If I may slightly hijack the thread, I’ve always had an odd opinion on writers like Clancey, King, Cussler, Ludlum, Rice and several others mentioned here.
It seems to me that when a writer first gets the urge to write it is because they have a story to tell or something to say. Then, after one or four or seven or whatever, they have told their stories. Suddenly, it isn’t “I have this story I want to write!”, instead it’s “Well, let me think up something to write this time…”. And it shows. Kind of like it isn’t fun writing anymore and has become just another boring job.
I’ll point out that Sterling and Stephenson have fairly different politics from Clancy, which would make them appeal to a different audience.
(Me? I gave up on Clancy after Patriot Games. Couldn’t even tell you what he has written since.)
I agree with the general sentiment here… Clancy started out writing some excellent, if detail-laden, thrillers. I think his best book was The Sum of All Fears.
Then he started getting too political, and too generally crappy. Teeth of the Tiger is one of the worst books I’ve ever read all the way through.
Actually, I’ve found that once an author has sloshed around in his own universe for a while, it can be an improvement to let someone else write in it. As a previous poster mentioned, sometimes the author just gets mired down in the details of his universe, or begins to think of it as “work” instead of “fun”. Take another reasonably skilled author, and he might be like “WOOHOO! New sandbox!” and come up with some good stuff.
And yeah, I’d like to second Larry Bond. Loved reading Red Phoenix, what I like to call a “sampler war novel”, since it has everything from massive naval air battles, canyon bombing runs, infantry ambushes, politicking, naval missile duels, sub battles, etc. Very good book.
Oh, and I liked most of the Op Center novels I’ve read. That said, I think I’ve read like, the first one, then the third through fifth ones. I also liked the first Netforce book, though I never got into the rest of the series.
I loved Patriot Games though, for the quite unprobable climatic boat chase (mostly for the people involved in the boat chase)
Given the difference in politics, the SDMB isn’t really the place to ask about Tom Clancy.
Personally, I think that TC’s good work stopped sometime partway through Executive Orders. Unlike many here, I didn’t mind the political preaching in EO - he used it well to build the characters - but I did mind that he didn’t really use their politics to further the plot other than a minor court case.
IIRC EO was written about the time he divorced his wife and the quality of his writing plummetted thereafter. R6 is plain bad, TBATD is mediocre, and I didn’t bother further.
I liked “Hunt for red October” and “Cardinal”, sorta liked “Red Storm Rising”, read “Sum of All Fears” and was entertained.
Then I grabbed “Executive Orders” out of a bargain bin before an 18-hour ferry trip. I want my 18 hours back. Who thought it was a good idea to publish an 800 page essay on “What I’d do if I was President” ? Clancy had one or two good stories in him, but Jack Ryan is not that interesting a character. So when the story turns to “Ryan gets to rule the world and everything turns peachy” - meh.
There was a guy named Ralph Peters a few years back who wrote two war-techno thrillers, “Red Army” and “The War in 2020” that were just sensational. War and technology by a guy who could actually WRITE.
He continued writing novels, apparently, but sort of dropped off the radar screen, and I have heard his later stuff wasn’t as good. But if you can find a copy of “Red Army” or “The War in 2020,” get them. Just terrific little page-turners.
Maybe, maybe not . . . Sterling wrote Zenith Angle from a POV generally sympathetic to the GWAT. (An agent of a rival agency accuses the protagonist, Dr. Derek Vandeveer, of being a left-wing pacifist, and Vanderveer retorts, “Leftist? Me? I just had lunch with Paul Wolfowitz!”) The difference is that Sterling is able to think about the issues much more intelligently than Clancy can. E.g., at one point Vanderveer has a revelation that he, personally, will never get a chance to “fight al-Qaeda”; he’s a computer security expert, and al-Qaeda is a band of angry, ignorant, culture-shocked peasants. “Osama bin Laden does not surf the Net.”
As for Stephenson . . . it’s not clear that he has a political message of any kind.
I don’t agree. I’ll admit I’d only read two of his books that I can recall: Snowcrash and Zodiac. The impression I got wasn’t that he was pro-free-trade, just that he believed it was coming will-he or nill-he. In some respects he seemed pretty down on the consequences of it, actually.
