Mother Jones
Tom Clancy, the American author famous for such thrillers as The Hunt for Red October and Clear and Present Danger, died Tuesday night at the age of 66. The Baltimore-born writer passed away at the Johns Hopkins Hospital following a “brief illness.”
Starting in the mid-1980s, Clancy built a one-man empire of books, film, and video games. His name has become synonymous with the spy and Cold War-era thriller genre of American popular fiction, earning him a net worth of around $300 million. His books were widely read, the movies adapted from his novels were often big hits, and his fame and ubiquity were enough for The Simpsons to feature him on the show twice (he even got to voice himself one time).
In a way, Clancy owed his great success to the United States Naval Institute. Years before The Hunt for Red October became a critically acclaimed, high-grossing film starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin, it was just another manuscript in search of a publisher. This was Clancy’s first novel, which he wrote in his 30s while working as an insurance salesman. After several rejections from mainstream publishing houses, the Naval Institute Press picked it up and paid Clancy a $5,000 advance in 1984. It was the first fictional work that the Institute had published, and it attracted the praise of President Ronald Reagan (one of Clancy’s political heroes), who called it, “my kind of yarn.” The success of this first novel propelled Clancy into the the stardom he enjoyed until his final days.
Politically, he was a hardened conservative. His earlier work was steeped in cold warrior mentality. For instance, here’s a map of international alliances in his 1986 World War III novel Red Storm Rising:
ClarkK1/Wikimedia Commons
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How The US Naval Institute Gave the Late Tom Clancy His First Big Break
