The Hunt for Red October
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Image:Hunt for Red October.jpg The Hunt for Red October is Tom Clancy's first novel, published in 1984. The story follows the intertwined adventures of Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius, and a CIA analyst named Jack Ryan.
The novel is sometimes referred to as the first real example of the techno-thriller, a hybrid between the spy thriller and science fiction in which attention to technical and operational detail about military and intelligence activities is paramount.
The Hunt for Red October was inspired by a real incident. On November 8, 1975, the Soviet Navy frigate Storozhevoy mutinied, which at the time the West believed was an attempt to defect from Latvia to the Swedish island of Gotland. The mutiny was led by the ship's political officer, Captain Valery Sablin. The mutiny was unsuccessful; Sablin was captured, court-martialed and executed. The novel was originally published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press—the first work of fiction they ever published, and still the most successful. Many of the characters in the novel appear throughout Clancy's subsequent works, particularly Ryan, who is the central character of many of Clancy's novels.
The novel was made into a commercially successful movie in 1990, starring Sean Connery as Ramius and Alec Baldwin as Ryan, and featuring James Earl Jones, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, Richard Jordan, Joss Ackland, Peter Firth, Jeffrey Jones, Fred Dalton Thompson, Courtney B. Vance, Tim Curry, and Stellan Skarsgård. See The Hunt for Red October (film).
The novel also served as the basis for a computer game, as well as a board game.
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Plot synopsis
Ramius, a Lithuanian by birth, who has risen to high levels of trust in the Soviet Navy, intends to defect to the United States with his officers and the experimental nuclear submarine Red October. The Red October is equipped with a revolutionary stealth propulsion system (in the movie, a magnetohydrodynamic drive called a caterpillar drive), making it extremely difficult to detect with regular methods. Ramius' defection is spurred by several factors, including the death of his wife, a long-standing disatisfaction with the communist system and the callousness of the Soviet establishment towards its sailors. Later, it is revealed that Ramius' intentions resulted from the incompetence of the doctor who had operated on Ramius' wife. Because the doctor was the son of a Politburo member, he was beyond reproach, which ultimately ended Ramius' tolerance towards the Soviet System's failings and its corruption that began to appear and grow after the death of Lenin.
In the beginning of the novel, Ramius kills Political Officer Ivan Putin to ensure he will not get in the way of the defection. In a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin, Ramius states that he is going to sail into New York harbor. Because of this, the entire Soviet Navy is sent to sink her, except their missile submarines which are recalled to port. This places the Soviet Navy, under the cover story of a search and rescue mission, well within 400 km of the American coast.
Ryan, an expert on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, deduces Ramius' plans. The US high command meanwhile come up with contingency plans in case the Soviet Fleet has other desires. As tensions rise between the US and Soviet fleets, and the crew of a U.S. attack submarine stumble on the secret to detecting the Red October, Ryan must contact the Red October's rebellious captain to prevent the loss of a decisive technological advantage. Through a combination of circumstances, Ryan becomes responsible for seeing the sub, and Ramius, to safety from the pursuing Soviet naval fleet. After a clever diversionary tactic, the Americans find a way to have the Red October safely reach their naval base in Norfolk, Virginia. Template:Endspoiler
Trivia
- President Ronald Reagan helped to fuel the success of The Hunt for Red October and Tom Clancy's writing career when he announced that he enjoyed the book at a televised press conference, calling it "unputdown-able". [1]
- Some of the technical details were prescient. For example, the Ada programming language is used to implement a computational fluid dynamics model on a Cray-2 supercomputer. Cray Ada Version 1.0 actually became available in 1988. [2]
- In the movie, the "revolutionary" magnetohydrodynamic drive that acts as the main driver of the plot was fictional. However, both superpowers actually did experiment with MHD propulsion, though neither could get it to work well enough for use on board of a ship. In the book, Red October uses a tunnel drive that operates like a jet engine.
See also
- Crazy Ivan
- Strozhevoi mutiny
- The Hunt for Red October (video game)
- The Hunt for Red October (film)
- USS Ethan Allen (SSBN-608)
External links
| Books by Tom Clancy
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fr:À la poursuite d'Octobre Rouge ja:レッド・オクトーバーを追え! lb:The Hunt for Red October sv:Jakten på Röd oktober