Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: sysmgr@dover.eng.umd.edu (System Manager)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Tom Clancy
Message-ID: <12153@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 9 Dec 89 00:41:28 GMT
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From: sysmgr@dover.eng.umd.edu (System Manager)
In article <12095@cbnews.ATT.COM>, willner@cfa203.harvard.edu (Steve Willner) writes...
: 
: 
: 
: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.)

"The Third World War" Gen. Sir John Hackett, I believe. 

Having rapping with Clancy on GEnie and sat in on two Roundtables
on said service with him, I think your summation is pretty correct; 
things *do* work too well
in his books (Maybe why the Government likes 'em?) and he tends to be
a little 2-D in his characterizations. 

You want good FICTION, try "The Day Before Midnight" by Steven Hunter.
Or is it Steven Maynes? Hum. 

					Doug