Getting in and out of Clancy-Land

For some reason, reading Tom Clancy’s works is a guilty pleasure. The technolingo, the self-serving role of male protagonists in a machine-world, and yes the taken-for-granted gratefulness from the rest of the world for intelligence agencies saving the day to the benefit of all the free world.

Having just finished Red October (Russian: Красный Oктябрь, “Krasniy Oktyabr”), I plan to keep reading until I am done with “The Cardinal of the Kreml”. The reason for going about this reading is because Tom Clancy knew his homework, which indirectly is also my homework. The critics aside, Clancy talked to A LOT OF PEOPLE about the topics on which he wrote, which made for good writing in the end. One of these people were Christer Larsson who worked with the Space Media Network, a Swedish subsidiary newspaper conducting investigative journalism using satellite observation.

Image excerpts from “The Cardinal of the Kremlin” inspired by Larsson’s investigative journalism using satellite observation

Larsson was awarded The Swedish Grand Prize for Journalism 1986 due to his work on satellite journalism, among them exposing the Chernobyl Disaster earlier the same year. Clancy took interest in this and called up Larsson to discuss one of his new book ideas, a Soviet equivalent to the Reagan “Strategic Defence Initiative” (The Star Wars). Once Clancy had described his book theme, Larsson responded, “the thing is Tom, the Soviets are doing it for real”.

The original image has been reworked to include some dramaturgical components, like the KGB-barracks which were not on site in the original data-satellite image.

The Cardinal in the Kremlin is not just another book about the agent Jack Ryan, but it is also about the continued collaboration between Larsson and Clancy on the use of satellites in the Cold War surveillance. In this respect satellite surveillance influences fiction and the linkage from fiction back to fact is what is also interesting here as well. My ending question in this reading so far is what became of the peaceful use of satellites once the Die Mauer had fallen, to what degree are the same or similar arguments found in environmental agendas for satellites in the post-Cold War world that satellite operators had to adjust their artifacts to?