The Hunt for Red October
Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision...the Red October is heading west.The Americans want her.The Russians want her back.And the most incredible chase in history is on...The Hunt for Red October is the runaway bestseller that launched Tom Clancy's phenomenal career. A military thriller so accurate and convincing that the author was rumored to have been debriefed by the White House. Its theme: the greatest espionage coup in history. Its story: the chase for a runaway top secret Russian missile sub. Its title: The Hunt for Red October.
Stats for nerds
20recommend
79mentions
75people
2010–2026years
27% recommend71% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- >>YouTube removed the 1-5 scale for the same reason, people have no idea what to do with it.
As always, I'm in a minority - I have a VERY clear idea what to do with it :-).
(1/2 - never ever show me crap like this again. 3 - decent mainstream stuff. 4 - This meets my interests, is good, and I'd like more of it please. 5 - this is endorphin analog candy for me. Scott Pilgrim, Hunt for Red October, Neuromancer, Dune grade content :)
- A good Sunday afternoon pairs The Hunt for Red October and Down Periscope
- Early Tom Clancy, before he monetized his name, was pretty amazing. The Hunt for Red October was published by the Naval Institute Press. [0]
It was also the first adult book I read. Probably around 6 or 7? Before Jurassic Park, which I read before that movie came out.
I'd asked my father if "There were books about other things, because kids books were boring."
He handed me Tom Clancy off his bookshelf.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Naval_Institut...
- Using an accent without also speaking the right language seems needless.
I do like that Hunt for Red October has the Russians all speak Russian until one of them says a crucial word that's the same in English, and from there it's all English. "Armageddon". This submarine is capable of ICBM launch, starting World War III, and in the resulting ashes English or Russian would not matter.
- I know some tech people who are capable of absorbing difficult material, but who never read for pleasure (and that means especially fiction). I think dyslexia may play a part in it.
If reading is really a chore for you, try looking for movies with more literate scripts. Many good writers have written for film, and in most genres.
If reading itself is not the problem and you are just easily bored, don't try to start with "serious" literature, but look for anything that grabs your attention. Not all of these are to my taste, but they have been broadly popular: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), The Da Vinci Code (2003), The Big Sleep (1939), The Color out of Space (1927) (short), The Hunt for Red October (1984), Hondo (1953), Get Shorty (1990).
- Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising.
I think most people usually don't consider Tom Clancy to be a science fiction writer, but these two books (his best two by far, FWIW) both feature speculative technology central to the story. Red October features a magneto-hydrodynamic drive for a submarine; MHD drives work for real in the small scale but without great superconductors it doesn't scale well to work for a full scale military submarine. In Red Storm Rising there are F-19 stealth jets based off rumors of the F-117. They get a few things wrong (smooth continuous curves instead of flat facets, poor stealth from below, armed with anti-aircraft missiles, etc) but on the whole they were reasonably grounded speculation.
If you're not convinced, here is a longer argument for Red October (the film) being hard science fiction: https://qntm.org/october
