Back in the 1990s, I voraciously read Tom Clancy’s political thrillers. I enjoyed Clancy’s technical details on military activities and espionage. I also read similar authors such as Dale Brown and and Stephen Coontz. However, after reading Rainbow Six in which the enemy was a group of “radical environmentalists” I realized that Clancy’s strong political views were obstructing his ability to write an entertaining and realistic story. His later books had other problems including poor characterization, wildly meandering plots, and very lengthy books. Executive Orders which I read in 2002 was over 1,100 pages long and the last 100 pages felt rushed as if Clancy suddenly realized he needed to wrap up this monstrosity. The last fiction book by Tom Clancy I read was The Bear and the Dragon which was just terribly written. It has been about four years since I have read any of Clancy’s non-fiction work.

Today I read a blog that really states why writers should leave their politics out of their fiction. Tom Clancy is his main example, but he also includes Orson Scott Card (whom I have never read) and Michael Crichton (I’ve only read Jurassic Park back in 1993). Check out the link:

There are some authors who, quite frankly, should leave their politics at the door. It seems to me that when an author of popular fiction whose work I tended to enjoy starts injecting their politics in their writing, it usually also happens to be the case that their writing has fallen below a certain level of quality that makes them no longer readable in any case.

Now, don’t get me wrong–I am not necessarily suggesting a cause-and-effect relationship. I just happen to notice the two things tend to happen at about the same time. It certainly happened to Tom Clancy. I greatly enjoyed his early books, including The Hunt for Red October, The Cardinal and the Kremlin, The Sum of All Fears, and Without Remorse (which I am re-reading right now). Guy books, certainly, but that describes all of Clancy’s books.