Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: willner@cfa203.harvard.edu (Steve Willner) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Tom Clancy Message-ID: <12095@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 8 Dec 89 04:13:41 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Lines: 32 Approved: military@att.att.com From: willner@cfa203.harvard.edu (Steve Willner) Fans of Tom Clancy should read the article by Scott Shuger in the November issue of the _Washington Monthly_. Mr. Shuger's main point is that Clancy writes about how weapons are _supposed_ to work and how they are _intended_ to be used, but that these bear very little relation to the reality of actual combat. Mr. Shuger makes another assertion that is frightening indeed, if true. He says that high government officials make policy on the basis of Clancy's novels. While I am skeptical on this point, I have to admit that the article makes a good case for it. Having just finished _Red Storm Rising_ (1986), I'll append a capsule review. The novel's strength is the number of interesting and surprising strategems it contains, but I considered the plot badly flawed by a major hole. There were other, minor errors in the plot logic and in the technology of infrared imaging, though as far as I could tell most of the other technology was accurate. (But infrared imaging is something I get paid to do; my knowledge of the other technologies is limited.) The characters were stereotypical. And Mr. Shuger's criticism is valid; weapons - especially US weapons - almost always work as intended, and intelligence (on the US side, anyway) is far too accurate to be convincing. I guess what I'm saying is that I had a lot of trouble "suspending my disbelief." If you want to see this sort of thing done right, read _The Third World War_; it's by a retired general and is much more convincing. (My copy has somehow disappeared, so I can't give author's name or publisher, and there is some chance the title is slightly wrong. It was published in the early 1980's, I think.)