Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 1, 1993 TAG: 9301300190
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA SKOWRON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PRINCE FREDERICK, MD. LENGTH: Long
CLANCY: THE KING OF TECHNO-FICTION
SOLDIERS, SAILORS AND SPIES are Tom Clancy's heroes, and they've made him a fortune. This mailman's kid from Baltimore, who first found fame with "The Hunt for For Red October," keeps on turning out best sellers and cutting movie deals. Now he hopes to score a professional football franchise.It seems appropriate that author Tom Clancy has a Sherman tank decorating his yard, instead of plastic flamingos or birdbaths.
The guns on the World War II relic don't work, and it creaks along like an old man, but the tank looks impressive silhouetted against Chesapeake Bay, which laps at the eastern edge of Clancy's 300-acre estate.
The tank, a gift from Clancy's wife, Wanda, is a testament of sorts to the author's wild financial success and to some of the characters who fill his books - soldiers, sailors, Marines, and FBI and CIA agents. They are Clancy's heroes, to him the glue that holds society together.
"Millions of people have died in wars of the United States to defend those rights that we use every day," he says.
Tom Clancy, the mailman's kid from Baltimore whose only ambition was to get his name on the cover of a book, has had the success that inspires daydreams.
His six novels have made the New York Times best-seller list, and the trade journal Publishers Weekly named one of his books the best selling hard-cover novel of the 1980s just a year after it had been published. He has reportedly received a $13 million to $14 million advance for his next book, "Without Remorse," to be published next August.
Two of his hugely successful books - "The Hunt for Red October" (1984) and "Patriot Games" (1987) - have been adapted into movies and a third, "Clear and Present Danger" (1990), is in the works.
His other novels are "Red Storm Rising" (1986), "The Cardinal of the Kremlin" (1988) and "The Sum of All Fears" (1991).
And, oh yes, he wants to buy a football team.
"There are a lot of good writers out there," Clancy says. "I sell more than most of them, not because I am necessarily better, but because I'm a little bit luckier and have become fashionable."
Fashion has changed since Clancy wrote his first yarn about a Cold War struggle between the Soviet and U.S. navies over a defecting Soviet submarine. The Iron Curtain has fallen, the American military is shrinking, and Republican presidents, with whom Clancy had rubbed elbows, are out of the White House.
"As long as I turn out a quality product, I expect people will be buying my books," he says. He points out that Colombian drug dealers, Mideastern terrorists and Irish extremists have also been among his villains, so he won't suffer from a lack of subjects.
Clancy, 45, a tall man with thick, tinted glasses, looks the very image of the insurance salesman he was after he graduated in 1969 from Loyola College in Baltimore with a degree in English. But while writing policies for life, auto and fire insurance, he also scribbled down ideas for a novel.
"I just wanted to be in the Library of Congress catalog," he says. "That's only as far ahead as I ever thought," he said.
Clancy's novels have been called techno-thrillers - a brew of action, suspense and high-tech gadgetry blended into a white-knuckle crescendo in which the good guys win and the bad guys loose.
His books are so detailed, so spiced with techno-tidbits that one wonders if he wasn't once a fly on the wall at the National Security Agency.
Even Clancy's most vociferous critics agree that he has a talent for putting his readers inside a secret world.
"As fiction, the characters are wooden, the writing is terrible, the morals are appalling," says George Grella, a critic and associate professor of English and film studies at the University of Rochester.
"I think [his books'] sense of appeal lies in their inside knowledge of highly technical information, immense detail of a specific sort."
Clancy was a physics major in his freshman year in college, but switched to English in his second. "I wasn't smart enough."
But he says his education gave him some background in the sciences.
"I went to a Jesuit school and received a liberal arts education, which relies on an education in the sciences. I'm a product of my educational environment."
He says he does research and also talks to people knowledgeable about weapons systems.
"I'll find out what books are appropriate and buy them and create my own library. In that way I don't have to return them. Or I'll go into the field and play with the toys myself. I've driven and fired tanks. I've been at sea with the Navy and I've had my hands on flight simulators.
"As a practical matter, there are no secrets in this technology. If you have the right kind of education, you can find it all out."
As for his own military career, Clancy enrolled in Army ROTC in college but failed to pass the physical because he's nearsighted.
In 1979, Clancy began "Patriot Games," in which he invented his hero, CIA agent Jack Ryan. In 1982, he put it aside and started "The Hunt For Red October," basing it on a real incident in November 1979, in which a Soviet missile frigate called the Storozhevoy attempted to defect.
"It didn't quite make it," Clancy says. "The guy who led it was duly executed after a fair trial."
In Clancy's book, the defector is a Soviet submarine commander. Aided by Ryan, he does make it, as does his ship, following a taunt chase by the Soviet and U.S. navies.
Clancy sold his manuscript to the first publisher he tried, the Naval Institute Press, which had never bought original fiction.
By a stroke of luck, President Reagan got `Red October' as a Christmas gift and happened to quip at a dinner that he was losing sleep because he couldn't put the book down.
"It put me on the New York Times best-seller list," Clancy says.
Clancy, his wife, Wanda, and their four children live in a sweeping eight-bedroom house that overlooks the bay, complete with library, office, indoor swimming pool and indoor pistol range.
"Wanda wanted a swimming pool, and I wanted a pistol range, so we compromised," he says.
Wanda Clancy was elusive when asked about the tank, but Charles Lemons, the curator of the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor at Fort Knox, Ky., estimated the cost of a M4A1 Sherman tank at $30,000 to $50,000, depending on the version of the tank and the condition.
Clancy, a member of the National Rifle Association, is an avid marksman, but he says his interest in weapons didn't spawn his novels or vice versa. "They're two separate activities." he says.
Clancy's current passion is football. He's trying to bring a professional team back to Baltimore, which is still smarting over the defection of the beloved Colts to Indianapolis. His partner is Baltimore native James Robinson, producer of the movies "The Last of the Mohicans" and "Robin Hood." Together they have drawn Hall of Fame quarterback John Unitas into their fold.
Clancy reportedly was unhappy over Paramount's handling of "Patriot Games," claiming that only one of his book's scenes remained out of 200 in the film. He later recanted, saying he was pleased with how the intelligence process and the CIA reconnaissance systems were portrayed.
He is serving as an adviser to Paramount, which is developing a screenplay for "Clear and Present Danger," a novel about a literal war on drugs fought in Colombia. He had no role in the movie versions of "Hunt for Red October" and "Patriot Games."
In addition to his next book, Clancy is involved in developing a television series and a movie project about his relationship with a young fan who died of cancer.