The Hunt for Red October & Military Fiction

The influence of Tom Clancy's first book, and the enduring importance of military fiction.

As many of my readers will know, I am a big fan of using military fiction to explore important themes in national security, war and military affairs. My first attempt at this, White Sun War, was published in 2023 and I am currently working on a sequel. In this article, I explore the importance of Tom Clancy’s first book, The Hunt for Red October, and the enduring influence of military fiction.

The novel The Hunt for Red October debuted in the United States on 1 October 1984. Published by a small publisher, the US Naval Institute Press, the book went on to become hugely successful in the United States and beyond. Ronald Reagan publicly praised the book and even invited its author, former insurance salesman Tom Clancy, to visit the White House. ‘They’re not just novels’, explained George H.W. Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle. ‘They’re read as the real thing.’

Clancy’s novels made him the most successful fiction writer of the 1980s, and his first three – The Hunt for Red October, Red Storm Rising, and The Cardinal of the Kremlin – were hugely popular representations of the drama of the Cold War in the Reagan era. The Hunt for Red October follows a rogue Soviet submarine captain who attempts to defect to the United States with a state-of-the-art nuclear submarine, igniting a tense standoff between American and Soviet forces, and the CIA analyst tasked with facilitating his defection.

The novel raised the standard for military thrillers in a decade of new-age military technology such as the futuristic ‘Star Wars’ missile defence system, which, to the Soviets, appeared as if it could upend the delicate strategic balance of the Cold War. As a contemporary New York Times review of the book noted: ‘It’s not heroes and villains who keep the plot afloat, or in this case submerged. Rather, it’s the sophisticated technology available to modern navies, and Mr Clancy describes its uses with a thoroughness bordering on folly.’

Because of its thorough treatment of cutting-edge military technology, The Hunt for Red October is considered a pioneering work in a new generation of military thrillers that feature higher levels of technical accuracy. Clancy’s extensive research ensured that his portrayal of military technologies – such as submarines, naval warfare, and radar systems – was highly realistic. Following the publication of Clancy’s debut novel, military thrillers began to focus more on technical and tactical precision. Authors such as Harold Coyle, Larry Bond, Dale Brown and Stephen Coonts followed in Clancy’s footsteps, each incorporating complex military systems and tactics into their fictional works. Clancy and this next generation of military fiction authors popularised the ‘techno-thriller’, a subgenre that remains highly popular in military literature and for a wider audience today.

However, The Hunt for Red October was simply the next step in a genre of writing that originated in the 19th century. Military fiction emerged as societies and their military institutions sought to understand and adapt to the wide-ranging and rapid technological changes that occurred during the Second Industrial Revolution in the latter half of that century. With that great change came new opportunities and fears.

In the late 1860s an officer in the British Army’s Royal Engineers named George Chesney became concerned with the poor state of the British Army. After failing to achieve any action through writing letters of concern, he decided to author a fictional story highlighting the shortfalls in Britain’s defence. Entitled The Battle of Dorking, his story described an invasion of Britain by a ‘German-speaking’ nation which he called The Enemy.

The story, published in 1871 in the wake of the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War, was a sensation. As Lawrence Freedman notes in his book, The Future of War: A History, Chesney’s work quickly sold over 80,000 copies and sparked a national debate about Britain’s defences. The Battle of Dorking was the start of the genre of fiction about the potential for, and the nature of, future conflicts.

The Battle of Dorking would be the book that originated the category of literature about a potential invasion of Britain at the turn of the 20th century. In the lead-up to the First World War, several other books joined this genre. One of the best-known is William Le Queux’s The Invasion of 1910, published in 1906. The key theme in Le Queux’s book was the British military’s lack of preparedness for a European war. The book described a German invasion force landing on the east coast of England and fighting its way into London. Eventually, the British turn the tide on their invader through a popular uprising, liberating their nation. Over one million copies of the book edition were sold, and it was translated into 27 languages.

On the other side of the English Channel, the antagonist of many British military fiction novels was also producing literature for a future war that speculated about what conflict would look like against the British. Perhaps the best-known writer was the Prussian General and military historian Friedrich Adam Julius von Bernhardi. After the Franco-Prussian War and the end of his career as an army corps commander in Westphalia, from 1909 Bernhardi dedicated himself to writing on military subjects. Unlike many of the pre-war authors, he eventually got to put into practice many of his ideas, serving with distinction in the German Army on both the Eastern and Western fronts throughout the First World War.

In 1911, Bernhardi published his best-known work, Germany and the Next War. Gaining popularity among German nationalists, it became even more widely read in Britain when a translated edition was released in 1912. Many in Britain believed it provided evidence of the ill intent that Germany harboured towards them. The book is bellicose in character, and at one point, Bernhardi describes war as a ‘biological necessity of the first importance’. But Germany in the Next War was also a detailed examination of Germany’s place in the world and its aspirations (or at least those of the author) to become a world power. The book proposed the character of the next war while conducting in-depth examinations of German land and naval power. Bernhardi also notably recommended the development of what he called an ‘air fleet’.

Across the Atlantic, American author Frank Stockton described a different vision of future war. Published in 1889, Stockton’s The Great War Syndicate described a war between the United States and England. The twist of this story is that 23 ‘great capitalists’ form a syndicate in America and propose to the US Congress that they take charge of the war. The syndicate would ‘assume the entire control and expense of the war, and to effect a satisfactory peace within one year’. Stockton’s book was prescient, and it remained relatable to generations of readers familiar with the power of the military-industrial complex.

Another early work of speculative military fiction that has made a lasting impact is H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds. Unlike other stories centred on the threat of invasion from across the Channel or the Atlantic, this tale features an invader that does not even originate from Earth. Wells explored the theme of future war through the lens of science fiction – an invasion from Mars. Originally serialised in 1897 by Pearson’s Magazine in England and by Cosmopolitan in the United States, it was published as a novel in 1898.

Wells’ story is significant for several reasons. First, it was one of the earliest novels to explore conflict between humans and aliens, and its themes have permeated science fiction for over 120 years. It also serves as an exploration of conflict with ‘the other’. Most European and American future-war literature of the time dealt with familiar adversaries, as well similar methods of warfare, weapons, and ways of thinking. The War of the Worlds diverged from this approach by having its protagonists face an entirely new enemy, whose weapons, tactics, strengths, and weaknesses were unknown to Earth’s defenders.

The novel contained important themes that would manifest in the wars of the first half of the 20th century. Wells described a vision of total war – destruction without moral limitations – that emerged during the First World War. The widespread death and devastation depicted in Wells’ novel became a reality for cities including London, Hamburg, Berlin, Tokyo, and many others during the second great war from 1939 to 1945. Wells also focused on the Martians’ destruction of key infrastructure, the lifelines of the Second Industrial Revolution. The emphasis on demolishing British railways, weapon stores, and telegraph lines during the alien invasion presaged the Allies’ focus on destroying German infrastructure during the Second World War.

Over 400 military fiction novels were published between The Battle of Dorking and the start of the Great War in 1914. These pre-war novels laid the foundation for what would become a flood of military fiction after the Second World War. Military fiction truly came of age during the Cold War, in the shadow of nuclear tensions, great power conflicts, and the threat of total destruction, when technologies such as atomic weapons, radar and computing magnified the capabilities and dangers of modern war.

Yet fiction was also a valuable medium for exploring the enduring friction, chaos, and uncertainty inherent in warfare through the ages. The concept of ‘friction’ in war – the myriad factors that complicate military operations – was first articulated by Carl von Clausewitz in his 19th-century work, On War. This uncertainty in military affairs, whether stemming from the unpredictable actions of friendly and enemy forces during conflict, or the ambiguity surrounding a potential adversary’s readiness during peacetime, has been a consistent theme in military fiction across all eras.

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