Author | Tom Clancy |
---|---|
Language | English |
Series | Jack Ryan |
Genre | |
Publisher | G.P. Putnam's Sons |
Publication date | August 14, 1991 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
Pages | 798 |
ISBN | 0399136150 |
Preceded by | Clear and Present Danger |
Followed by | Without Remorse |
The Sum of All Fears is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on August 14, 1991, as the sequel to Clear and Present Danger (1989). Main character Jack Ryan, who is now the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, tries to stop a crisis concerning the Middle East peace process wherein Palestinian and former East German terrorists conspire to bring the United States and Soviet Union into nuclear war. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. [1]
A film adaptation, which is a reboot of the Jack Ryan film series and starring Ben Affleck as the younger iteration of the CIA analyst, was released on May 31, 2002.
During the first day of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) prepares to conduct a tactical nuclear strike to stave off defeat. The necessity for the strike is averted, but an Israeli Mark 12 nuclear bomb is accidentally left on an A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft flown by Captain Mutti Zadin; which is subsequently shot down over Syria, near Kafr Shams. The nuclear weapon is lost, buried in the field of a Druze farmer. Eighteen years later, an Israeli police captain (coincidentally the brother of the downed pilot) converts to a fundamentalist sect of Hasidic Judaism after discovering his wife had an extramarital affair and attempts to instigate a violent demonstration of Palestinians at the Temple Mount. When the demonstrators unexpectedly conduct a peaceful protest, Zadin orders the police to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at the protesters anyway. Captain Zadin then kills the leader of the demonstration by shooting him point-blank. The United States finds it hard to diplomatically defend Israel, yet knows it cannot withdraw its support without risk of destabilizing the Middle East.
Following the advice of Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) Jack Ryan, National Security Advisor Dr. Charles Alden enacts a plan to accelerate the peace process by converting Jerusalem into a Vatican-like independent city-state to be administered by a tribunal of Jewish, Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox religious leaders, and secured by an independent contingent of the Swiss Guards. As a nod to Israel, the U.S. Army supplies the IDF with more sophisticated equipment and agrees to construct a training base in the Negev Desert run by the U.S. Army's tank warfare specialists and the revived 10th Cavalry Regiment. To everyone's surprise, Ryan's plan seems to work, in large part due to Ryan's meetings with officials in Israel and Saudi Arabia and the acquiescence of the reformist President Andrey Narmonov in the democratized Soviet Union. With their religious contentions appeased, the factions in the Middle East find it much easier to negotiate their disputes.
White House Foreign Affairs Advisor Elizabeth Elliot holds a grudge against Ryan and Alden and maneuvers against them. She first takes Alden's job as National Security Advisor by taking advantage of a sex scandal involving a child fathered by Alden out of wedlock, with the stress contributing to Alden's death in a severe stroke that causes a blowout fracture. She concurrently begins a sexual relationship with widowed President J. Robert Fowler and manipulates him to publicly omit Ryan's role in the peace settlement, taking credit for himself. After Ryan accuses her of wishing to silence an American opponent of the deal, Elliot engineers a smear campaign accusing Ryan of engaging in an extramarital affair and fathering a child with a young widow. Jack's friends, CIA operatives John Clark and Domingo Chavez, convince Ryan's wife Cathy that the allegations are false. Jack's alleged mistress is Carol Zimmer, widow of Buck Zimmer, who was killed during Ryan and Clark's earlier mission to rescue Chavez and his Army teammates from Colombia. Ryan later decides to retire from the CIA, but not before he puts together a covert operation to uncover corrupt dealings between Japanese and Mexican government officials.
Meanwhile, a small group of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorists, enraged at the looming failure of their jihad against Israel, come across the lost Israeli bomb and use it to construct their own weapon by using the bomb's plutonium pit as fissile material for a new bomb. The terrorists enlist the help of disaffected East German nuclear physicist Manfred Fromm who agrees to the plot, wishing to exact his own revenge against his former communist country's reunification as a capitalist democratic state. With Fromm's expertise, the terrorists enhance the weapon by turning it into a modern style boosted fission weapon. The terrorists' plan is to detonate the weapon at the Super Bowl in Denver while simultaneously staging a false flag attack on U.S. military forces in stationed in Berlin by East Germans disguised as Soviet soldiers. The terrorists are trying to begin a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The East Germans hope that the war will eliminate both superpowers and punish the Soviets for betraying World Socialism, while the Palestinians hope the attack will destroy the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and end U.S. aid to Israel.
Thinking that his work on the bomb is complete, the Palestinians kill Fromm. However, Fromm had not yet told them that the tritium for the booster still needed to be filtered before use, to eliminate accumulated helium-3. The Palestinians assemble the bomb for use, but when detonated, the impure booster material causes only a low yield fizzle to occur. Even with low yield, the bomb still destroys the Super Bowl venue, killing nearly everyone there including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the commander of NORAD. With the corresponding attacks in Berlin, the United States briefly assumes DEFCON-1 status as Fowler and Elliott prepare for a nuclear war. The crisis is averted by Ryan, who learns the domestic origin of the bomb's plutonium, gains access to the hotline, and convinces the Soviet President to stand down his country's military.
When the terrorists are captured and interrogated by Clark in Mexico City, they implicate the Iranian Ayatollah in the attack. President Fowler orders the Ayatollah's residence in the holy city of Qom to be destroyed by a nuclear strike. Ryan averts the attack by enforcing the two-man rule. The terrorists are delivered to the FBI field office in Buzzard Point, where Ryan questions them. During questioning, Ryan falsely asserts that Qom was destroyed, tricking Qati into revealing that Iran was not involved, and that their deceit was meant to discredit the United States; thus destroying the peace process and allowing the campaign against Israel to continue. Elliot is sedated after suffering a nervous breakdown, while Fowler resigns office and is succeeded by his Vice President, Roger Durling.
The terrorists are executed by beheading in Riyadh by the commander of the Saudi Arabian special forces using an ancient sword owned by the Saudi royal family. Later, the sword is presented to Ryan as a gift. In the sequels, the gift (combined with his origins as a Marine) inspires Ryan's Secret Service codename of "Swordsman."
Written under the working title The Field of Camlan, which was based on King Arthur's final battle, The Sum of All Fears explores nuclear fears that humans endured during the Cold War, with Clancy warning that complacency regarding such threats is dangerous. Published months after the first Gulf War, Clancy also envisioned a fictional “next great step” toward lasting peace in the Middle East. The book was said to be inspired by the 1977 thriller film Black Sunday , which depicts a blimp being used as a weapon to blow up a football stadium during the Super Bowl; the movie was referenced three times.
A major theme is the limits and uncertainties surrounding information collected by intelligence agencies and the need for policy makers to acknowledge such limits and uncertainties: "There is a difference between not knowing anything and understanding that you don't know."
The novel also explores the danger of "electing someone who covets power for all the wrong reasons and who is totally inept at managing it", according to Marc Cerasini's essay on the book. President Fowler and Elliot were compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton. [2]
The title is a reference to nuclear war and to the plot by the novel's antagonists to reconstruct a lost nuclear weapon. It comes from a Winston Churchill quote serving as the first of the novel's two epigraphs:
Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together—what do you get? The sum of their fears. [3]
The Vatican-like solution for Jerusalem, which was implemented in the book, is ultimately derived from the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which indeed provided for making Jerusalem such a "Corpus separatum" (Latin for "separated body"). The course which the 1948 Palestine war took prevented implementation of this plan. In later years, various peace plans and diplomatic initiatives sought to revive the idea, but in reality it has never come close to implementation. The plan is known for being popular outside the Middle East, but unpopular among the actual residents of Jerusalem, who would prefer that their "side" should rule entirely rather than submit to a neutral administration.
A database file with certain limited details about John Clark is included as background information within the first Rainbow Six game, and moreover, the same database entry is also found in many of the sequels. That entry mentions in passing that "the Denver, Colorado atomic detonation [occurred] in 1989". That information might not be canonical, since the book is set after both the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 1989) and the First Persian Gulf War (January–February 1991). If it is canonical, though, this means that the book is not set in the same year it was published. A second inference is that 1989 was likely the year in which President Fowler's administration ended.
Clancy started working on the novel in 1979, setting the first chapter during the Yom Kippur War. Then he abandoned his idea for other novels until he wrote The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), where Ryan first meets Russian premier Narmonov. After figuring out the resolution to The Sum of All Fears, Clancy then used his next novel Clear and Present Danger (1989) as a way to introduce future President Fowler. Speaking of the consistency, Clancy said: "The whole series really is a logical and connected network of plot lines which would continue to diverge and converge throughout the body of the work." [4] The novel was notable for detailing the process in making a bomb; however, certain technical details were altered, and Clancy made clear in the novel's afterword that a lot of information in his book can be found in the public domain. [5]
Whilst the Israelis used both the A-4 single-seat single-engine subsonic light attack jet and F-4 two-seat twin-engined all-weather supersonic fighter-bomber during the Yom Kippur War, use of the A-4's nuclear capability was never envisaged. Nuclear warheads were assembled at the Tel Nof Airbase, but for deployment on F-4 rather than A-4 as told in the novel. This was done on October 8 in such a way that the U.S. got to know of it by the next morning, prompting President Nixon to initiate the same day an immediate air-lifted re-supply to Israel of conventional arms, including tanks and planes to replace losses, in Operation Nickel Grass. Whether any of these nuclear bombs were actually carried during a sortie has never been documented.
At least one real-world buried nuclear warhead has actually been documented however, but American and in the U.S., rather than Israeli in Syria. The plutonium pit of a Mark 39 nuclear bomb warhead remains buried 33m deep in a North Carolina field, now fenced-off, following the fatal 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash. Many B-52 Stratofortresses crashed while carrying live nuclear warheads on training flights, mostly inside the U.S., between 1961 and 1968, but many have been recovered.
The book received positive reviews. Publishers Weekly praised the novel as "a nonstop roller-coaster ride to a nail-biting finish", adding: "Fundamentally, Clancy is writing about a vital and elusive quality: grace under pressure. Whether terrorists or statesmen, Clancy's characters face a common challenge—situations that break down pretensions of rank, power and ideology. Their responses, carefully and empathetically constructed, make this book compelling instead of merely ingenious." [6] Kirkus Reviews hailed it as "hair-raising" and "quite a rouser". [7]
The book was adapted as a feature film, which was released on May 31, 2002. Jack Ryan was played by Ben Affleck while John Clark was played by Liev Schreiber; additionally, CIA director Marcus Cabot, whose first name was changed into William, was played by Morgan Freeman. The film is a reboot that departs from all previous Ryan films, and as a result, there were significant changes from the book, such as the antagonists being neo-Nazis instead of Palestinian terrorists, Ryan becoming a low-level CIA analyst, and the time period changed to 2002. Clancy served as executive producer on the film, and regarding the changes from his book, jokingly introduced himself in the commentary track on the DVD release as "the author of the book that he [director Phil Alden Robinson, who is present with Clancy] ignored". Nevertheless, he complained about technical inaccuracies throughout the film in the commentary. [8]
The Sum of All Fears was a major financial success, grossing a total of $193 million in box office. [9] However, it received mixed reviews from critics; Rotten Tomatoes reported that 59% of critics gave the film positive reviews and that the average rating was 6/10 based on a total of 171 reviews counted. [10]
In turn, the film had its video game adaptation, which is a tactical first-person shooter game that is similar to the Rainbow Six series of games. It was developed by Red Storm Entertainment and released by Ubisoft in 2002.
The Hunt for Red October is the debut novel by American author Tom Clancy, first published on October 1, 1984, by the Naval Institute Press. It depicts Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius as he seemingly goes rogue with his country's cutting-edge ballistic missile submarine Red October, and marks the first appearance of Clancy's most popular fictional character, Jack Ryan, an analyst working for the Central Intelligence Agency, as he must prove his theory that Ramius is intending to defect to the United States.
The Cardinal of the Kremlin is an espionage thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on May 20, 1988. A direct sequel to The Hunt for Red October (1984), it features CIA analyst Jack Ryan as he extracts CARDINAL, the agency's highest placed agent in the Soviet government who is being pursued by the KGB, as well as the Soviet intelligence agency's director. The novel also features the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a real-life missile-defense system developed by the United States during that time, and its Russian counterpart. The book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
Debt of Honor is a techno-thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on August 17, 1994. A direct sequel to The Sum of All Fears (1991), Jack Ryan becomes the National Security Advisor when a secret cabal of Japanese industrialists seize control of their country's government and wage war on the United States. The book debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list. The novel was later noted as containing plot elements which were similar to the circumstances of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93.
John Patrick Ryan Sr. (Hon.), nicknamed Jack, is a fictional character created by author Tom Clancy and featured in his Ryanverse novels, which have consistently topped the New York Times bestseller list over 30 years. Since Clancy's death in 2013, five other authors, Mark Greaney, Grant Blackwood, Mike Maden, Marc Cameron and Don Bentley, have continued writing new novels for the franchise and its other connecting series with the approval of the Clancy family estate.
John T. Clark is a fictional character created by Tom Clancy. He has been featured in many of his Ryanverse novels. Although he first appeared in The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), his origin story was detailed in Without Remorse (1993).
Clear and Present Danger is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and published on August 17, 1989. A sequel to The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), main character Jack Ryan becomes acting Deputy Director of Intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency, and discovers that he is being kept in the dark by his colleagues who are conducting a covert war against a drug cartel based in Colombia. It debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation, featuring Harrison Ford reprising his role as Ryan, was released on August 3, 1994.
Executive Orders is a techno-thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and released on July 1, 1996. It picks up immediately where the final events of Debt of Honor (1994) left off, and features now-U.S. President Jack Ryan as he tries to deal with foreign and domestic threats. The book is dedicated to former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who helped launch Clancy's worldwide success as a novelist. The book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
The Apollo affair or NUMEC affair was a 1965 incident in which a US company, NUMEC, in the Pittsburgh suburbs of Apollo and Parks Township, Pennsylvania was investigated for losing 200–600 pounds (91–272 kg) of highly enriched uranium, with suspicions that it had gone to Israel's nuclear weapons program.
The Mark-12 nuclear bomb was a lightweight nuclear bomb designed and manufactured by the United States which was built starting in 1954 and which saw service from then until 1962.
The Sum of All Fears is a 2002 American spy thriller film directed by Phil Alden Robinson, based on Tom Clancy's 1991 novel of the same name. The film, which is set in the Jack Ryan film series, is a reboot taking place in 2002. Jack Ryan is portrayed as a younger character by Ben Affleck, in comparison with the previous films: The Hunt for Red October (1990) starring Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan and the sequels, Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), both starring Harrison Ford in the role.
World War III, sometimes abbreviated to WWIII, is a common theme in popular culture. Since the 1940s, countless books, films, and television programmes have used the theme of nuclear weapons and a third global war. The presence of the Soviet Union as an international rival armed with nuclear weapons created persistent fears in the United States and vice versa of a nuclear World War III, and popular culture at the time reflected those fears. The theme was also a way of exploring a range of issues beyond nuclear war in the arts. U.S. historian Spencer R. Weart called nuclear weapons a "symbol for the worst of modernity."
The Ryanverse is a term for the political thriller media franchise created by author Tom Clancy centering on the character of Jack Ryan and the fictional universe featuring Jack and other characters, such as John Clark and Domingo Chavez.
The State of Israel and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan have never had formal diplomatic relations. In 1947, Pakistan voted against the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, and does not recognize Israeli sovereignty. Despite the Pakistani position on the Arab–Israeli conflict, there have been multiple instances of close cooperation, such as during the Soviet–Afghan War and the Black September conflict. Pakistan supports the Palestinian Arabs and endorses the two-state solution. Pakistan says it will not normalize relations with Israel until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. Nevertheless, with Turkey serving as middleman, Israel and Pakistan have used their embassies and consulates-general in the cities of Ankara and Istanbul to communicate and exchange necessary information. In 2010, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, following up on reports received in Washington, had gone through Ankara to pass on information to Israel's Mossad about an upcoming terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, where a Jewish cultural centre was listed as a major target; this information first surfaced on WikiLeaks one year after the 2008 Mumbai attacks were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based terrorist organization.
A salted bomb is a nuclear weapon designed to function as a radiological weapon by producing larger quantities of radioactive fallout than unsalted nuclear arms. This fallout can render a large area uninhabitable. The term is derived both from the means of their manufacture, which involves the incorporation of additional elements to a standard atomic weapon, and from the expression "to salt the earth", meaning to render an area uninhabitable for generations. The idea originated with Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard, in February 1950. His intent was not to propose that such a weapon be built, but to show that nuclear weapon technology would soon reach the point where it could end human life on Earth.
Dead or Alive is a techno-thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and co-written with Grant Blackwood, and released on December 7, 2010. It is Clancy's first novel in seven years after The Teeth of the Tiger (2003), and follows the hunt by The Campus for "the Emir", a Middle Eastern terrorist based on Osama bin Laden. It unites several characters from the Ryanverse, including former president Jack Ryan, his son Jack Ryan Jr., his nephews Dominic and Brian Caruso, and Rainbow Six veterans John Clark and Domingo Chavez. The book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
Locked On is a techno-thriller novel written by Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney released on December 13, 2011. A direct sequel to Dead or Alive (2010), it is Clancy's first of three collaborations with Greaney and features Jack Ryan Jr. and The Campus as they try to avert a nuclear threat from a rogue Pakistani general, as well as his father Jack Sr. in his presidential campaign. The book debuted at number two on the New York Times bestseller list.
The Jack Ryan franchise consists of American action-thriller installments, based on the fictional titular character from a series of novels written by Tom Clancy. Various actors have portrayed the role.
Full Force and Effect is a political thriller, written by Mark Greaney and published on December 2, 2014. It is the fifteenth overall entry in the Jack Ryan series and the first such entry to be published after original author Tom Clancy’s death during the previous year, as well as Greaney's second solo contribution to the franchise.
The following is a complete list of books published by Tom Clancy, an American author of contemporary spy fiction and military fiction.