can forget that night?  Who can forget the pride of nationhood?  Who can forget the excitement and the wonder? ... Exploration is part and parcel of American history ... The Space Program is the future.  It really is that simple.”

There are hundreds of other works by and especially about Tom Clancy.  Legions of critics have weighed in on the prolific writer, but he is much more complicated than his novels or protagonist Jack Ryan.  Clancy said he wrote “The Hunt for Red October” to achieve a lifelong dream to be a novelist and to achieve immortality.  

Tom Clancy, R.I.P. 

Heinlein, Haldeman, ERB & Mars

by Bill Doughty

Robert A. Heinlein, whose Starship Troopers is a surprising fiction title on the mostly nonfiction Navy Professional Reading Program list, owes much to Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB).  But, unlike most of the fantasy and science fiction that preceded him, Heinlein’s literary fiction opened doors to a future history through human eyes, concentrating more on the heart and hands heading to Mars than on the tools those hands operated.

If former Lt. Cmdr. Heinlein represented the WWII and Korean War period SF of his generation, then Joe Haldeman is a Vietnam-era and Post-Vietnam counterpoint starting in the early-mid 70s, especially with his masterpiece The Forever War.  Both writers established powerful characters of both genders and moved away from earlier genre fantasy and SF that tended to objectify women or stereotype people of other backgrounds or cultures.

Sir Ridley Scott

Haldeman, praised by Heinlein and vice versa, served as a combat engineer in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Purple Heart.  His combat experience shapes his writing and gives credibility to his military SF.  The Forever War concepts show up in the films Avatar  and Aliens. It will be fascinating to see how Ridley Scott brings Haldeman to the big screen if/when it happens. Scott, who created Blade Runner, Alien and now Prometheus, has the rights to make The Forever War.

Haldeman’s skill in writing about war, space and time led Stephen King to endorse him: “If there was a Fort Knox for the science fiction writers who really matter, we’d have to lock Haldeman up there.”

Haldeman’s latest work is a trilogy beginning with 2008’s Marsbound, which shows a Heinlein-like commitment to characters and heart but with a warped look into what can happen after first contact with a “Martian” race and “Others.”  Interestingly, Haldeman writes in the first person as a female protagonist.

Marsbound gives a distinct nod to Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Barsoom series -- A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, John Carter of Mars, etc.  The spaceship that carries characters to and from Mars is named the John Carter.  The aliens are red, green and yellow, like the characters created by ERB, but unlike ERB’s swashbuckling swordplay, Haldeman employs psychology, sex and Sun-Tzu.

Mars, named after the Roman god of war, has long been a destination for science fiction writers.

Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian scientist, discovered what he thought were continents, seas and “channels” on Mars. American astronomer Percival Lowell hypothesized that the channels, interpreted as “canals,” showed signs of water and vegetation.  His views were part of a worldwide meme imagining life on Mars.

In the final years of the 19th Century, H.G. Wells captivated human imagination with the The Crystal Egg and War of the Worlds, where Martians who had depleted the resources on their planet came as predators to stake their claim on Earth.

Discoveries and conjecture about Mars inspired the young Edgar Rice Burroughs, who was educated at Michigan Military Academy and then served in the Army with the 7th U.S. Cavalry before devoting most of the rest of his life to writing.

Like Heinlein, ERB and Haldeman, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Lester del Rey, Philip José Farmer, Philip K. Dick and Frederik Pohl all had great works revolving around the red planet.

Heinlein created a mindbending look at Mars and spirituality with his Stranger in a Strange Land.  In The Number of the Beast Heinlein pays tribute to ERB with characters named Zebedia John Carter and Jacob Burroughs traveling to Barsoom and Oz.

As we’ve seen in earlier posts, ERB as a staple reading choice of Sailors who fought in World War II.  Pearl Harbor Survivors enjoyed SF, westerns and other adventure books.  Like the Greatest Generation service members who inspire Sailors today, Golden Age SF writers and imagineers like Haldeman inspire the writers and filmmakers of today.