Techno-Thrillers discussion

Want to catch up on some classics I haven’t read. Saw the movie.
Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy

Any people game for a “buddy read”, reading and commenting on this book in the next 30 days? If so, reply and we’ll add it to the bookshelf.

Yeah, I'm probably up for this. Pretty sure I haven't read it either.

Jed wrote: "Yeah, I'm probably up for this. Pretty sure I haven't read it either."

Alright! I’m going to make it official.

Anyone/everyone is welcome to join the buddy read.

Wow, it doesn’t want to show more than 4 books in the currently reading area. Guess we’re really gettin’ after it in August. I already read all 4 August books and the September book (which was awesome), and an old Crichton book. I’ll put this as a future September book so it will at least show up somewhere on the home page. I’m just going to start early.

Started it today. Heh, I forgot how much detail Tom Clancy does in his stories, haven't read him in a while. Haven't really connected with this book yet, but it's early.

Tom Clancy takes a while to get going. The first book of his I read decades ago … I swear I got half-way through and it was all exposition. I couldn’t believe it. When does something interesting happen? How can you this be the favorite author of so many people? The second half was indeed worth it at the time, but I haven’t liked all of his books in the end. Not a fan of narrator Scott Brick. His narration of The Invisible Man was very difficult to endure.

Some of his books are relatively steeped in the technology and the tactical stuff. That’s him at his best. Clancy likes weapons the way Hugh Hefner likes women. At the right scale, that’s intriguing. When he goes down the rabbit hole for a spell on a pistol, … this sometimes backfires. If you or your character is actually a top-tier special ops soldier, who has and plausibly expects to continue to use their weapons in real combat regularly, that’s one thing. Anything short of that guy, … and that’s decidedly not an interesting conversation, … quite the opposite. Some of these books, he just waxes on and on and on about his wet dream of what he thinks is the most perfect kind of man who ought to the most highly possibly esteemed, … and that is really tedious to endure. Yet, that seems to be a big part of what makes him popular.

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth is the book that inspired Tom Clancy to write thrillers. Have to check that out.

Chapter 29 it seems Tom has switched from background to the story moving forward. My kids tell me I fell asleep with the audiobook going last week. Conveniently missed about 4 hours of slow background, and I’m unusually not going back. This one took too much time to get the ball rolling. The bomb making details seemed really excessive. Yes, it seems implausible and so I suppose he tries to overcome that by beating us to death with boring details.

Ha, not fair, Steve! I'm fighting my way through serious Clancy weeds!

Ha, ha! How you like me now?!

At chapter 49, maybe 92%.

It’s been a hot minute since the movie—22 years—and my memory is that it was different, with a lot less detail and moving parts than the book. Glad I read this, even though it took forever to setup a good multifaceted brink of war scenario. In the thick of it, it’s very interesting, and the details of various weapons and communications capabilities, not to mention the hierarchy of governments and militaries does sway the decision calculus in the moment. It feels as credible as any modern story gets. And in the end, even with all the technical detail in play, he makes it feel like the character/personality of the players is still critical, and who knows how such situations would go in the real world. Particularly in this book, the alarms fear is what could happen if a couple of questionable personalities were in the hot seat when the moment came. The staging is infuriatingly tedious, but this stage seems the unique domain of Clancy. He does some annoying aspects, but this is fun in the thick of it here.

If you’d have asked me 5 days ago, I would’ve said no way does this get more than 3 stars. No way. How can people rate it so high as they do? Like Cardinal of the Kremlin it just seems so ponderously slow and boring for such stretches, but … damnit if it doesn’t have it’s share of peak moments that stick in the memory for years to come. It is back on 4 star track.

Finished it. It made it to 4 stars for me, maybe a low 4, but it made it. Re-watched the movie, which got modified in many ways, partly because they switched from Harrison Ford to Ben Affleck. They dropped the ball not filming these films more faithfully closer to when they were published. They rewrote it to show Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan going from a nobody to advising the president in the scope of that movie, and it was a bit of a stretch. A young Ben Affleck does not convey the maturity of a guy with a PhD who is an expert on anything. The book is better, and even if you saw the movie, ... the book is different.

Jed, are you still chipping away at Clancy weeds?

I've stalled. For now switched focus to Artificial Wisdom. Hope to resume soon!