Tom Clancy facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Tom Clancy
At Boston College's Burns Library in 1989
Born	Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. (1947-04-12)April 12, 1947 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Died	October 1, 2013(2013-10-01) (aged 66) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Occupation	Novelist
Alma mater	Loyola College (BA)
Period	1984–2013
Genre	Techno-thriller spy fiction crime fiction realistic fiction military history historical fiction
Spouses	Wanda Thomas King ​ ​ (m. 1969; div. 1999)​ Alexandra Marie Llewellyn ​ (m. 1999)​
Children	5

Thomas Leo Clancy Jr. (born April 12, 1947 – died October 1, 2013) was a famous American writer. He was best known for his exciting stories about spies and the military. Many of his books were set during or after the Cold War, a time of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Seventeen of Tom Clancy's novels became bestsellers. More than 100 million copies of his books have been sold around the world. His name was also used for movie scripts, non-fiction books about military topics, and popular video games. He even owned a part of his hometown baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles.

Tom Clancy started his career as an insurance agent. In 1984, he sold his first military thriller novel, The Hunt for Red October, for $5,000. It was published by a small company called Naval Institute Press. His books like The Hunt for Red October (1984), Patriot Games (1987), Clear and Present Danger (1989), and The Sum of All Fears (1991) were made into successful movies.

His stories also inspired many popular video games. These include the Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, The Division, and Splinter Cell series. After Clancy passed away in 2013, his family continued the Jack Ryan book series with other authors.

Early Life and Education

Tom Clancy was born on April 12, 1947, in Baltimore, Maryland. He grew up in the Northwood neighborhood of Baltimore. His family was Irish-American. He was the second of three children. His father, Thomas Clancy, worked for the United States Postal Service. His mother, Catherine Langan Clancy, worked in a store's credit department.

Clancy went to a private Catholic high school called Loyola High School. He graduated in 1965. Then, he went to Loyola College in Baltimore, graduating in 1969. He earned a degree in English literature. While in college, he was the president of the chess club. He wanted to join the Army, but he couldn't because he had nearsightedness and needed thick glasses.

After college, Clancy worked for an insurance company. In 1973, he joined a small insurance agency in Owings, Maryland. In 1980, he bought the agency. He wrote novels in his free time while working there. This is how he wrote his first novel, The Hunt for Red October.

Writing Career

Tom Clancy started writing The Hunt for Red October in 1982. In 1984, he sold it to the Naval Institute Press for $5,000. The publisher was very impressed with his story. An editor named Deborah Grosvenor said she knew it could be a bestseller. She thought Clancy was a natural storyteller and his characters had clever conversations.

Clancy hoped to sell 5,000 copies of his book. Instead, he sold over 45,000! After it was published, President Ronald Reagan praised the book, calling it "the best yarn." This helped sales jump to 300,000 hardcover copies and two million paperback copies. It became a national bestseller.

The book was also praised for being very accurate with its technical details. This led Clancy to meet many high-ranking U.S. military officers. His novels often feature heroes like Jack Ryan and John Clark. These characters are usually skilled, disciplined, and honest. They only get upset when bad politicians or bureaucrats get in their way.

His book Red Storm Rising (1986) was a big story about the Cold War. It was co-written with another military author, Larry Bond. This book sold almost a million copies in its first year. Tom Clancy became a very important author for his publisher, Putnam. He was known for writing a new book almost every year.

Financial Success

Many of Tom Clancy's books became huge hits. Seventeen of his novels reached the top of the New York Times best seller list. He also co-wrote books with top generals and created many guided tours of the U.S. military.

By 1988, Clancy had earned $1.3 million from The Hunt for Red October. He signed a $3 million contract for his next three books. In 1992, he sold the North American rights to Without Remorse for $14 million. This was a record amount for a single book at the time.

Later, in 1997, a publishing company paid Clancy $50 million for the rights to two new books. They also paid $25 million to his company, Red Storm Entertainment, for a four-year book and multimedia deal. He also made deals for book series like Tom Clancy's Net Force and Tom Clancy's Op-Center. These deals were worth tens of millions of dollars.

In 1993, Clancy joined a group of investors to buy the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. He also tried to buy the Minnesota Vikings football team in 1998, but he had to stop because of costs from his divorce.

The first NetForce novel (1999) was made into a TV movie in 1999. The first Op-Center novel (1995) was released with a TV miniseries in 1995.

Clancy wrote several non-fiction books about different parts of the U.S. Armed Forces. He also allowed his name to be used on many other books and video games. These were written by other authors but followed similar themes to Clancy's own works.

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

In 2008, a French video game company called Ubisoft bought the right to use Clancy's name. They use it for video games and related products like movies and books.

Political Views

Tom Clancy was a supporter of conservative and Republican ideas. He often dedicated his books to conservative political figures, like Ronald Reagan. After the September 11 attacks, Clancy suggested that some politicians were partly to blame for not preventing the attacks.

Many experts have studied the political ideas in Clancy's books. They often say his novels, especially The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, showed the popular ideas of the Reagan Era during the Cold War. His books helped spread certain views about the Soviet Union and American national security.

Personal Life

Tom Clancy's first wife was Wanda Thomas King, a nurse. They married in 1969 and had four children. They separated in 1996 and divorced in 1999. As part of the divorce, they split his ownership in the Baltimore Orioles baseball team.

On June 26, 1999, Clancy married Alexandra Marie Llewellyn, a journalist. They had met in 1997 through a family friend, Colin Powell. They stayed together until Clancy's death in 2013 and had one daughter.

Clancy was a Roman Catholic.

Property

Tom Clancy owned an 80-acre estate in Calvert County, Maryland. It had a beautiful view of the Chesapeake Bay. The large stone house had 24 rooms and a shooting range in the basement. The property also had a World War II-era M4 Sherman tank, which was a Christmas gift from his first wife.

He also bought a very large apartment in the Ritz-Carlton in Baltimore for $16 million. He combined four smaller apartments to create this huge home. His Chesapeake Bay estate was sold for $4.9 million in 2020.

Death

Tom Clancy passed away from heart failure on October 1, 2013. He died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. A co-author, John D. Gresham, said Clancy had heart problems for some time. He had a heart attack and bypass surgery years before, and his heart simply wore out.

Stephen Hunter, a film critic and author, said that when Clancy published The Hunt for Red October, he changed and expanded the spy thriller genre. This made it possible for many other authors to publish similar books.

On March 31, 2014, the Orioles baseball team honored Clancy with a video tribute. They also wore a special patch on their jerseys throughout the season.

Achievements and Awards

• Tom Clancy was one of only three authors in the 1990s to sell two million copies of a book on its first printing. The others were John Grisham and J. K. Rowling.
• His novel Clear and Present Danger (1989) sold over 1.6 million hardcover copies. This made it the #1 bestselling novel of the 1980s.
• Clancy received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement in 1988.
• He received an honorary doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1992. He often mentioned the school in his books.
• Clancy was an honorary Yeoman Warder of the Tower of London. He had been arrested for climbing its walls when he was younger!
• He received the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement from the Navy League of the United States in 1990.

Works

Film, TV, and Video Game Adaptations

Films

Short Films

• Ghost Recon: Alpha
• Ghost Recon Wildlands: War Within the Cartel

Television Series

Video Games

Further information: Tom Clancy's

Early video games based on The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising were released in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These included submarine combat games and action games.

More recently, Ubisoft has made many video game series based on Tom Clancy's books or endorsed by him.

Images for kids

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  A robot for kids.

See also

In Spanish: Tom Clancy para niños